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

Iodine 131 and a classic magicians' distraction technique.

This was posted to www.llrc.org today

Iodine 131 and a classic magicians' distraction technique. 

This post is about radio-Iodine but we have doubts about going with it. If the authorities can get us all thinking about Iodine and then reassure us that actually it's not a problem except for people in Japan (which is broadly true) then we might not realise that the really dangerous isotopes - Plutonium, Uranium, Strontium, Tritium in particular - are not even being reported. This is a massive failure of Governments' duty of care. 

However, with that caveat, we'll fall into the Iodine trap because we have received many requests for advice since the Fukushima emergency began. 

Our early advice on taking stable Iodine is unchanged. It is here. 

The European Committee on Radiation Risk has published amethod for calculating doses from drinking water or milk contaminated with Iodine 131. ECRR's main message is reassuring about the risks, so far as USA and Europe are concerned. They are not much different from what you hear from official sources.Calculating doses from Iodine.

Take the figure for Becquerels per litre (Bq/l). (There is information on the internet. LLRC has no resources for monitoring it all). If, as in USA, the radioactivity levels are expressed in picoCuries (pCi), convert pCi to Becquerels (Bq) by multiplying by 0.037.

To convert a dietary intake into a dose multiply the Becquerels by 0.11 and the answer will be the dose in microSieverts. For example, if a litre of water is contaminated with 0.5 Bq, drinking it will give 0.5 x 0.11 = 0.055microSv. (This uses the ECRR adult dose coefficient for Iodine 131 which is slightly different to the ICRP dose coefficient - see ECRR 2010 p. 244).

The cancer risk associated with this dose is small. It can be calculated by dividing the dose in microSv by 1 billion. For the above example this means that if a billion people each drank a litre of water contaminated with 0.5 Bq then 5.5 of them would develop cancer over a period of 50 years. The individual person would increase his or her chances of getting cancer by 1 in 182 million. (This uses the ECRR cancer risk coefficient of 0.1 per Sievert which is different to the ICRP risk coefficient 0.05 per Sievert - seeECRR 2010 p. 180).

Note that this calculation is for a single intake. Iodine 131 loses half of its radioactivity in 8.04 days. This means that if your water supply comes from rainfall and if the rain becomes contaminated in a single episode the radioactivity will decay to 1/16th of its original concentration during a month and so on. That's assuming no further releases from the reactor affect your region.

Black Ops on CRIIRAD?

In the last few days many websites and newspapers have misreported Iodine dose figures from the French NGO CRIIRAD. It is claimed that CRIIRAD has said if a child under 2 years ingested 50 Becquerels of Iodine 131 the dose would be
10milliSieverts. At best, this is a transcription error; at worst it's a propaganda attack intended to discredit good sources of independent advice by making them look like scaremongers. 

CRIIRAD actually said:

Les enfants en bas âge (0 – 2 ans) sont les plus vulnérables : l’ingestion d’une cinquantaine de becquerels d’iode 131 suffit à délivrer à leur organisme une dose de

10 µSv. (Children under the age of 2 are the most vulnerable. Ingesting about 50 becquerels of Iodine 131 is enough to give them a dose of 10 µSv.) 

That's 10 microsieverts, a thousand times smaller than 10 millisieverts. We have checked the calculation. It appears that CRIIRAD has used ICRP dose and risk coefficients and a ten-fold multiplier to correct for the small body mass of these little children. This is reasonable (for any given intake, a small body mass means a larger dose). According to LLRC's arithmetic the effective dose to the child is 11µSv. Using ECRR dose coefficients it would be 27.5µSv. 

So beware of nonsense on the net. The micro / milli confusion can arise because the International System of Units (SI) uses the letter m to stand for milli or 1/1,000. The Greek letter mu (µ) stands for micro or 1/1,000,000. Some software packages use the Symbolfont to allow Greek characters and the key you press to get µ is the "M" key. If someone pastes the resulting text into an editor that doesn't recognise Symbol it will give an m. It looks like a small error but in this case it's a thousand times wrong.

If you have more questions email us. We get a lot of emails. We can't answer them all, but we read them all and they influence what we write about here.

Bad news and good advice for Fukushima's refugees

Iodine131 affects the thyroid gland. A few years ago the New York Times reported that doctors had found a puzzling increase in thyroid cancer in New York State. Here's the link. The increased cancer rate was driven by immigrants from Belarus and Ukraine, many of whom settled in New York. Their doctors and, presumably, public health officials didn't realise that it was important to watch for changes to their thyroids, while back in the homeland the people who stayed behind were monitored closely and treated early. Eventually, the emigrés' thyroid cancers became impossible to ignore. Unfortunately, in many cases they were diagnosed too late. 

