WASHINGTON, Dec. 19, 2011 -- Impact Seen As Roughly Comparable to Radiation-Related Deaths After Chernobyl; Infants Are Hardest Hit, With Continuing Research Showing Even Higher Possible Death Count.
An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.
Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks...
Full Article:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/medical-journal-article-14000-us-deaths-tied-to-fukushima-reactor-disaster-fallout-2011-12-19
Showing posts with label Chernobyl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chernobyl. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Architect of Reactor 3 warns of massive hydrovolcanic explosion
11/19/11
Dear Readers,
I've been following nuclear issues for more than 40 years -- since I was about fourteen years old. I watched as Three Mile Island unfolded, and then Chernobyl, the loss of the Russian submarine Kursk, and a thousand other events. I'd guess I've testified at over 100 nuke hearings (10 more, and I get a free pizza!) and written over a thousand essays (we'll call this one #1,167, though it may not be). A phone call in the middle of the night on 3/11 from Harvey Wasserman alerted me to Fukushima. (So now I owe Harvey a pizza.)
Suffice it to say, it's not often I read a headline about nuclear dangers that scares the daylights out of me. They all distress me, but I don't lose my daylights (wherever they happen to be) very often. However, here's a headline that DOES scare the daylights out of me:
"Architect of Reactor 3 warns of massive hydrovolcanic explosion."
(Full article and links, below).
Here's my take on it (with a little history to set the scene):
In the fall of 1945 Vern Partlow was a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News.
After interviewing scientists about the atomic bombs that were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he became so alarmed that he wrote a song about the dangers, called Old Man Atom.
The song was an enormous hit among folksingers of the time (Pete Seeger among them) but was (famously) banned during the McCarthy Era. (Even the New York Times editorialized that the song's ban was "a threat to freedom.")
The song has a line that describes "the atom" as: "...the thing that Einstein says he's scared of" then goes on to say: "And when Einstein's scared, brother, I'M SCARED!"
If Einstein were alive today, I think he'd be VERY scared.
Of Fukushima.
Professor Haruo Uehara is a former president of Saga University and the primary architect of Fukushima Dai-ichi Reactor 3. Professor Haruo is scared. So I think we should ALL be scared. Not that Professor Uehara is saying anything significantly different from what I -- and others -- have been saying we thought happened in Fukushima, or is happening, or will happen. But now it's coming from someone with very heavy credentials AND close ties to Fukushima Dai-ichi itself.
There may be nothing we can do about Fukushima, but ADDITIONAL nuclear catastrophes can be relatively easy to prevent: Shut the reactors down. Shut 'em ALL down.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
The author was born during atmospheric weapons testing (1956, to be exact) and is an educational software developer. He witnessed the breakup of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) into the NRC and the DOE (1974). He was working at a college news department as Three Mile Island unfolded (1979). He was a computer programmer by the time of Chernobyl (1986). His older brother died of leukemia (1994), then he had bladder cancer himself (2005). Then Fukushima started raining radioactive poisons down on us all (2011). What's next? San Onofre? Indian Point? Or any of a hundred others?
-------------------------------------------------
Architect of Reactor 3 warns of massive hydrovolcanic explosion:
http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/11/architect-of-reactor-3-warns-massive-hydrovolcanic-explosion/?mid=531
Posted by Mochizuki on November 19th, 2011
Architect of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3, Uehara Haruo, the former president of Saga University had an interview on 11/17/2011.
In this interview, he admitted Tepco’s explanation does not make sense, and that the China syndrome is inevitable.
He stated that considering 8 months have passed since 311 without any improvement, it is inevitable that melted fuel went out of the container vessel and sank underground, which is called China syndrome.
He added, if fuel has reaches a underground water vein, it will cause contamination of underground water, soil contamination and sea contamination. Moreover, if the underground water vein keeps being heated for long time, a massive hydrovolcanic explosion will be caused.
He also warned radioactive debris is spreading in Pacific Ocean. Tons of the debris has reached the Marshall Islands as of 11/15/2011.
Original source: http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/6041353/
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
Dear Readers,
I've been following nuclear issues for more than 40 years -- since I was about fourteen years old. I watched as Three Mile Island unfolded, and then Chernobyl, the loss of the Russian submarine Kursk, and a thousand other events. I'd guess I've testified at over 100 nuke hearings (10 more, and I get a free pizza!) and written over a thousand essays (we'll call this one #1,167, though it may not be). A phone call in the middle of the night on 3/11 from Harvey Wasserman alerted me to Fukushima. (So now I owe Harvey a pizza.)
Suffice it to say, it's not often I read a headline about nuclear dangers that scares the daylights out of me. They all distress me, but I don't lose my daylights (wherever they happen to be) very often. However, here's a headline that DOES scare the daylights out of me:
"Architect of Reactor 3 warns of massive hydrovolcanic explosion."
(Full article and links, below).
Here's my take on it (with a little history to set the scene):
In the fall of 1945 Vern Partlow was a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News.
After interviewing scientists about the atomic bombs that were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he became so alarmed that he wrote a song about the dangers, called Old Man Atom.
The song was an enormous hit among folksingers of the time (Pete Seeger among them) but was (famously) banned during the McCarthy Era. (Even the New York Times editorialized that the song's ban was "a threat to freedom.")
The song has a line that describes "the atom" as: "...the thing that Einstein says he's scared of" then goes on to say: "And when Einstein's scared, brother, I'M SCARED!"
If Einstein were alive today, I think he'd be VERY scared.
Of Fukushima.
Professor Haruo Uehara is a former president of Saga University and the primary architect of Fukushima Dai-ichi Reactor 3. Professor Haruo is scared. So I think we should ALL be scared. Not that Professor Uehara is saying anything significantly different from what I -- and others -- have been saying we thought happened in Fukushima, or is happening, or will happen. But now it's coming from someone with very heavy credentials AND close ties to Fukushima Dai-ichi itself.
There may be nothing we can do about Fukushima, but ADDITIONAL nuclear catastrophes can be relatively easy to prevent: Shut the reactors down. Shut 'em ALL down.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
The author was born during atmospheric weapons testing (1956, to be exact) and is an educational software developer. He witnessed the breakup of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) into the NRC and the DOE (1974). He was working at a college news department as Three Mile Island unfolded (1979). He was a computer programmer by the time of Chernobyl (1986). His older brother died of leukemia (1994), then he had bladder cancer himself (2005). Then Fukushima started raining radioactive poisons down on us all (2011). What's next? San Onofre? Indian Point? Or any of a hundred others?
-------------------------------------------------
Architect of Reactor 3 warns of massive hydrovolcanic explosion:
http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/11/architect-of-reactor-3-warns-massive-hydrovolcanic-explosion/?mid=531
Posted by Mochizuki on November 19th, 2011
Architect of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3, Uehara Haruo, the former president of Saga University had an interview on 11/17/2011.
In this interview, he admitted Tepco’s explanation does not make sense, and that the China syndrome is inevitable.
He stated that considering 8 months have passed since 311 without any improvement, it is inevitable that melted fuel went out of the container vessel and sank underground, which is called China syndrome.
He added, if fuel has reaches a underground water vein, it will cause contamination of underground water, soil contamination and sea contamination. Moreover, if the underground water vein keeps being heated for long time, a massive hydrovolcanic explosion will be caused.
He also warned radioactive debris is spreading in Pacific Ocean. Tons of the debris has reached the Marshall Islands as of 11/15/2011.
Original source: http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/6041353/
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Fukushima Is Continually Blasting All Of Us
Fukushima Is Continually Blasting All Of Us With High Levels Of Cesium, Strontium And Plutonium And Will Slowly Kill Millions For Years To Come
August 30th, 2011
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/fukushima-is-continually-blasting-all-of-us-with-high-levels-of-cesium-strontium-and-plutonium-and-will-slowly-kill-millions-for-years-to-come
Fukushima is now far and away the worst nuclear disaster in all of human history. Chernobyl was a Sunday picnic compared to Fukushima and the amount of cesium-137 released at Fukushima this year so far is equivalent to 168 Hiroshima bombs. The crisis at Fukushima is far, far worse than you have been told. We are talking about multiple self-sustaining nuclear meltdowns that will not be fully contained for years. In an attempt to keep people calm, authorities in Japan (and around the rest of the world as well) have lied and lied and lied. Over the months that have passed since the disaster began, small bits of the truth have slowly started to come out. Authorities are finally admitting that the area immediately surrounding Fukushima will be uninhabitable indefinitely, and they are finally admitting that the amount of radioactive material that has been released is far higher than initially reported. It is going to take the Japanese years to fully contain this problem. Meanwhile, Fukushima will continue to blast all of us with high levels of cesium, strontium and plutonium and will slowly kill millions of people around the globe for years to come.
These days, the mainstream media does not talk about Fukushima much. The reality is that there have been a whole lot of other disasters for them to talk about.
But just because Fukushima is a nightmare that is playing out in very slow motion does not mean that it does not deserve our full attention.
To get an idea of just how nightmarish Fukushima has turned out to be, just consider the words of nuclear expert Steven C. Jones....
By way of comparison, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that occured in 1986 in the Ukraine, Russia- heretofore the worst nuclear disaster on record- burned for 10 days and cumulatively killed an estimated 1 million people worldwide. The Fukushima, Japan nuclear disaster has 5 nuclear reactors burning, 2 in partial meltdown and 3 in full meltdown- and they've ALL been uncontrollably burning since March 11th. Its been over 3 months and this nuclear disaster remains completely out of control. In fact, some industry estimates cite the possibility that these meltdowns will be contained (optimistically) in 1-3 years, at the very earliest.
The amount and intensity of the radioactive fallout from this particular nuclear disaster will assuredly kill hundreds of millions of people worldwide over time. Japan itself is, of course, the epicenter of this radioactive contamination that has spread out from these reactors.
Keep in mind that radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster deeply contaminated 77,000 square miles.
So if Fukushima is many times worse, what does that mean for us?
Just recently, authorities in Japan confessed that the amount of cesium-137 released by Fukushima is equivalent to 168 of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article in the Telegraph....
Japan's government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs.
I am no nuclear expert, but shortly after the Fukushima disaster began I postulated that much of northern Japan would be rendered uninhabitable by all of this radiation.
Well, it turns out that authorities in Japan have finally reached the same conclusion. According to the New York Times, the Japanese government is acknowledging that large areas around the Fukushima nuclear facility may be uninhabitable for decades....
Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.
So what is the big deal?
Unfortunately, most people do not have any concept of just how dangerous nuclear contamination can be.
At this point, the vast majority of people living in the northern hemisphere have been exposed to radioactive material from Fukushima.
We can't see them, but radioactive particles can do an insane amount of damage. We can breathe them in, we can eat them in our food and we can even absorb them through our skin. Once trapped inside our bodies, these particles can slowly "bake" us for years and years. The following is from an opinion piece by Helen Caldicott in the Guardian....
Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). [2] After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.
