Nuclear Radiation Experts: 2,000 Tons Nuclear Materials Spewing Radioactivity for Months

Earlier today, Earth & Industry had the chance to participate in a call with leading international radiation experts and learn what they had to say about the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant and the threats posed by nuclear fallout.

The Physicians for Social Responsibility news event was held to address concerns about misleading and incomplete information that is being provided about the Japanese nuclear catastrophe and was led by Dr. Ira Helfand, lifelong nuclear energy educator and former president of Physicians for Social Responsibility; Dr. David Richardson, associate professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina; and Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, an international consultant on radioactive waste issues.

A streaming audio replay of this telenews conference will be available here.  Read on to learn more about areas of concern and the impact of this disaster.

2,000 Tons of Nuclear Materials at Fukushima Daiichi

Six reactors, seven fuel pools and a storage tank total almost 2,000 tons of nuclear material.  The reactors alone are storing 1000 times as much nuclear energy as the Hiroshima bomb released in one concentrated dose and include waste that has been undergoing nuclear fission for 3 years.  Continued exothermic reactions make for more radioactive contaminants and contribute to the gravity of the daunting situation in Japan, which has left at least 10,000 dead.

The Heat is On---For Months!

Steam explosions and burn off from exposed fuel pools are the hazards causing the most concern.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed a partial meltdown in reactors 1, 2 and 3 and workers have already experienced two fires at Reactor 4.  They can no longer get close to problem areas because water, which serves to shield workers and cool the fuel, is not being dropped and gamma radiation is extremely high.    As the water evaporates it exposes the nuclear fuel and uranium rods begin to burn, emitting more heat and radioactive cesium.  Uranium is then able to mix with water and begin the reaction that sends radiation into the atmosphere.

Reactor #3 is especially dangerous, as it is fueled with a combination of Moxand uranium.  Mox fuel releases plutonium, which has a 24,200 year half-life and can cause lung cancer at extremely low doses.

Roofless spent-fuel pools sit at the top of the reactors (70-80 feet up), if these pools aren't cooled to a temperature below 1800 F, hydrogen will be created and more explosions will occur.

Though water cannons are being deployed, Japan is having trouble resupplying water to cool the affected areas, which leads Dr. Resnikoff to believe thattemperatures could be soaring for months.

External Ionizing Radiation and Human Health

There remains a lack of information on the environmental levels of external ionizing radiation--the kind that moves through the body in waves (think: gamma and beta rays)--but knowing these measurements of total body radiation exposure doesn't indicate personal health risk as much as knowing the exposure rate to specific tissues.  We do know that the "Fukushima 50" (the workers left battling the meltdown)  are in a grave situation, facing hazards of extreme heat, explosions and fires, and that the workers must move through some sites in a matter of minutes to avoid acute radiation.

Radioactive Isotopes and Ambient Radiation

Ambient radiation and the dispersion of radioactive isotopes will cause numerous health problems, warns nuclear expert, Dr. Ira Helfand.  Radioactive isotopes may be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed into the bloodstream through open wounds and pose more of a threat to the Japanese population than radiation waves or beams.  Land 100 miles downwind of Chernobyl was contaminated with radioactivity and is still not safe to use, "if winds blow in the direction of Tokyo, it is conceivable that large parts of Tokyo could be contaminated in this way," he says.  A forecast for easterly winds could be the city's saving grace.

Exactly how much ambient radiation will be released is impossible to say and measured levels vary dramatically moment to moment.  We will likely not know the volume released to the environment until the materials that remain stored at Fukushima are assessed.  The highest levels noted by Dr. Helfand are 40 rems-- a dose that would cause sickness after 2.5 hours of exposure.

Of the 200 different radioactive isotopes that could be released, 4 pose real risk to human health:

Iodine 131 - concentrates in the thyroid, has a half-life of 8 days, leads to thyroid cancer

Strontium 90 - concentrates in bone marrow, has a half-life of 90 years, leads to bone cancer and leukemia

Cesium 137 - prevalent in all tissues, has a half-life of 30 years, can cause multiple cancers

Plutonium 239 - concentrates in the lungs, has a half-life of 24,200 years, low doses lead to lung cancer

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Image Credit: daveeza via Flickr

Nuclear Nightmare (and what to do about it .. )

Nuclear Nightmare

Posted by Mark Sircus on 18 March 2011 | Filed under World Affairs

The Japanese government today admitted that
it is overwhelmed by unfolding events.