Apologists for nuclear power claim that the increase in thyroid cancer in the Chernobyl-affected territories is an artefact caused by increased vigilance - more thyroid cancers were detected because doctors were looking for them. (This quote is from the BBC's disgraceful Nuclear Nightmares mockumentary of 2006.) They think this gets radioactive fallout off the hook. The New York experience shows the opposite; radioactive fallout caused the cancers and lack of vigilance killed the victims. This is a powerful warning to people who have left the blighted parts of Japan. Don't think you have left the radiation problem behind; it might have come with you. If you think you have been exposed, make sure your doctor knows it. Get regular checkups long-term. If medical people on LLRC's circulations send us relevant advice we will post it later.

Fukushima Disaster: Are We Told The Truth?: Stephen Lendman

By Stephen Lendman

08 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

On April 6, Reuters reported that "the core at Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel," Rep. Edward Markey told a House hearing on the disaster, saying:

"I have been informed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the core has gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel."

However, the NRC is denying this. Reuters subsequently reported:

A top official from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Wednesday it was not clear that Japan’s Fukushima No. 2 nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel.

Earlier, Democratic lawmaker Edward Markey told a House of Representatives hearing on the nuclear disaster that the NRC had told him the core had melted through the vessel.

“That’s not clear to us, nor is it clear to us that the reactor has penetrated the vessel,” said Martin Virgilio, deputy executive director for reactor and preparedness programs at the NRC.

Recklessly promoting nuclear proliferation, America's NRC is notorious for coverup and denial of its harmful effects.

Nonetheless, on April 6, New York Times writers Matthew Wald and Andrew Pollack headlined, "Core of Stricken Reactor Probably Leaked, US Says," stating:

America's NRC "said Wednesday that some of the core of a stricken Japanese reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure, implying that the damage was even worse than previously thought."

Far worse, in fact, because molten core material then burns uncontrollably through the concrete foundation, meaning all bets are off.

On April 5, Times writers James Glanz and William Broad headlined, "US Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant," saying:

American engineers warned "that the troubled nuclear plant....is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential" NRC assessment.

Identified threats include:

-- Possible further explosions because of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater used to cool the reactors that may have done more harm than good. According to former GE reactor designer Margaret Harding:

"If I were in the Japanese's shoes, I'd be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn't been checked since the earthquake," and very likely is seriously damaged.

-- Because of concern about severe reactor core damage, NRC recommended boron be added to cooling water as a moderator to absorb neutrons.

-- Exposed/unprotected spent fuel rods in Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 pose extreme dangers. Moreover, explosions blew nuclear material "up to one mile from the units" into the atmosphere, indicating much greater damage than previously disclosed.

As a result, David Lochbaum from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) believes:

"This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don't work out for them....They've got a lot of nasty things to (handle), and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse."

Other experts believe criticality was reached, posing far greater dangers than revealed.

Yet government and Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) officials still claim "no immediate risk of a hydrogen explosion occurring" or serious harm to human health. In fact, danger levels now are extreme. More on that below.

Even the NRC admitted that salt water "severely restricted" and likely blocked circulation pathways. Moreover, inside the core, "there is likely no water level (so it's) difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel." Perhaps none, and three or more reactors are affected, one or more in meltdown.

Independent Expert Opinions

On April 4, geoscientist/international radiation expert Leuren Moret told interviewer Alfred Lambremont Webre that Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper are concealing the effects of tectonic nuclear war on North America from Fukushima's fallout. In fact, Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) radiation maps confirm contamination on America's West Coast, Midwest, and Western Canada, in some areas as high as Japan's.

Radioactive Iodine-131 in rainwater sampled near San Francisco was found to be over 18,000 times above federal drinking water standards. Idaho, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts rainwater samples showed Iodine-131 up to 181 times above normal, expected to rise. It's also showing up in milk.

As a result, mobile measures in parts of America and Canada were suspended until further notice to conceal the disaster's gravity.

Moret cited two distinguished nuclear scientists who've publicly said northern Japan (one-third of the country) is uninhabitable and should be evacuated. Marion Fulk is one, a Manhattan Project scientist who helped develop the hydrogen bomb. He also was America's atmospheric fallout expert when above-ground tests were conducted.

Dr. Chris Busby is the other, an ionizing radiation expert. On March 30, he told Russia Today television that Fukushima contamination will cause at least 417,000 new cancers.