One of the most dangerous radioactive elements being released at Fukushima is strontium. Strontium accumulates in the bones and in the teeth. It is also known to cause cancer in humans.
It has been estimated that approximately 80 percent of the strontium that was released during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster entered the food cycle.
Considering the vast amount of strontium that has been released at Fukushima, that is a very frightening statistic.
The following is what NHK World recently had to say about the levels of strontium that are being found around Fukushima....
The utility detected up to 480 becquerels of radioactive strontium 90 per kilogram of soil. That's about 100 times higher than the maximum reading recorded in Fukushima Prefecture following atmospheric nuclear tests carried out by foreign countries during the Cold War era.
TEPCO reported detecting 2,800 becquerels of strontium 89 per kilogram of soil at the same location.
Once you absorb strontium, it will stay in your bones for the rest of your life. Just consider what Dr. Russell Blaylock recently told Newsmax....
When we look at Chernobyl, most of West Germany was heavily contaminated. Norway, Sweden. Hungary was terribly contaminated. The radiation was taken up into the plants. The food was radioactive. They took the milk and turned it into cheese. The cheese was radioactive.
That’s the big danger, the crops in this country being contaminated, the milk in particular, with Strontium 90. That radiation is incorporated into the bones and stays for a lifetime.
So would you like to have radioactive material in your bones that affects your health for the rest of your life?
It may have already happened to you and you wouldn't even know it.
Other deadly radioactive elements that are being released at high levels at Fukushima include iodine, cesium, uranium and plutonium. Large amounts of these radioactive particles have already been absorbed in the soil and in the water in the United States.
Large amounts of these radioactive particles have also entered our food chain.
As the years go by, a whole lot of Americans are going to get sick and die and they will never even know that it was Fukushima that caused it.
Remember, just because you cannot see these radioactive particles does not mean that they aren't incredibly deadly. Just check out what nuclear expert Steven C. Jones recently had to say about plutonium....
To give one an example of how lethal radiation is, one pound of plutonium evenly distributed into everyone's lungs would kill every man, woman and child on Earth. There are literally "tons" of radioactive plutonium (among other radioactive elements) that have been released into the air and ocean environments since March 11th. Another critical fact to remember is that radioactive plutonium, for example, remains lethal (killing life) for thousands years as it has a half-life of 24,000 years. Some other radioactive elements such as uranium have a half-life of 4.47 billion years.
That is the scary thing with many of these radioactive elements. Now that they have been released, many of them will be with us for as long as we live, for as long as our children live and for as long as our grandchildren live.
Yes, things are much worse than you have been told.
Up until now, the Japanese government has insisted that those living outside the 20 kilometer exclusion zone are safe.
But is that really the case?
According to Reuters, Greenpeace has found incredibly high levels of radiation at schools up to 60 km away.....
Greenpeace said on Monday that schools and surrounding areas located 60 km (38 miles) from Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear power plant were unsafe for children, showing radiation readings as much as 70 times internationally accepted levels.
In addition, a recent Japan Times article noted that high levels of cesium have been discovered at 42 incineration plants in seven different prefectures in Japan....
High levels of cesium isotopes are cropping up in dust at 42 incineration plants in seven prefectures, including Chiba and Iwate, an Environment Ministry survey of the Kanto and Tohoku regions shows.
Also, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal stated that incredibly high levels of cesium-137 have been found up to 100 km away from the Fukushima nuclear facility....
The first comprehensive survey of soil contamination from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant showed that 33 locations spread over a wide area have been contaminated with long-lasting radioactive cesium, the government said Tuesday.
The survey of 2,200 locations within a 100-kilometer (62-mile) radius of the crippled plant found that those locations had cesium-137 in excess of 1.48 million becquerels per square meter, the level set by the Soviet Union for forced resettlement after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Japanese authorities said.
Remember that Tokyo is only about 250 km away from the Fukushima nuclear facility.
So what happens if high levels of cesium start showing up in Tokyo?
According to some sources, things have already gotten very serious in Tokyo.
Dr. Chris Busby recently traveled to Japan with some very sophisticated testing equipment and found one sample in Tokyo that had levels of radioactivity that were higher than the exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl during that nuclear disaster.
But things are much worse for those living much closer to Fukushima. High levels of cesium have been detected in the urine and in the breast milk of those living in the region surrounding the facility. All over the area there are reports of people coming down with the symptoms of radiation sickness.
The truth is that the "evacuation area" should be far, far larger than it is now. Just consider what Mike Adams of Natural News recently had to say about what recent tests have shown....
One soil sample taking 25 kilometers away from Fukushima showed Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter. This level, of course, makes it uninhabitable by humans, yet both the Japanese and U.S. governments continue to downplay the whole event, assuring their sheeple that there's nothing to worry about. By their logic, since all the people are sheeple anyway, as long as the area is safe enough for sheep, it's also safe enough for the human population.
A lot of people in Japan are going to die, and frustrations are rising. According to an article in The Independent, a lot of Japanese feel totally abandoned by their government at this point....
It is the fate of people outside the evacuation zones, however, that causes the most bitter controversy. Parents in Fukushima City, 63km from the plant, have banded together to demand that the government do more to protect about 100,000 children. Schools have banned soccer and other outdoor sports. Windows are kept closed. "We've just been left to fend for ourselves," says Machiko Sato, a grandmother who lives in the city. "It makes me so angry."
But just because you don't live in Japan does not mean that you are not in danger. The Fukushima nuclear facility sits right on the Pacific Ocean. When nuclear material gets released into the air at Fukushima, the first time much of it will encounter land is when it reaches the United States.
Also, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tons of highly radioactive water has been released into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima.
What this is going to do to our oceans nobody knows for sure. But according to the Los Angeles Times, the seawater near Fukushima has been found to be incredibly radioactive....
Tokyo Electric Power Co. had said Tuesday that it had found iodine-131 at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials instituted a health limit for radioactivity in fish. Other samples were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.
All of this radioactive water is going to circulate all over the globe. It is going to be a nightmare that is never going to end.
Just because the mainstream media is not talking much about all of this radiation does not mean that it is not affecting the United States....
*Radiation from Fukushima has been detected in seaweed in Puget Sound.
*Radiation from Fukushima has been detected in the drinking water in numerous states.
*Radiation from Fukushima has been discovered in milk in numerous states.
*Very high levels of radiation continue to be detected in rainwater in the northwest United States.
This is a slow motion nightmare that is going to play out for years and years.
Some nuclear experts claim that it could be up to 50 or 100 years before any of the nuclear material at the Fukushima complex will cool down enough to be removed from the facility.
Right now there is no viable solution to what is going on at Fukushima, so it will continue to blast all of us with high levels of radiation and will slowly kill millions of people around the globe for years to come.
Former nuclear industry insider Arnold Gundersen recently put it this way....
"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."
This is a nightmare that will be with us for the rest of our lives. Millions are going to get sick and untold numbers of people are going to slowly die.
Please share this information with as many people as you can.
August 30th, 2011
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/fukushima-is-continually-blasting-all-of-us-with-high-levels-of-cesium-strontium-and-plutonium-and-will-slowly-kill-millions-for-years-to-come
Fukushima is now far and away the worst nuclear disaster in all of human history. Chernobyl was a Sunday picnic compared to Fukushima and the amount of cesium-137 released at Fukushima this year so far is equivalent to 168 Hiroshima bombs. The crisis at Fukushima is far, far worse than you have been told. We are talking about multiple self-sustaining nuclear meltdowns that will not be fully contained for years. In an attempt to keep people calm, authorities in Japan (and around the rest of the world as well) have lied and lied and lied. Over the months that have passed since the disaster began, small bits of the truth have slowly started to come out. Authorities are finally admitting that the area immediately surrounding Fukushima will be uninhabitable indefinitely, and they are finally admitting that the amount of radioactive material that has been released is far higher than initially reported. It is going to take the Japanese years to fully contain this problem. Meanwhile, Fukushima will continue to blast all of us with high levels of cesium, strontium and plutonium and will slowly kill millions of people around the globe for years to come.
These days, the mainstream media does not talk about Fukushima much. The reality is that there have been a whole lot of other disasters for them to talk about.
But just because Fukushima is a nightmare that is playing out in very slow motion does not mean that it does not deserve our full attention.
To get an idea of just how nightmarish Fukushima has turned out to be, just consider the words of nuclear expert Steven C. Jones....
By way of comparison, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that occured in 1986 in the Ukraine, Russia- heretofore the worst nuclear disaster on record- burned for 10 days and cumulatively killed an estimated 1 million people worldwide. The Fukushima, Japan nuclear disaster has 5 nuclear reactors burning, 2 in partial meltdown and 3 in full meltdown- and they've ALL been uncontrollably burning since March 11th. Its been over 3 months and this nuclear disaster remains completely out of control. In fact, some industry estimates cite the possibility that these meltdowns will be contained (optimistically) in 1-3 years, at the very earliest.
The amount and intensity of the radioactive fallout from this particular nuclear disaster will assuredly kill hundreds of millions of people worldwide over time. Japan itself is, of course, the epicenter of this radioactive contamination that has spread out from these reactors.
Keep in mind that radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster deeply contaminated 77,000 square miles.
So if Fukushima is many times worse, what does that mean for us?
Just recently, authorities in Japan confessed that the amount of cesium-137 released by Fukushima is equivalent to 168 of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article in the Telegraph....
Japan's government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs.
I am no nuclear expert, but shortly after the Fukushima disaster began I postulated that much of northern Japan would be rendered uninhabitable by all of this radiation.
Well, it turns out that authorities in Japan have finally reached the same conclusion. According to the New York Times, the Japanese government is acknowledging that large areas around the Fukushima nuclear facility may be uninhabitable for decades....
Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.
So what is the big deal?
Unfortunately, most people do not have any concept of just how dangerous nuclear contamination can be.
At this point, the vast majority of people living in the northern hemisphere have been exposed to radioactive material from Fukushima.
We can't see them, but radioactive particles can do an insane amount of damage. We can breathe them in, we can eat them in our food and we can even absorb them through our skin. Once trapped inside our bodies, these particles can slowly "bake" us for years and years. The following is from an opinion piece by Helen Caldicott in the Guardian....
Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). [2] After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.
One of the most dangerous radioactive elements being released at Fukushima is strontium. Strontium accumulates in the bones and in the teeth. It is also known to cause cancer in humans.
It has been estimated that approximately 80 percent of the strontium that was released during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster entered the food cycle.
Considering the vast amount of strontium that has been released at Fukushima, that is a very frightening statistic.
The following is what NHK World recently had to say about the levels of strontium that are being found around Fukushima....
The utility detected up to 480 becquerels of radioactive strontium 90 per kilogram of soil. That's about 100 times higher than the maximum reading recorded in Fukushima Prefecture following atmospheric nuclear tests carried out by foreign countries during the Cold War era.
TEPCO reported detecting 2,800 becquerels of strontium 89 per kilogram of soil at the same location.