If millions of Japanese wondering what they need to do to get out of harm’s way are confused, there is good reason for it. The Japanese government as well as the American one and health officials around the world are themselves confused about the potential dangers to the people of the greater metropolitan Tokyo area, which is practically in the shadow of the out-of-control nuclear power station. Imagine how they feel being so close. It’s a nuclear nightmare up there in northern Japan. Is there anyone who really wants to doubt that?
Top U.S. officials have testified before congress this week that the situation in Japan has reached catastrophic proportions on par with Chernobyl. Both the Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Gregory B. Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave dire testimony before the House Energy and Commerce committee. This is not the same story being told in Tokyo, at least not yet. But Japan’s nuclear agency spokesman conceded that a “Chernobyl solution” of burying the reactors in sand and concrete was in the back of the authorities’ minds. A day later it is moving to the very front of their minds.
American officials in Japan continue to operate on the assumption that the danger level is higher than described by the Japanese and in this essay we continue to assume the dangers are stratospherically higher than even the American officials are admitting. At this point both the primary and secondary containment vessels at the Fukushima nuclear reactor #4 are breached. To make matters worse, radiation readings taken by the U.S. indicate that the cooling pond is empty, indicating the fuel rods are in a state of complete meltdown with no cooling to counteract the meltdown in progress. These events spell out NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE and there will be many deaths in this bad dream.
The U.S. has issued a 50-mile evacuation zone around the plant and even that might be too conservative of a radius as things get further out of hand. This is in contrast to Japanese directives that people within about 12 miles evacuate while those between 12 and 19 miles stay indoors. Yet there are strong indications that fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation, suggesting they should really start considering evacuating Tokyo.
It is time to get people out and it’s time for us to stop using fluoride in our water and mercury in our vaccines and dental products but that’s the problem with us humans and our cherished institutions—we don’t recognize the real dangers until it’s too late and we come up with all kinds of excuses and rationalizations to do or not do something. The frenetic series of efforts to get water into four of the plant’s six reactors is not working.
American officials say they suspect that the Japanese power company has consistently underestimated the risk and moved too slowly to contain the damage. To expect the politicians, nuclear power energy officials and the company owners to communicate in an unbiased/untwisted way about nuclear events is to be a fool. All they see are safety signs in their minds and they cannot let anything get in the way of the future of nuclear power even though it’s proving out to be the stupidest, most insane thing modern man has ever done. We will now learn this lesson the hard way. Does anyone have any doubt about that either?
As each hour passes in Japan, the world comes closer to reading news of one of the largest nuclear stations in the world going out of control creating a permanent hot spot on our planet that will result in nightmares for ages to come. It is already happening and we are within a hair’s breadth of incalculable suffering and harm to human civilization. Yet the risks are not being disclosed for fear of panic. The days and weeks ahead are going to give us a shocking wake-up call about who we are and what we have done and allowed to be done to our lives. It is a good time for prayers and a good time for some self-reflection.

The United Nations is forecasting a possible radioactive
plume coming across the Pacific Ocean and arriving
in California today, according to the New York Times.

California is going to get dumped on by the jet stream from Japan with the fallout being the first whiffs from the first, most minor explosion at Fukushima. The radioactive fallout will contain uranium, cesium, tritium, strontium, and carbon 14 but not very much radioactive iodine. In our next essay entitled “No Danger, No Concern, No Sanity,” we will look more carefully at what to pay attention to regarding long-range, traveling nuclear fallout.
Iodine supplementation always makes perfect medical sense for an iodine-deficient population whether confronted with radioactive iodine or not. Dr. David Brownstein has tested 5,000 of his patients and has conferred with many of his colleagues who all sustain the reality that 95 percent of Americans are iodine deficient. Without sufficient iodine we are sitting ducks to toxicities of many kinds with radioactive iodine being only one. Fluoride in the drinking water is much more toxic to an iodine-deficient thyroid. They will not warn you about that and they will not give sufficient warning to what is happening in Japan and what lies ahead.
Soon it will be deadly +plutonium coming through. The fuel rods at all six reactors at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi complex contain plutonium. Only six percent of the fuel rods at the plant’s Unit 3 were a mixture of plutonium-239 and uranium-235 when first put into operation. The fuel in other reactors is only uranium, but even there, plutonium is created during the fission process. This means the fuel in all of the stricken reactors and spent fuel pools contain plutonium. Plutonium is super nasty stuff, especially damaging to lungs and kidneys. Inhaling or ingesting only one radioactive particle of plutonium can cause cancer.
There are 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools within the six-reactor plant, including one joint pool storing very old fuel from units 3 and 4. There are 877 tons in five of the reactor cores. That is a lot of radioactive material and Japan is actually a very small place.
The media run by the super elites are not going to tell people what is really going on. You think they are telling the truth about what is happening in the Gulf states? You think they are going to warn the kids going down for spring break to stay out of the water? You think they are going to tell everyone to go out and buy both eatingand external clay to help draw radioactive particles from the body? No they will not come out with any helpful informative information.
You would think they would give a heads up to the population about the usefulness of simple Arm & Hammer baking soda and how useful that can be to citizens worried about or actually suffering with radioactive contamination? Not a chance even though it’s been reported that you can clear soil of uranium with it, with sodium bicarbonate, the same stuff that you can stick in your refrigerator, brush your teeth and wash your hair with and even save a life in the emergency room.
The world is already paying a high price for nuclear energy. It is not clean and green and certainly not safe but you will never get them to admit that. If a company like Boeing can fall to the temptation of arrogance and shoddy planes, as 60 Minutes exposed, what do you think the nuclear power industry is all about?
So what aren’t they telling us? They are not telling us that the mixed oxide fuel rods used in the compromised number three reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi complex contain enough plutonium to threaten public health with the possibility of inhalation of airborne plutonium particles.
Plutonium is most dangerous when it is inhaled and gets into the lungs. The effect on the human body is to vastly increase the chance of developing fatal cancers. That is why in my protocol I call for use of glutathione sodium bicarbonate nebulization because it treats and helps clear the lung tissues. If one has anything above a zero chance of surviving the inhalation of airborne plutonium it’s going to be this kind of treatment as well as with the use of clay. Well actually increasing one’s chance from zero entails the use of a complete protocol for radiation exposure.
The damaged number three reactor was undergoing its first fuel cycle using MOX at Daiichi. If one of thoseMOX reactors blows, spewing plutonium dust across Japan and elsewhere, it is lights out via cancer for anyone who breathes the stuff. The half-life of various plutonium isotopes ranges from minutes to 80 million years. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years meaning it takes that long to lose half of its radioactive potency—nothing compared to depleted uranium, which counts its time in billions of years. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years. And cesium, which tends to go airborne easily, has a half-life of 30 years.