Moret called Fukushima a false flag operation to weaken an economic rival, harm its economy, agriculture and fisheries, and compromise its detente with China. Compared to Chernobyl, Fukushima's releasing multiple times more radiation, perhaps amounts too enormous to imagine with potentially catastrophic global effects.

In response, Japan, America and Canada are in denial. Permissible radiation exposure levels have been raised. Legitimate reporting was halted. US and Canadian atmospheric testing was suspended. State authorities told California physicians not to give iodine to concerned patients. Measuring radiation in milk was also stopped.

Contamination is spreading from the Arctic to the Equator. Long-lived radioactive isotopes will cause environmental and human health havoc for generations. Moret said life forms developed over billions of years are being destroyed in a century.

On March 29, Chris Busby's Rense.com article headlined, "Deconstructing Nuclear Experts," saying:

"What these people have in common is ignorance. (Most) who appear (in the major media) and pontificate have not actually done any research on the issue of radiation and health. Or if they have, they....missed all the key studies and references. (Others are) real baddies" who say Fukushima is nothing to worry about, nothing like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island (TMI).

In fact, Fukushima already way exceeds both and will get increasingly worse ahead as radiation releases continue and spread. Busby quoted Joseph Conrad saying, "after all the shouting is over, the grim silence of facts remain."

"I believe that (the array of) phony experts," said Busby, "are criminally irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths....I hope they are sent to jail where they can have plenty of time to read the scientific proofs (showing) their advice was based on the mathematical analysis of thin air."

He cited the late Professor John Gofman, a senior US Atomic Energy Commission expert who resigned, saying:

"(T)he nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity."

So far, in fact, it's winning. It's entered an endgame that will decide whether or not humanity will survive. "Not from sudden nuclear war," said Busby. "But from the ongoing and incremental nuclear war which began with the releases to the biosphere in the 60s of all the atmospheric test fallout, and which continued inexorably since (to this day), accompanied by parallel increases in cancer rates and fertility loss to the human race."

Busby calls it "the greatest public health scandal in human history...." Who can disagree.

A Final Comment

In a personal email, environmental researcher Dr. Ilya Perlingieri explained the dangers of Japan dumping thousands of tons of radioactive water in the Pacific, saying:

"We are all in grave danger! This was insanity! This radioactive water will come here (to America). There is no question about that. The currents will bring it to the west coast and contaminate the entire area: beaches and all sealife between the coast and Japan. What evaporates naturally will then come on the air currents around the rest of the US and then the rest of the planet!""This is epic, and it was not an accident."

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

Low-level radiation from nuclear plant found in several states

At least 14 states have found trace amounts of radiation from the crippled nuclear plant in Japan, but officials say the levels of radioactivity are much too low to prompt health concerns.

The states are Alaska, Hawaii, California, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Very low concentrations of iodine-131 were found last week in a rainwater sample in Boston. "It is not a problem for public safety nor is it a threat to the drinking water supply," said Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Richard Sullivan.

Sullivan ordered the collection of drinking water samples from 12 locations Sunday. Tests showed the water was "absolutely clean," he said.

No radiation has been discovered in Virginia, but state Health Commissioner Karen Remley said she asked that routine quarterly monitoring be conducted this week instead of next week as scheduled. "I am not worried," she said.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that its nationwide air monitoring system found slightly higher radiation levels than last week in some locations but said they are "still far below levels of public health concern."

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, prompting radioactive emissions that have been dispersed by weather systems.

Iodine-131 ordinarily is not found in Nevada and can be linked to Japan because of its half-life, said Ted Hartwell, manager of environmental monitoring at Nevada's Desert Research Institute.

Iodine-131 "has a very short half-life of about eight days, so we know it's from a fairly recent event," he said. Half-life is the length of time it takes a radioactive substance to decrease in potency by half.

Elsewhere:

• Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said Monday that weekend testing found no elevated levels of radioactivity in his state's drinking water. Iodine-131 was found Friday in rain samples.

• Aubrey Godwin, director of the Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency, said he was not surprised when two sensors 50 miles apart detected trace amounts of radioactive material. "We saw the same thing after Chernobyl," the 1986 nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, he said. "It shouldn't be concerning to Arizonans," he said.

• Case Western Reserve University geology professor Gerald Matisoff said Monday that he found trace amounts of iodine-131 in rainwater he collected from the roof of a campus building in Cleveland for an unrelated study.

• Monitors picked up low levels of iodine-131 at Progress Energy's nuclear plants in Hartsville, S.C., and Crystal River, Fla., last week, said company spokesman Drew Elliot.

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