Once you absorb strontium, it will stay in your bones for the rest of your life. Just consider what Dr. Russell Blaylock recently told Newsmax....
When we look at Chernobyl, most of West Germany was heavily contaminated. Norway, Sweden. Hungary was terribly contaminated. The radiation was taken up into the plants. The food was radioactive. They took the milk and turned it into cheese. The cheese was radioactive.
That’s the big danger, the crops in this country being contaminated, the milk in particular, with Strontium 90. That radiation is incorporated into the bones and stays for a lifetime.
So would you like to have radioactive material in your bones that affects your health for the rest of your life?
It may have already happened to you and you wouldn't even know it.
Other deadly radioactive elements that are being released at high levels at Fukushima include iodine, cesium, uranium and plutonium. Large amounts of these radioactive particles have already been absorbed in the soil and in the water in the United States.
Large amounts of these radioactive particles have also entered our food chain.
As the years go by, a whole lot of Americans are going to get sick and die and they will never even know that it was Fukushima that caused it.
Remember, just because you cannot see these radioactive particles does not mean that they aren't incredibly deadly. Just check out what nuclear expert Steven C. Jones recently had to say about plutonium....
To give one an example of how lethal radiation is, one pound of plutonium evenly distributed into everyone's lungs would kill every man, woman and child on Earth. There are literally "tons" of radioactive plutonium (among other radioactive elements) that have been released into the air and ocean environments since March 11th. Another critical fact to remember is that radioactive plutonium, for example, remains lethal (killing life) for thousands years as it has a half-life of 24,000 years. Some other radioactive elements such as uranium have a half-life of 4.47 billion years.
That is the scary thing with many of these radioactive elements. Now that they have been released, many of them will be with us for as long as we live, for as long as our children live and for as long as our grandchildren live.
Yes, things are much worse than you have been told.
Up until now, the Japanese government has insisted that those living outside the 20 kilometer exclusion zone are safe.
But is that really the case?
According to Reuters, Greenpeace has found incredibly high levels of radiation at schools up to 60 km away.....
Greenpeace said on Monday that schools and surrounding areas located 60 km (38 miles) from Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear power plant were unsafe for children, showing radiation readings as much as 70 times internationally accepted levels.
In addition, a recent Japan Times article noted that high levels of cesium have been discovered at 42 incineration plants in seven different prefectures in Japan....
High levels of cesium isotopes are cropping up in dust at 42 incineration plants in seven prefectures, including Chiba and Iwate, an Environment Ministry survey of the Kanto and Tohoku regions shows.
Also, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal stated that incredibly high levels of cesium-137 have been found up to 100 km away from the Fukushima nuclear facility....
The first comprehensive survey of soil contamination from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant showed that 33 locations spread over a wide area have been contaminated with long-lasting radioactive cesium, the government said Tuesday.
The survey of 2,200 locations within a 100-kilometer (62-mile) radius of the crippled plant found that those locations had cesium-137 in excess of 1.48 million becquerels per square meter, the level set by the Soviet Union for forced resettlement after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Japanese authorities said.
Remember that Tokyo is only about 250 km away from the Fukushima nuclear facility.
So what happens if high levels of cesium start showing up in Tokyo?
According to some sources, things have already gotten very serious in Tokyo.
Dr. Chris Busby recently traveled to Japan with some very sophisticated testing equipment and found one sample in Tokyo that had levels of radioactivity that were higher than the exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl during that nuclear disaster.
But things are much worse for those living much closer to Fukushima. High levels of cesium have been detected in the urine and in the breast milk of those living in the region surrounding the facility. All over the area there are reports of people coming down with the symptoms of radiation sickness.
The truth is that the "evacuation area" should be far, far larger than it is now. Just consider what Mike Adams of Natural News recently had to say about what recent tests have shown....
One soil sample taking 25 kilometers away from Fukushima showed Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter. This level, of course, makes it uninhabitable by humans, yet both the Japanese and U.S. governments continue to downplay the whole event, assuring their sheeple that there's nothing to worry about. By their logic, since all the people are sheeple anyway, as long as the area is safe enough for sheep, it's also safe enough for the human population.
A lot of people in Japan are going to die, and frustrations are rising. According to an article in The Independent, a lot of Japanese feel totally abandoned by their government at this point....
It is the fate of people outside the evacuation zones, however, that causes the most bitter controversy. Parents in Fukushima City, 63km from the plant, have banded together to demand that the government do more to protect about 100,000 children. Schools have banned soccer and other outdoor sports. Windows are kept closed. "We've just been left to fend for ourselves," says Machiko Sato, a grandmother who lives in the city. "It makes me so angry."
But just because you don't live in Japan does not mean that you are not in danger. The Fukushima nuclear facility sits right on the Pacific Ocean. When nuclear material gets released into the air at Fukushima, the first time much of it will encounter land is when it reaches the United States.
Also, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tons of highly radioactive water has been released into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima.
What this is going to do to our oceans nobody knows for sure. But according to the Los Angeles Times, the seawater near Fukushima has been found to be incredibly radioactive....
Tokyo Electric Power Co. had said Tuesday that it had found iodine-131 at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials instituted a health limit for radioactivity in fish. Other samples were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit.
All of this radioactive water is going to circulate all over the globe. It is going to be a nightmare that is never going to end.
Just because the mainstream media is not talking much about all of this radiation does not mean that it is not affecting the United States....
*Radiation from Fukushima has been detected in seaweed in Puget Sound.
*Radiation from Fukushima has been detected in the drinking water in numerous states.
*Radiation from Fukushima has been discovered in milk in numerous states.
*Very high levels of radiation continue to be detected in rainwater in the northwest United States.
This is a slow motion nightmare that is going to play out for years and years.
Some nuclear experts claim that it could be up to 50 or 100 years before any of the nuclear material at the Fukushima complex will cool down enough to be removed from the facility.
Right now there is no viable solution to what is going on at Fukushima, so it will continue to blast all of us with high levels of radiation and will slowly kill millions of people around the globe for years to come.
Former nuclear industry insider Arnold Gundersen recently put it this way....
"With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end."
This is a nightmare that will be with us for the rest of our lives. Millions are going to get sick and untold numbers of people are going to slowly die.
Please share this information with as many people as you can.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
A 35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown
June 10th, 2011
Dear Readers,
It is now known that women are more susceptible -- approximately twice as susceptible, or worse -- to radiation's harmful effects than men who get the same dose. Young people are more susceptible than old.
Young children are perhaps ten times as susceptible to radiation's dangers as adults are, because their cells are dividing and establishing themselves. The cells of some organs will continue to divide; but cells such as neurons and heart muscle cells stop dividing at adulthood. Cancer can also get established at this early stage. Cancer usually requires a long sequence of cell changes to occur -- often 10 or 12 or more changes in the cell DNA's structure will have to occur, which can take many years.
Starting early is a very bad thing.
Infants are even more susceptible than young children. Newborns, preemies... immune-challenged... even more so.
Since Fukushima, on the west coast of the United States, our babies are dying at a significantly increased rate (see article, below). Across the country deaths are up as well, though not as much (ibid).
And fetuses. Can we even talk about fetuses? As two cells, separated by space - the sperm and the egg -- "it" is utterly vulnerable! One zap from a nuclear buzzsaw and it's over. So much for the next Einstein! Another Da Vinci? Gone! Oh well, there's millions where they came from, right? (If so, I haven't seen them.)
After the cells start to multiply, they begin "specification", becoming hearts, lungs, brains, bones, intestines, and all the other little warts and dimples that make us who we are as individuals and as a species.
Fetuses vary from "infinitely" more susceptible to radiation's dangers, to thousands of times when they are very small, to "merely" hundreds of times as they grow, to whatever they are at birth -- no one knows precisely. Reasonable estimates can be made. If what is reported below is, indeed, caused by Fukushima, it should surprise no one.
The authors of the article shown below are both friends of mine; I've known them for years. I authored an article or two with one of them. They've both written extensively about the scientific data which condemns nuclear power and been involved in all aspects of research into the dangers of radiation, and are both book authors of wonderful scientific books on the subjects, as well.
They research everything they do very carefully and shoot straight when they talk about it.
They are scientists in the best sense of the word.
Nevertheless, let's hope they're wrong.
If what they report below is even half true, we're all in for a whole lot of hurt. Our babies are taking the "hits" now. We all will in one way or another -- by losing loved ones, if nothing else.
If this anomaly has any other explanation, I challenge anyone to find it. And stop it.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
A 35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown
Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout?
By JANETTE D. SHERMAN, MD and JOSEPH MANGANO
http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman06102011.html
U.S. babies are dying at an increased rate. While the United States spends billions on medical care, as of 2006, the US ranked 28th in the world in infant mortality, more than twice that of the lowest ranked countries. (DHHS, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics. Health United States 2010, Table 20, p. 131, February 2011.)
The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:
4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)
This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.
Spewing from the Fukushima reactor are radioactive isotopes including those of iodine (I-131), strontium (Sr-90) and cesium (Cs-134 and Cs-137) all of which are taken up in food and water. Iodine is concentrated in the thyroid, Sr-90 in bones and teeth and Cs-134 and Cs-137 in soft tissues, including the heart. The unborn and babies are more vulnerable because the cells are rapidly dividing and the delivered dose is proportionally larger than that delivered to an adult.
Data from Chernobyl, which exploded 25 years ago, clearly shows increased numbers of sick and weak newborns and increased numbers of deaths in the unborn and newborns, especially soon after the meltdown. These occurred in Europe as well as the former Soviet Union. Similar findings are also seen in wildlife living in areas with increased radioactive fallout levels.
(Chernobyl Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Alexeiy V. Yablokov, Vasily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Nesterenko. Consulting Editor: Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger. New York Academy of Sciences, 2009.)
Levels of radioisotopes were measured in children who had died in the Minsk area that had received Chernobyl fallout. The cardiac findings were the same as those seen in test animals that had been administered Cs-137. Bandashevsky, Y. I, Pathology of Incorporated Ionizing Radiation, Belarus Technical University, Minsk. 136 pp., 1999. For his pioneering work, Prof. Bandashevsky was arrested in 2001 and imprisoned for five years of an eight year sentence.
The national low-weight (under 2500 grams, or 5.5 lbs) rate has risen 23% from 1984 to 2006. Nearly 400,000 infants are born under 2500g each year in the U.S. Most of the increase in infant mortality is due specifically to infants born weighing less than 750 grams (1 lb 10 1/2 oz). Multiple births commonly result in underweight babies, but most of the increase in births at less than 750 grams occurred among singletons and among mothers 20-34 years of age. (CDC, National Vital Statistics Report, 52 (12): 1-24, 2005.)
From an obstetrical point of view, women in the age bracket 20 to 34 are those most physically able to deliver a healthy child. So what has gone wrong? Clues to causation are often revealed when there is a change in incidence, a suspicious geographical distribution, and/or an increase in hazards known to adversely affect health and development.
The risk of having a baby with birth defects is estimated at three to four of every 100 babies born. As of 2005, the Institute of medicine estimated the cost of pre-term births in the US at more than $2.6 billion, or $51,600 for each infant.
Low birth weight babies, born too soon and too small, face a lifetime of health problems, including cerebral palsy, and behavioral and learning problems placing an enormous physical, emotional and economic burdens on society as a whole and on those caring for them. Death of a young child is devastating to a family.
As of June 5, 2011, The Japan Times reported that radiation in the No. 1 plant was measured at 4,000 milliseverts per hour. To put that in perspective, a worker would receive a maximal “permissible” dose in 4 minutes. In addition there are over 40,000 tons of radioactive water under that reactor with more radioactivity escaping into the air and sea. Fuel rods are believed to have melted and sunk to the bottom of reactors 1, 2, and 3.
Tepco, the corporate owner took more than two months to confirm the meltdowns and admitted lying about the levels of destruction and subsequent contamination, resulting in “Public Distrust.” Over 100,000 tons of radioactive waste are on the site.
Why should we care if there may be is a link between Fukushima and the death of children? Because we need to measure the actual levels of isotopes in the environment and in the bodies of people exposed to determine if the fallout is killing our most vulnerable. The research is not technically difficult the political and economic barriers may be greater. Bandshevsky and others did it and confirmed the connection. The information is available in the Chernobyl book. (Previously cited.)
The biological findings of Chernobyl cannot be ignored: isotope incorporation will determine the future of all life on earth animal, fish, bird, plant and human. It is crucial to know this information if we are to avoid further catastrophic damage.
Janette D. Sherman, M. D. is the author of Life's Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease, and is a specialist in internal medicine and toxicology. She edited the bookChernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature, written by A. V. Yablokov, V. B., Nesterenko and A. V. Nesterenko, published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Her primary interest is the prevention of illness through public education. She can be reached at: toxdoc.js@verizon.net and http://www.janettesherman.com/
Joseph Mangano is an epidemiologist, and Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project research group.
************************************************
** Ace Hoffman, Owner & Chief Programmer, The Animated Software Co.
** POB 1936, Carlsbad CA 92018
** U.S. & Canada (800) 551-2726; elsewhere: (760) 720-7261
** home page: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/
** email: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
Dear Readers,
It is now known that women are more susceptible -- approximately twice as susceptible, or worse -- to radiation's harmful effects than men who get the same dose. Young people are more susceptible than old.
Young children are perhaps ten times as susceptible to radiation's dangers as adults are, because their cells are dividing and establishing themselves. The cells of some organs will continue to divide; but cells such as neurons and heart muscle cells stop dividing at adulthood. Cancer can also get established at this early stage. Cancer usually requires a long sequence of cell changes to occur -- often 10 or 12 or more changes in the cell DNA's structure will have to occur, which can take many years.
Starting early is a very bad thing.
Infants are even more susceptible than young children. Newborns, preemies... immune-challenged... even more so.
Since Fukushima, on the west coast of the United States, our babies are dying at a significantly increased rate (see article, below). Across the country deaths are up as well, though not as much (ibid).
And fetuses. Can we even talk about fetuses? As two cells, separated by space - the sperm and the egg -- "it" is utterly vulnerable! One zap from a nuclear buzzsaw and it's over. So much for the next Einstein! Another Da Vinci? Gone! Oh well, there's millions where they came from, right? (If so, I haven't seen them.)
After the cells start to multiply, they begin "specification", becoming hearts, lungs, brains, bones, intestines, and all the other little warts and dimples that make us who we are as individuals and as a species.
Fetuses vary from "infinitely" more susceptible to radiation's dangers, to thousands of times when they are very small, to "merely" hundreds of times as they grow, to whatever they are at birth -- no one knows precisely. Reasonable estimates can be made. If what is reported below is, indeed, caused by Fukushima, it should surprise no one.
The authors of the article shown below are both friends of mine; I've known them for years. I authored an article or two with one of them. They've both written extensively about the scientific data which condemns nuclear power and been involved in all aspects of research into the dangers of radiation, and are both book authors of wonderful scientific books on the subjects, as well.
They research everything they do very carefully and shoot straight when they talk about it.
They are scientists in the best sense of the word.
Nevertheless, let's hope they're wrong.
If what they report below is even half true, we're all in for a whole lot of hurt. Our babies are taking the "hits" now. We all will in one way or another -- by losing loved ones, if nothing else.
If this anomaly has any other explanation, I challenge anyone to find it. And stop it.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
A 35% Spike in Infant Mortality in Northwest Cities Since Meltdown
Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout?
By JANETTE D. SHERMAN, MD and JOSEPH MANGANO
http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman06102011.html
U.S. babies are dying at an increased rate. While the United States spends billions on medical care, as of 2006, the US ranked 28th in the world in infant mortality, more than twice that of the lowest ranked countries. (DHHS, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics. Health United States 2010, Table 20, p. 131, February 2011.)
The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:
4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)
This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.
Spewing from the Fukushima reactor are radioactive isotopes including those of iodine (I-131), strontium (Sr-90) and cesium (Cs-134 and Cs-137) all of which are taken up in food and water. Iodine is concentrated in the thyroid, Sr-90 in bones and teeth and Cs-134 and Cs-137 in soft tissues, including the heart. The unborn and babies are more vulnerable because the cells are rapidly dividing and the delivered dose is proportionally larger than that delivered to an adult.
Data from Chernobyl, which exploded 25 years ago, clearly shows increased numbers of sick and weak newborns and increased numbers of deaths in the unborn and newborns, especially soon after the meltdown. These occurred in Europe as well as the former Soviet Union. Similar findings are also seen in wildlife living in areas with increased radioactive fallout levels.
(Chernobyl Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Alexeiy V. Yablokov, Vasily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Nesterenko. Consulting Editor: Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger. New York Academy of Sciences, 2009.)
Levels of radioisotopes were measured in children who had died in the Minsk area that had received Chernobyl fallout. The cardiac findings were the same as those seen in test animals that had been administered Cs-137. Bandashevsky, Y. I, Pathology of Incorporated Ionizing Radiation, Belarus Technical University, Minsk. 136 pp., 1999. For his pioneering work, Prof. Bandashevsky was arrested in 2001 and imprisoned for five years of an eight year sentence.
The national low-weight (under 2500 grams, or 5.5 lbs) rate has risen 23% from 1984 to 2006. Nearly 400,000 infants are born under 2500g each year in the U.S. Most of the increase in infant mortality is due specifically to infants born weighing less than 750 grams (1 lb 10 1/2 oz). Multiple births commonly result in underweight babies, but most of the increase in births at less than 750 grams occurred among singletons and among mothers 20-34 years of age. (CDC, National Vital Statistics Report, 52 (12): 1-24, 2005.)
From an obstetrical point of view, women in the age bracket 20 to 34 are those most physically able to deliver a healthy child. So what has gone wrong? Clues to causation are often revealed when there is a change in incidence, a suspicious geographical distribution, and/or an increase in hazards known to adversely affect health and development.
The risk of having a baby with birth defects is estimated at three to four of every 100 babies born. As of 2005, the Institute of medicine estimated the cost of pre-term births in the US at more than $2.6 billion, or $51,600 for each infant.
Low birth weight babies, born too soon and too small, face a lifetime of health problems, including cerebral palsy, and behavioral and learning problems placing an enormous physical, emotional and economic burdens on society as a whole and on those caring for them. Death of a young child is devastating to a family.
As of June 5, 2011, The Japan Times reported that radiation in the No. 1 plant was measured at 4,000 milliseverts per hour. To put that in perspective, a worker would receive a maximal “permissible” dose in 4 minutes. In addition there are over 40,000 tons of radioactive water under that reactor with more radioactivity escaping into the air and sea. Fuel rods are believed to have melted and sunk to the bottom of reactors 1, 2, and 3.
Tepco, the corporate owner took more than two months to confirm the meltdowns and admitted lying about the levels of destruction and subsequent contamination, resulting in “Public Distrust.” Over 100,000 tons of radioactive waste are on the site.
Why should we care if there may be is a link between Fukushima and the death of children? Because we need to measure the actual levels of isotopes in the environment and in the bodies of people exposed to determine if the fallout is killing our most vulnerable. The research is not technically difficult the political and economic barriers may be greater. Bandshevsky and others did it and confirmed the connection. The information is available in the Chernobyl book. (Previously cited.)
The biological findings of Chernobyl cannot be ignored: isotope incorporation will determine the future of all life on earth animal, fish, bird, plant and human. It is crucial to know this information if we are to avoid further catastrophic damage.
Janette D. Sherman, M. D. is the author of Life's Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease, and is a specialist in internal medicine and toxicology. She edited the bookChernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature, written by A. V. Yablokov, V. B., Nesterenko and A. V. Nesterenko, published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Her primary interest is the prevention of illness through public education. She can be reached at: toxdoc.js@verizon.net and http://www.janettesherman.com/
Joseph Mangano is an epidemiologist, and Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project research group.
************************************************
** Ace Hoffman, Owner & Chief Programmer, The Animated Software Co.
** POB 1936, Carlsbad CA 92018
** U.S. & Canada (800) 551-2726; elsewhere: (760) 720-7261
** home page: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/
** email: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Investigator: Fukushima Blast Was Nuclear Explosion
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
http://www.prisonplanet.com/investigator-fukushima-blast-was-nuclear-explosion.html
British scientist Christopher Busby, a researcher on the negative health effects of ionizing radiation, told Russia Today that one of the explosions at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was a nuclear explosion, not a hydrogen explosion as widely reported in the media.
Busby said the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 was also a nuclear explosion. The Chernobyl nuclear accident dispersed large quantities of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere. Busby told RT the crisis at Fukushima is far worse than Chernobyl.
He said the explosion did not originate in the reactor core, but the tanks where spent plutonium MOX fuel rods are stored. MOX fuel contains plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. The explosion vaporized the plutonium rods and ejected a large amount of radiation into the atmosphere.
Takeshi Tokuda, a member of the Lower House of the Japanese Diet, also believes the first explosion at Fukushima was nuclear. Tokuda talked with a doctor Oikawa of the Minami Soma City General Hospital. Oikawa told the government representative that materials ejected from the plant after the explosion registered high radiation levels.
“When the hospital checked the radiation level on the people who escaped from around the nuke plant after the explosion, there were more than 10 people whose radiation level exceeded 100,000 cpm [counts per minute], beyond what could be measured by the geiger counter the hospital had,” Tokuda wrote. “100,000 cpm is the new level that the Japanese government set that requires decontamination. Before the Fukushima accident, the level was 6,000 cpm.”
The EPA has attempted to downplay the fact that plutonium is now bombarding the United States and much of the Northern Hemisphere. According to Lucas Hixton Whitefield, an EPA RADNet report shows increased levels of plutonium in the atmosphere. Whitefield found information on the plutonium in a RADnet dataset.
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
http://www.prisonplanet.com/investigator-fukushima-blast-was-nuclear-explosion.html
British scientist Christopher Busby, a researcher on the negative health effects of ionizing radiation, told Russia Today that one of the explosions at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was a nuclear explosion, not a hydrogen explosion as widely reported in the media.
Busby said the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 was also a nuclear explosion. The Chernobyl nuclear accident dispersed large quantities of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere. Busby told RT the crisis at Fukushima is far worse than Chernobyl.
He said the explosion did not originate in the reactor core, but the tanks where spent plutonium MOX fuel rods are stored. MOX fuel contains plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. The explosion vaporized the plutonium rods and ejected a large amount of radiation into the atmosphere.
Takeshi Tokuda, a member of the Lower House of the Japanese Diet, also believes the first explosion at Fukushima was nuclear. Tokuda talked with a doctor Oikawa of the Minami Soma City General Hospital. Oikawa told the government representative that materials ejected from the plant after the explosion registered high radiation levels.
“When the hospital checked the radiation level on the people who escaped from around the nuke plant after the explosion, there were more than 10 people whose radiation level exceeded 100,000 cpm [counts per minute], beyond what could be measured by the geiger counter the hospital had,” Tokuda wrote. “100,000 cpm is the new level that the Japanese government set that requires decontamination. Before the Fukushima accident, the level was 6,000 cpm.”
The EPA has attempted to downplay the fact that plutonium is now bombarding the United States and much of the Northern Hemisphere. According to Lucas Hixton Whitefield, an EPA RADNet report shows increased levels of plutonium in the atmosphere. Whitefield found information on the plutonium in a RADnet dataset.
Nuclear Power Can Never Be Made Safe
Karl Grossman
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/26-2
With the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant catastrophe having arrived, and with the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear complex still unfolding and radioactivity continuing to spew from those plants some people are asking: can nuclear power be made safe?
The answer is no. Nuclear power can never be made safe.
This was clearly explained by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the “father” of the U.S. nuclear navy and in charge of construction of the first nuclear power plant in the nation, Shippingport in Pennsylvania. Before a committee of Congress, as he retired from the navy in 1982, Rickover warned of the inherent lethality of nuclear power and urged that “we outlaw nuclear reactors.”
The basic problem: radioactivity.
“I’ll be philosophical,” testified Rickover. “Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on Earth; that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn’t have any life fish or anything.” This was from naturally-occurring cosmic radiation when the Earth was in the process of formation. “Gradually,” said Rickover, “about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet…reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin.”
“Now, when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible,” he said. “Every time you produce radiation” a “horrible force” is unleashed. By splitting the atom, people are recreating the poisons that precluded life from existing. “And I think there the human race is going to wreck itself,” Rickover stated.
This was Rickover, a key figure in nuclear power history, not Greenpeace.
The problem is radioactivity unleashed when the atom is split. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a General Electric boiling water reactor such as those that have erupted at Fukushima, or the Westinghouse pressurized water design, or Russian-designed plants like Chernobyl, or the “new, improved” nuclear plants being touted by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a nuclear scientist and zealous promoter of nuclear technology. All nuclear power plants produce radiation as well as radioactive poisons like the Cesium-137, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 that have been and continue to be--spewed from the Fukushima plants.
Upon contact with life, these toxins destroy life. So from the time they’re produced in a nuclear plant to when they’re taken out as hotly radioactive “nuclear waste,” they must be isolated from life for thousands for some millions of years.
In the nuclear process, mildly radioactive uranium is taken from the ground and bombarded by neutrons and that part of the uranium which can split, is “fissile,” Uranium-235, is transformed into radioactive twins of safe and stable elements in nature: There are hundreds of these “fission products.” The human body doesn’t know the difference between these lethal twins and safe and stable elements. Also produced are alpha and beta particles and gamma rays, all radioactive.
In addition, much of the larger part of uranium, Uranium-238, which cannot split, grabs on to neutrons and turns into Plutonium-239, the most radioactive substance known.
In this atom-splitting, too, heat is produced which is used to boil water. Nuclear power plants are simply the most dangerous way to boil water ever conceived.
Why use this toxic process to boil water and generate electricity? It has far less to do with science than with politics and economics from the aftermath of the Manhattan Project to today During the World War II Manhattan Project, scientists working at laboratories secretly set up across the U.S. built atomic weapons. By 1945, it employed 600,000 people and billions of dollars were spent. Two bombs were dropped on Japan. And, with the war’s end, the Manhattan Project became the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and more nuclear weapons were built. But what else could be done with nuclear technology to perpetuate the nuclear undertaking?
Many of the scientists and government officials didn’t want to see their jobs end; corporations which were Manhattan Project contractors, notably General Electric and Westinghouse, didn’t want to see their contracts ended. As James Kunetka writes in his book City of Fire about Los Alamos National Laboratory, with the war over there were problems of “job placement, work continuity…more free time than work…hardly enough to keep everyone busy.”
Nuclear weapons don’t lend themselves to commercial spinoff. What else could be done with atomic technology to keep the nuclear establishment going? Schemes advanced included using nuclear devices as substitutes for dynamite to blast huge holes in the ground including stringing 125 atomic devices across the isthmus of Panama and setting them off to create the “Panatomic Canal,” utilizing radioactivity to zap food so it could seemingly be stored for years; building nuclear-powered airplanes (this didn’t go far because of the weight of the lead shielding needed to protect the pilots) and using the heat built up by the nuclear reaction to boil water to produce electricity.
All along, the nuclear scientists such as Chu now attempted to minimize, indeed deny, the lethal danger of radioactivity and, like Nuclear Pinocchios, they pushed their technology.
Nuclear power plants all 443 on the earth today should be closed and no new ones built. As Rickover declared, nuclear reactors must be outlawed.
During the Bill Clinton campaign years ago, the slogan was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” With nuclear power plants, “It’s the radioactivity” inherent in the process and deadly.
Instead we must fully implement the use of safe, clean, renewable energy technologies like solar, wind (now the fastest growing energy source and cheaper than nuclear) and geothermal and all the rest which, major studies have concluded, can provide all the energy the world needs energy without lethal radioactivity, energy we can live with.
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, has long specialized in doing investigative reporting on nuclear technology. He is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. He is the host of the nationally aired TV program, Enviro Close-Up (envirovideo.com).
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/26-2
With the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant catastrophe having arrived, and with the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear complex still unfolding and radioactivity continuing to spew from those plants some people are asking: can nuclear power be made safe?
The answer is no. Nuclear power can never be made safe.
This was clearly explained by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the “father” of the U.S. nuclear navy and in charge of construction of the first nuclear power plant in the nation, Shippingport in Pennsylvania. Before a committee of Congress, as he retired from the navy in 1982, Rickover warned of the inherent lethality of nuclear power and urged that “we outlaw nuclear reactors.”
The basic problem: radioactivity.
“I’ll be philosophical,” testified Rickover. “Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on Earth; that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn’t have any life fish or anything.” This was from naturally-occurring cosmic radiation when the Earth was in the process of formation. “Gradually,” said Rickover, “about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet…reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin.”
“Now, when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible,” he said. “Every time you produce radiation” a “horrible force” is unleashed. By splitting the atom, people are recreating the poisons that precluded life from existing. “And I think there the human race is going to wreck itself,” Rickover stated.
This was Rickover, a key figure in nuclear power history, not Greenpeace.
The problem is radioactivity unleashed when the atom is split. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a General Electric boiling water reactor such as those that have erupted at Fukushima, or the Westinghouse pressurized water design, or Russian-designed plants like Chernobyl, or the “new, improved” nuclear plants being touted by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a nuclear scientist and zealous promoter of nuclear technology. All nuclear power plants produce radiation as well as radioactive poisons like the Cesium-137, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 that have been and continue to be--spewed from the Fukushima plants.
Upon contact with life, these toxins destroy life. So from the time they’re produced in a nuclear plant to when they’re taken out as hotly radioactive “nuclear waste,” they must be isolated from life for thousands for some millions of years.
In the nuclear process, mildly radioactive uranium is taken from the ground and bombarded by neutrons and that part of the uranium which can split, is “fissile,” Uranium-235, is transformed into radioactive twins of safe and stable elements in nature: There are hundreds of these “fission products.” The human body doesn’t know the difference between these lethal twins and safe and stable elements. Also produced are alpha and beta particles and gamma rays, all radioactive.
In addition, much of the larger part of uranium, Uranium-238, which cannot split, grabs on to neutrons and turns into Plutonium-239, the most radioactive substance known.
In this atom-splitting, too, heat is produced which is used to boil water. Nuclear power plants are simply the most dangerous way to boil water ever conceived.
Why use this toxic process to boil water and generate electricity? It has far less to do with science than with politics and economics from the aftermath of the Manhattan Project to today During the World War II Manhattan Project, scientists working at laboratories secretly set up across the U.S. built atomic weapons. By 1945, it employed 600,000 people and billions of dollars were spent. Two bombs were dropped on Japan. And, with the war’s end, the Manhattan Project became the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and more nuclear weapons were built. But what else could be done with nuclear technology to perpetuate the nuclear undertaking?
Many of the scientists and government officials didn’t want to see their jobs end; corporations which were Manhattan Project contractors, notably General Electric and Westinghouse, didn’t want to see their contracts ended. As James Kunetka writes in his book City of Fire about Los Alamos National Laboratory, with the war over there were problems of “job placement, work continuity…more free time than work…hardly enough to keep everyone busy.”
Nuclear weapons don’t lend themselves to commercial spinoff. What else could be done with atomic technology to keep the nuclear establishment going? Schemes advanced included using nuclear devices as substitutes for dynamite to blast huge holes in the ground including stringing 125 atomic devices across the isthmus of Panama and setting them off to create the “Panatomic Canal,” utilizing radioactivity to zap food so it could seemingly be stored for years; building nuclear-powered airplanes (this didn’t go far because of the weight of the lead shielding needed to protect the pilots) and using the heat built up by the nuclear reaction to boil water to produce electricity.
All along, the nuclear scientists such as Chu now attempted to minimize, indeed deny, the lethal danger of radioactivity and, like Nuclear Pinocchios, they pushed their technology.
Nuclear power plants all 443 on the earth today should be closed and no new ones built. As Rickover declared, nuclear reactors must be outlawed.
During the Bill Clinton campaign years ago, the slogan was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” With nuclear power plants, “It’s the radioactivity” inherent in the process and deadly.
Instead we must fully implement the use of safe, clean, renewable energy technologies like solar, wind (now the fastest growing energy source and cheaper than nuclear) and geothermal and all the rest which, major studies have concluded, can provide all the energy the world needs energy without lethal radioactivity, energy we can live with.
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, has long specialized in doing investigative reporting on nuclear technology. He is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. He is the host of the nationally aired TV program, Enviro Close-Up (envirovideo.com).
The first million is the hardest...
Ace Hoffman
April 26th, 2011
Today is the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl. Today, a quarter century ago, the ruthless murder of a million people began. And the cover-up.
How quickly we forget! How destined we are to repeat!
Today's commemorations around the world might have gone practically unnoticed by the mainstream media, save perhaps for a 60-second spot about a decaying sarcophagus, were it not for Fukushima.
Today we honor and remember the already-dead from Chernobyl:
1) The "liquidators" who helped clean it up (about 800,000 young men) who now die like flies of cancer, leukemia, and a thousand other stranger ailments.
2) The local citizens who were not told for a week or more that anything was wrong, even while the rest of the world knew because a nuclear reactor power company in Sweden had alerted the "free" public (that is, the Western media) several days after Chernobyl exploded, after the ill winds tripped their own monitors.
3) The people around the world who also MUST have died, in addition to the million who lived nearer the plant or were among the liquidators.
4) The descendents, for at least seven generations, of all these people -- that's how far the DNA is likely to show damage, perhaps even further down the line.
"The million" are only the ones that were reasonably easy to count. I use the term "easy" very relatively: WHO wouldn't count them -- for five years they didn't even start to take a half-hearted look. IAEA wouldn't count them (and probably prevented WHO from doing so). It would be bad for the promotion of nuclear power, their mandate and perceived mission. The nuclear industry didn't want them counted. The nuke-loving cash-strapped secretive militaristic Russian government certainly didn't want them counted. Nobody wanted them counted.
So they weren't counted. Not easily, unless the term is relative. People halfway around the world, not under Soviet censorship, propaganda, or oppression, were NEVER counted by anyone. Billions of Curies, tens of thousands of terabecquerels... didn't just disappear. Many of them were breathed in by someone. They killed people all over the world, and still do. So will Fukushima Daiichi.
Cover-ups and lies hide the million-dead from the ongoing Chernobyl horror. Some say it's only tens of thousands, some say "merely" thousands, and some -- the nuclear industry in America, for instance-- just three or four dozen.
Nobody says, "nobody died at Chernobyl" like they (lie) and say about Three Mile Island.
Until last month Chernobyl was the worst industrial accident in human history -- unless you believe the lies.
New pictures have reportedly been released of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 -- the MOX reactor -- indicating the reactor pressure vessel itself had exploded last month (see Jeff's article, below).
The nuclear industry represents a small fraction of 1% of the human work force, even in America or France. These people could all be building wind turbines, except for those people who will have to guard the waste -- a cost society must incur forevermore, and which keeps getting more and more costly, and will continue to do so, at least until we stop making more waste every day.
It's time to stop the assault on human and other life. It's time to turn off the nukes.
Forced down our throats, and paid well to work there, society gave it a try.
Nuclear power has failed miserably. It's not enough to prevent new reactors, or even to prevent relicensing -- one unit at Fukushima had just been relicensed for another ten years just weeks before the catastrophe began. It's not enough to wait months and months for the "lessons learned" from Fukushima. It's not enough to be promised improvements, changes, more and better backup systems. All those are nice. But we need to close the reactors down forever.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
The author. 54. has, like you, seen far too many nuclear disasters (one is too many). Visit his web site: www.acehoffman.org to read his book online or as a free download: "The Code Killers", about the many ways the nuclear industry destroys humanity.
April 26th, 2011
Today is the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl. Today, a quarter century ago, the ruthless murder of a million people began. And the cover-up.
How quickly we forget! How destined we are to repeat!
Today's commemorations around the world might have gone practically unnoticed by the mainstream media, save perhaps for a 60-second spot about a decaying sarcophagus, were it not for Fukushima.
Today we honor and remember the already-dead from Chernobyl:
1) The "liquidators" who helped clean it up (about 800,000 young men) who now die like flies of cancer, leukemia, and a thousand other stranger ailments.
2) The local citizens who were not told for a week or more that anything was wrong, even while the rest of the world knew because a nuclear reactor power company in Sweden had alerted the "free" public (that is, the Western media) several days after Chernobyl exploded, after the ill winds tripped their own monitors.
3) The people around the world who also MUST have died, in addition to the million who lived nearer the plant or were among the liquidators.
4) The descendents, for at least seven generations, of all these people -- that's how far the DNA is likely to show damage, perhaps even further down the line.
"The million" are only the ones that were reasonably easy to count. I use the term "easy" very relatively: WHO wouldn't count them -- for five years they didn't even start to take a half-hearted look. IAEA wouldn't count them (and probably prevented WHO from doing so). It would be bad for the promotion of nuclear power, their mandate and perceived mission. The nuclear industry didn't want them counted. The nuke-loving cash-strapped secretive militaristic Russian government certainly didn't want them counted. Nobody wanted them counted.
So they weren't counted. Not easily, unless the term is relative. People halfway around the world, not under Soviet censorship, propaganda, or oppression, were NEVER counted by anyone. Billions of Curies, tens of thousands of terabecquerels... didn't just disappear. Many of them were breathed in by someone. They killed people all over the world, and still do. So will Fukushima Daiichi.
Cover-ups and lies hide the million-dead from the ongoing Chernobyl horror. Some say it's only tens of thousands, some say "merely" thousands, and some -- the nuclear industry in America, for instance-- just three or four dozen.
Nobody says, "nobody died at Chernobyl" like they (lie) and say about Three Mile Island.
Until last month Chernobyl was the worst industrial accident in human history -- unless you believe the lies.
New pictures have reportedly been released of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 -- the MOX reactor -- indicating the reactor pressure vessel itself had exploded last month (see Jeff's article, below).
The nuclear industry represents a small fraction of 1% of the human work force, even in America or France. These people could all be building wind turbines, except for those people who will have to guard the waste -- a cost society must incur forevermore, and which keeps getting more and more costly, and will continue to do so, at least until we stop making more waste every day.
It's time to stop the assault on human and other life. It's time to turn off the nukes.
Forced down our throats, and paid well to work there, society gave it a try.
Nuclear power has failed miserably. It's not enough to prevent new reactors, or even to prevent relicensing -- one unit at Fukushima had just been relicensed for another ten years just weeks before the catastrophe began. It's not enough to wait months and months for the "lessons learned" from Fukushima. It's not enough to be promised improvements, changes, more and better backup systems. All those are nice. But we need to close the reactors down forever.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
The author. 54. has, like you, seen far too many nuclear disasters (one is too many). Visit his web site: www.acehoffman.org to read his book online or as a free download: "The Code Killers", about the many ways the nuclear industry destroys humanity.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Ace Hoffman on Fukushima: Easter 2011
Ace Hoffman: It's official: Fukushima = Chernobyl
April 12th, 2011
Dear Readers,
Fukushima is now officially as bad as Chernobyl was: An INES (International Nuclear Event Scale) level seven "major nuclear accident."
Say goodbye, Chernobyl. You will soon be forgotten.
(Except for the 1,700 square mile exclusion zone that was once prime farmland, the pride of the Soviet Union. Who can forget that? And those deformed babies. Their parents don't forget them.)
Things didn't get particularly worse at Fukushima in the past few days. That's not why they went to a "level seven" accident rating -- the highest possible. Things didn't get any better, either, but that's also not why.
One thing that's changed is they had to expand the evacuation zone. This time, they've given thousands of additional residents living northwest of the plant -- as much as 30 kilometers away -- 30 days to leave. Obviously, the sooner they leave, the better, and they should not expect to be coming back any time soon, either. Possibly many generations. The soil is contaminated.
Thousands more people, just outside the current 20 kilometer depopulation area around Fukushima Daiichi, are in districts that "might" be asked to self-evacuate on a moment's notice. They have been told to make arrangements for evacuation on their own. Have a place to go. Have a way to get there. Have food and water (and cash and gas) for the journey. Pick up stragglers along the way. Turn out the lights and shut off the gas on the way out. Sayonara.
An old man was found wandering around the exclusion zone. He had been there, confused, the whole time. God knows what he breathed or ate.
Bitterness, shame, conflicting and confusing official orders, impossible orders (such as "stay indoors" and "don't drink the tap water") -- it's all there. It's all happening. A radiological crime against humanity is unfolding before us, yet again. Shall we turn a blind eye to the cause?
I ask: What are governments for, if not to stop this sort of thing? Japan has failed at Fukushima, the technological wizards of the world. Russia has failed at Chernobyl, the workers-always-know-best method failed. England has failed at Sellafield, then called Windscale, and shown that Oxford and Cambridge couldn't produce minds great enough to conquer the atom's quirks and quarks, or human's frailties and foibles. And America has failed a thousand little times and dozens of large ones, too -- Hanford being the nation's and possibly the world's most polluted site without even having a Fukushima of our own... yet... The Hanford "reservation" is strewn with enormous quantities of deadly plutonium from mostly "proper" operations. You can't live there. It poisons the Colombia River constantly. As additional radioactive plumes reach the river, they will poison it more and more.
What government, what entity, what human has any right to think they can control the atom? They can't. And even if they can, the thousands of generations who will have to mind their waste for having done so probably can't.
Now, global measurements are being compared to what was measured at the time of Chernobyl. That's one reason Japanese nuclear authorities had little choice but to raise the Fukushima tragedy from a level 5 through 6 to a 7, making it at least equal to the world's worst industrial and nuclear accident in history -- Chernobyl.
But of course, neither Fukushima nor Chernobyl were really accidents at all any more than drunks have accidents on the highway. (We just call them "statistics" here in America.) In the case of Chernobyl it was reactor operators running unapproved and dangerous experiments: Criminal negligence. At Fukushima is was improperly designed and maintained reactors and safety systems that failed just when they were needed most: Criminal negligence. Criminal negligence on the part of the entire nuclear industry. THIS could have happened anywhere!
If you tell me you've solved all the problems with nuclear power (HA!), and I'll tell you nuclear promoters all around the world told the public the same thing thousands of times in the years since Chernobyl and prior to Fukushima. And, of course, the biggest lie was that the reactors were different and this couldn't happen with "Western" style reactors.
Now, nuclear promoters are telling the public they'll apply the "lessons learned" very carefully from Fukushima to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. They're lying.
They might fix something, but they'll neglect something else. They don't have enough time or money -- or experience or know-how -- or personnel -- to fix everything. So if they fix one thing, they have to neglect something else. The income from an operating reactor is essentially finite (unless the NRC grants an uprate, which they did to one reactor yesterday, or the regulators grant a rate increase, which also happens, but only with much objection from everyone).
The reactor operators simply can't keep up. Tighter enforcement and/or new safety regulations in one area almost invariably just means something falls by the wayside in another area. So really, all they ever do is gamble with your life. They'll keep gambling until they lose -- your life.
Nevada understands gambling. That's why they want you to visit -- because you don't, and they do. They understand what a sucker's bet is. That's why Nevadan's have overwhelmingly rejected Yucca Mountain, with its TENS OF THOUSANDS of shipments of nuclear waste. Any ONE shipment could ruin Las Vegas for thousands of generations. Many thousands of shipments are supposed to pass right through that city, risking an unquenchable fire, and the city evacuated. They don't want that.
Yucca Mountain, located in an active earthquake zone, was an unworkable idea to begin with, but it was ALREADY a LAST RESORT. The Yucca scientific team was allowed to consider alternative methods, from deep-sea disposal to on-site storage to rocketing the waste into deep space, if they thought those ideas were any better (they weren't). So don't expect that cancelling Yucca Mountain will mean we'll find something else.
It's time to call an end to this obviously-unworkable "solution" to our energy problem. Nuclear power never deserved a chance anyway, and didn't live up to its promises when given a chance it didn't deserve.
Jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire simply doesn't work. Fossil fuels are not the solution. Fracking for natural gas with dangerous mixes of corporate-secret chemicals destroys the water tables and is not the solution. But there ARE solutions.
Atmospheric vortex engines could create enormous amounts of electricity across the country. We don't even have a national research plan for them, or a test site. But similar wind tunnels are used in vacuums all the time...
So what's gone wrong? We put all our tens of billions of dollars into nuclear power.
Every renewable energy system has its faults and its detractors -- mostly environmentalists and NIMBYs who won't budge. Wind farms work fine. Offshore wind farms can even be out of sight and out of mind. Transcontinental power lines can ensure that wind blowing in one place can be used anywhere. Wyoming, Wisconsin, Colorado... the "wind-swept plains" could solve all our electrical energy needs.
Wave energy systems off our coasts could provide part or even all of the electricity we need. SoCal residents (and anyone who listened to the Beach Boys) know that San Onofre is a great surf break. Fukushima probably was too, and for 20 miles around, but not any more!
If wave energy systems were, theoretically, to absorb some of the wave energy from California's coast, slightly calming some of the breaks, I'm sure it will be a long, long time before they would take even 1% of the wave energy that's out there. 99.9% of all waves are not ridden by anybody! So even surfers should not oppose wave energy systems!
And with a proper national grid system, we can capture the wave energy in the frigid Aleutians, where no one surfs, ever -- after designing them here, thank you! So don't worry, surfers, you'll catch a wave. And it won't be radioactive! At least, not any MORE radioactive! (San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station regularly poisons your water. Did you know that?)
The debris swarm from Japan that's currently coming ashore on the west coast of America represents the invisible, odorless, tasteless (except in large doses) deadly radiation that's coming along with it.
San Onofre can release tens of thousands of terabequerels of radiation per hour for hours on end, just as Fukushima has apparently done. San Onofre can do it without an earthquake or a tsunami and without ANY warning.
No time to evacuate.
So give us a break, all you other environmentalists, so busy on other projects, protecting something! I hear you. Save the trees, save the whales, save the waves, save the earth. BUT AS A MUST-DO FIRST STEP, TEAR DOWN THESE NUKES!
That's our generation's task.
Tidal energy. Most of the lagoons in California are restored using money from mitigation of other areas that were destroyed -- there is really NO natural coastline here. If a tidal energy system is workable somewhere, it should be considered.
Solar rooftops. Solar parking garages. Solar roadways, even! These all work! We still need a good nationwide or global energy grid (just like Buckminster Fuller proposed almost one hundred years ago).
Have I mentioned hydroelectric power lately? Of course not, because so many people flat-out oppose all dams, and why stir up trouble? But really, it's NOT that simple! One nuclear power plant accident can and WILL poison any river or lake, as well as the oceans, forever. So then a concrete dam doesn't look so bad, does it? It changes the landscape, but it doesn't produce ANY pollution.
So don't knock hydroelectric power too much, fellow environmentalists! The old mill by the river wasn't such a bad idea after all. Not everything is the size of the Three Gorges Dam.
There are alternatives to nuclear power, and we should use them. Where small-scale hydro works, or even where large scale hydro works, please consider that there are approximately 440 nuclear power reactors around the world threatening ALL our water supplies. Dams don't poison the water. Nuclear power does. Even when dams fail they don't kill for thousands of generations (or even one generation) afterwards! Nuclear power does. Fukushima will poison a lot of water for a long time to come.
Of course it's true that there are no perfect energy solutions and any proposed solution can AND WILL be opposed by someone -- often someone with a vested interest in an alternative system.
Nuclear power was promised to be so perfect it would become "too cheap to meter" but turned out to be the worst solution of all -- and the most expensive. Coal is the second-worst polluter but just about the cheapest energy source. Society has to overcome these obstacles somehow. Finally admitting that Fukushima is the worst nuclear "accident" in history is a good first step towards facing reality. Congratulations on facing reality, Japan.
But if we don't ALL face reality, and shut ALL the nuclear power plants down, Fukushima will be exceeded some day. And then again. And again.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Seething in...
Carlsbad, CA
The author, a computer programmer, has been writing about technology, and warning about nuclear power, for many decades. He has owned (and programmed) dozens of different types of computers in numerous languages. His web sites receive tens of millions of "hits" each year and has a top search engine ranking in hundreds of categories. This man is no Luddite! He loves body surfing in shorts or mountainbiking in full protective gear on a high-tech bike that costs more than his desktop computer. This man is a techno-geek. His book on nuclear power, for adults and children alike, is available as a free download from his web site: www.acehoffman.org
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Particulate radiation explained
To the Guardian
Conrad Miller, MD
It seems there is a bit of confusion here, perhaps inspired by Mr. Monbiot's eloquence & longstanding status here at the Guardian. Let's share a straight simple example to drive a point home about radiation & the human body & nuclear power. Every nuclear reactor generates between 400-1000 pounds of plutonium every year. There are about 450 reactors in the world, 55 in Japan, 104 in USA. Big point: research has shown, with the beagle dogs in Hanford Washington studies that the lung cancer causing dose of plutonium is one millionth of a gram. That is a very small microscopic particle that is inhaled into the lung. The process of developing cancer often takes 20-30 years - or longer. Plutonium-239 which is generated by fissioning uranium, has a half life of 24,000 years. That means that 24,000 years from now, half of the radioactivity in the plutonium generated today in your nuclear reactor, will still exist, possibly causing cancer over & over again. And this fantastic length of time is only part of the legacy, for scientists have determined that for any radionuclide or radioactive element, one has to worry about its toxicity for harm via radiation emission continuing for 10-20 half lives - known as a radionuclide's 'hazardous life.' That means 240,000 to 480,000 years for plutonium-239.
Now, every particle of plutonium floating from Fukushima across the Pacific & then across the Atlantic that hovers over your head (invisibly) in Merry England will not be inhaled & get down into your lung, where, as an alpha emitter, it will bleep its radioactive energy beams into your cells & their DNA, often killing the cells, or mutating their genetic code. When this happens to your germ cells, as when the liquidators at Chernobyl were exposed to radiation (not just from plutonium; more likely from a slaggy hodge podge of all the possible radionuclides released from the compromised reactor core by the steam explosion and graphite fire) without shielding protection, such mutations in your contribution of DNA can result in your offspring having such birth defects as an eye that is a bubble lying on the outside of your baby's face, or legs that are bizarrely short, or no right arm, or a heart with a misshapen chamber that cannot function properly to sustain life outside of the womb very long.
Back to the plutonium: yes, the tiny alpha particle imbedded in your lung can cause a lung cancer that will kill you, while you wonder how in the world you could've contracted this cancer. There will be no label on its source/cause.
Indeed, you might be able to wave that plutonium particle out of your lung if you didn't kill those crucial cells in your bronchial tree that have those hairs on them called 'cilia.' Smokers eventually kill too many of these cilia-cells off, impairing their ability to clear out debris from their lungs, usually leading to more infections occurring as they develop their emphysema or COPD, standing for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. People with emphysema will be more prone to have that plutonium particle get deeper into their lung sacs & end up with lung cancer. At this time, I am not aware of any study evaluating INCIDENCE of lung cancer in humans, related to exposure to plutonium. However, would you like to be in that study?
Going back to the one millionth of a gram cancer-causing dose: there are 454 grams in one pound. That means, theoretically, if an accident occurs dispersing plutonium in tiny particles into the atmosphere, as in vaporization or a hot massive explosion, as happened at Chernobyl, & also happened with the atomic bombs tested, or used on Nagasaki & Hiroshima, those particles could drift around the globe & possibly cause 454 million lung cancers per pound of plutonium. 20 pounds of plutonium could theoretically cause lung cancer in every human being on Earth! And those particles don't 'die' - if somehow they get out of the cancered, deteriorating, deceased human body, they theoretically could have a next round of killing & cancering for up to 480,000 years. That is the danger of plutonium, & that is the gravest long term threat we humans have invited by developing an industry that produces 400-1000 pounds of plutonium in every ominous unit that is used to produce heat by fissioning uranium to boil water to turn a turbine to produce electricity.
We should also be aware that the 'fallout' we heard about from the atomic bombs exploded upon our planet, is still falling even today, still up there at the top of our atmosphere from the 1940's & thereafter. Nuclear power & Chernobyl & Three Mile Island & Fukushima only add to that lode of tiny particles of plutonium forever falling from the sky.
People should also know that there are more than 500 radionuclides generated in nuclear reactors beside plutonium that can cause cancer: strontium has a hazardous life of 300-600 years. The body takes it in, mistakenly reckoning it is calcium, incorporating it into our bones & bone marrow: unfortunate results>>bone cancer, & leukemia, especially in fast-growing susceptible children. These are being discovered lately in higher concentrations around nuclear plants today, as studies are finally being funded. This occurs as 'noble' gases that we call 'inert,' like krypton & xenon, are routinely intermittently 'vented' from nuclear reactors degenerating into 'daughter products' like strontium.
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Richard Bramhall
bramhall@llrc.org
Low Level Radiation Campaign advice for the people of Japan
Tue, 12 Apr 2011
LLRC.org has been updated with advice and information on how people can calculate their additional cancer risk at various levels of reported fallout.
"Dose" data...
Published by the Japanese government are not a measure of risk. The data are for Caesium 137 which is easy to monitor because it is a strong gamma emitter. The data are a signal for the very likely presence of alpha emitting radionuclides like Uranium and beta emitters like Strontium-90 which are very hard to detect. These contaminants are the real threat to health. No official sources are saying anything about this hazard although hundreds of tonnes of Uranium and Plutonium are missing from the spent fuel ponds. High resolution aerial photos linked from the LLRC site show fuel ponds are absent, following explosions.
Food advice:
Vegetables and other foodstuffs showing more than 50 Bq/Kg Caesium indicate airborne contamination with other radionuclides. LLRC advises food with more than 50 Becquerels per Kg should not be eaten unless there's absolutely no choice.
We recommend that the Japanese government should ask for international food aid supplies to prevent its people eating contaminated food.
Early signs of health damage:
We have received information from people in the Tokyo region stating that they have swollen lymph nodes and sores in their nostrils. These are indicators that they have probably inhaled particles of Plutonium and Uranium.
LLRC advice:
Unless it is absolutely impossible to leave, evacuate to areas where there has been no fallout. We link to Japanese government sites with local data.
To evacuate or not?
We suggest a novel scientific approach to the problem of quantifying the health effects of radioactive pollution.
Put simply, in an area now contaminated to a level of 1 microsievert per hour the fallout raises every individual person's risk of getting cancer in the next 10 years by 11%.
How we know this:
The Japanese authorities are publishing data on contamination levels in the form of hourly dose rates from Caesium137. It is therefore possible to calculate the cancer yield using the same criteria as used by Tondel and colleagues in a robust but conservative study of cancer in Sweden after Chernobyl. Sweden is known to have been contaminated with Uranium fuel although fallout mapping generally used data for Caesium, just as in Japan now, exactly 25 years later. Tondel and colleagues found an 11% increase in cancer incidence for each 100 kiloBecquerels Caesium137 on each square metre of ground. The cancers were expressed (diagnosed) in a ten year period; cancers appearing later than 10 years are of course possible but were not included in Tondel's study. The detailed method has been published on the LLRC site.
The site has simple instructions for calculating the additional risk from fallout.
We recommend you download (free) [URL #1 below] the book on Chernobyl's effect on human, animal and plant life published last year by the New York Academy of Sciences. This book tells the facts as scientists have seen, measured and counted them, free of the dogma of "dose". This means they have not ignored the evidence of their own eyes just because it isn't predicted by the ICRP model.
The Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk are a free download linked from the site [URL #2 below]. They provide scientific material to allow the authorities in Japan to regulate industry discharges on a rational scientific basis and to take precautionary action to protect the public. Unlike the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection the ECRR advice is specifically intended to apply to post-accident scenarios.
Earlier material from the home page has been removed and will be archived on a separate part of the site. For a few hours it will not be visible. We apologise for the delay - the emergency in Japan has placed demands on LLRC at levels we have never before experienced. For the same reason we are not able to answer all emails. We read them all, but there isn't enough time in the day to answer them all.
The site links to a video [URL #3 below] showing radiation levels on a dangerous journey approaching from the south.
URLs:
Chernobyl Book:
http://tinyurl.com/3bf4fjf
ECRR book:
http://www.euradcom.org/2011/ecrr2010.pdf
Entering the evacuation zone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9iJ3pPuL8
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Amy Goodman interview with Thomas Breuer: "It's way worse..."
"Greenpeace has done calculations with scientists already three weeks ago, where we figured out that this accident is in a scale 7 accident. And we are wondering why the government of Japan needs three weeks to come to the same conclusion, especially because they must have way better data than we have. So, what it means now, they wasted three weeks of not informing the public about the real, real risks of this accident...
"So, from my point of view, it is not equal to Chernobyl, it is way worse..."
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/12/nuclear_catastrophe_in_japan_not_equal
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
April 12th, 2011
Dear Readers,
Fukushima is now officially as bad as Chernobyl was: An INES (International Nuclear Event Scale) level seven "major nuclear accident."
Say goodbye, Chernobyl. You will soon be forgotten.
(Except for the 1,700 square mile exclusion zone that was once prime farmland, the pride of the Soviet Union. Who can forget that? And those deformed babies. Their parents don't forget them.)
Things didn't get particularly worse at Fukushima in the past few days. That's not why they went to a "level seven" accident rating -- the highest possible. Things didn't get any better, either, but that's also not why.
One thing that's changed is they had to expand the evacuation zone. This time, they've given thousands of additional residents living northwest of the plant -- as much as 30 kilometers away -- 30 days to leave. Obviously, the sooner they leave, the better, and they should not expect to be coming back any time soon, either. Possibly many generations. The soil is contaminated.
Thousands more people, just outside the current 20 kilometer depopulation area around Fukushima Daiichi, are in districts that "might" be asked to self-evacuate on a moment's notice. They have been told to make arrangements for evacuation on their own. Have a place to go. Have a way to get there. Have food and water (and cash and gas) for the journey. Pick up stragglers along the way. Turn out the lights and shut off the gas on the way out. Sayonara.
An old man was found wandering around the exclusion zone. He had been there, confused, the whole time. God knows what he breathed or ate.
Bitterness, shame, conflicting and confusing official orders, impossible orders (such as "stay indoors" and "don't drink the tap water") -- it's all there. It's all happening. A radiological crime against humanity is unfolding before us, yet again. Shall we turn a blind eye to the cause?
I ask: What are governments for, if not to stop this sort of thing? Japan has failed at Fukushima, the technological wizards of the world. Russia has failed at Chernobyl, the workers-always-know-best method failed. England has failed at Sellafield, then called Windscale, and shown that Oxford and Cambridge couldn't produce minds great enough to conquer the atom's quirks and quarks, or human's frailties and foibles. And America has failed a thousand little times and dozens of large ones, too -- Hanford being the nation's and possibly the world's most polluted site without even having a Fukushima of our own... yet... The Hanford "reservation" is strewn with enormous quantities of deadly plutonium from mostly "proper" operations. You can't live there. It poisons the Colombia River constantly. As additional radioactive plumes reach the river, they will poison it more and more.
What government, what entity, what human has any right to think they can control the atom? They can't. And even if they can, the thousands of generations who will have to mind their waste for having done so probably can't.
Now, global measurements are being compared to what was measured at the time of Chernobyl. That's one reason Japanese nuclear authorities had little choice but to raise the Fukushima tragedy from a level 5 through 6 to a 7, making it at least equal to the world's worst industrial and nuclear accident in history -- Chernobyl.
But of course, neither Fukushima nor Chernobyl were really accidents at all any more than drunks have accidents on the highway. (We just call them "statistics" here in America.) In the case of Chernobyl it was reactor operators running unapproved and dangerous experiments: Criminal negligence. At Fukushima is was improperly designed and maintained reactors and safety systems that failed just when they were needed most: Criminal negligence. Criminal negligence on the part of the entire nuclear industry. THIS could have happened anywhere!
If you tell me you've solved all the problems with nuclear power (HA!), and I'll tell you nuclear promoters all around the world told the public the same thing thousands of times in the years since Chernobyl and prior to Fukushima. And, of course, the biggest lie was that the reactors were different and this couldn't happen with "Western" style reactors.
Now, nuclear promoters are telling the public they'll apply the "lessons learned" very carefully from Fukushima to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. They're lying.
They might fix something, but they'll neglect something else. They don't have enough time or money -- or experience or know-how -- or personnel -- to fix everything. So if they fix one thing, they have to neglect something else. The income from an operating reactor is essentially finite (unless the NRC grants an uprate, which they did to one reactor yesterday, or the regulators grant a rate increase, which also happens, but only with much objection from everyone).
The reactor operators simply can't keep up. Tighter enforcement and/or new safety regulations in one area almost invariably just means something falls by the wayside in another area. So really, all they ever do is gamble with your life. They'll keep gambling until they lose -- your life.
Nevada understands gambling. That's why they want you to visit -- because you don't, and they do. They understand what a sucker's bet is. That's why Nevadan's have overwhelmingly rejected Yucca Mountain, with its TENS OF THOUSANDS of shipments of nuclear waste. Any ONE shipment could ruin Las Vegas for thousands of generations. Many thousands of shipments are supposed to pass right through that city, risking an unquenchable fire, and the city evacuated. They don't want that.
Yucca Mountain, located in an active earthquake zone, was an unworkable idea to begin with, but it was ALREADY a LAST RESORT. The Yucca scientific team was allowed to consider alternative methods, from deep-sea disposal to on-site storage to rocketing the waste into deep space, if they thought those ideas were any better (they weren't). So don't expect that cancelling Yucca Mountain will mean we'll find something else.
It's time to call an end to this obviously-unworkable "solution" to our energy problem. Nuclear power never deserved a chance anyway, and didn't live up to its promises when given a chance it didn't deserve.
Jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire simply doesn't work. Fossil fuels are not the solution. Fracking for natural gas with dangerous mixes of corporate-secret chemicals destroys the water tables and is not the solution. But there ARE solutions.
Atmospheric vortex engines could create enormous amounts of electricity across the country. We don't even have a national research plan for them, or a test site. But similar wind tunnels are used in vacuums all the time...
So what's gone wrong? We put all our tens of billions of dollars into nuclear power.
Every renewable energy system has its faults and its detractors -- mostly environmentalists and NIMBYs who won't budge. Wind farms work fine. Offshore wind farms can even be out of sight and out of mind. Transcontinental power lines can ensure that wind blowing in one place can be used anywhere. Wyoming, Wisconsin, Colorado... the "wind-swept plains" could solve all our electrical energy needs.
Wave energy systems off our coasts could provide part or even all of the electricity we need. SoCal residents (and anyone who listened to the Beach Boys) know that San Onofre is a great surf break. Fukushima probably was too, and for 20 miles around, but not any more!
If wave energy systems were, theoretically, to absorb some of the wave energy from California's coast, slightly calming some of the breaks, I'm sure it will be a long, long time before they would take even 1% of the wave energy that's out there. 99.9% of all waves are not ridden by anybody! So even surfers should not oppose wave energy systems!
And with a proper national grid system, we can capture the wave energy in the frigid Aleutians, where no one surfs, ever -- after designing them here, thank you! So don't worry, surfers, you'll catch a wave. And it won't be radioactive! At least, not any MORE radioactive! (San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station regularly poisons your water. Did you know that?)
The debris swarm from Japan that's currently coming ashore on the west coast of America represents the invisible, odorless, tasteless (except in large doses) deadly radiation that's coming along with it.
San Onofre can release tens of thousands of terabequerels of radiation per hour for hours on end, just as Fukushima has apparently done. San Onofre can do it without an earthquake or a tsunami and without ANY warning.
No time to evacuate.
So give us a break, all you other environmentalists, so busy on other projects, protecting something! I hear you. Save the trees, save the whales, save the waves, save the earth. BUT AS A MUST-DO FIRST STEP, TEAR DOWN THESE NUKES!
That's our generation's task.
Tidal energy. Most of the lagoons in California are restored using money from mitigation of other areas that were destroyed -- there is really NO natural coastline here. If a tidal energy system is workable somewhere, it should be considered.
Solar rooftops. Solar parking garages. Solar roadways, even! These all work! We still need a good nationwide or global energy grid (just like Buckminster Fuller proposed almost one hundred years ago).
Have I mentioned hydroelectric power lately? Of course not, because so many people flat-out oppose all dams, and why stir up trouble? But really, it's NOT that simple! One nuclear power plant accident can and WILL poison any river or lake, as well as the oceans, forever. So then a concrete dam doesn't look so bad, does it? It changes the landscape, but it doesn't produce ANY pollution.
So don't knock hydroelectric power too much, fellow environmentalists! The old mill by the river wasn't such a bad idea after all. Not everything is the size of the Three Gorges Dam.
There are alternatives to nuclear power, and we should use them. Where small-scale hydro works, or even where large scale hydro works, please consider that there are approximately 440 nuclear power reactors around the world threatening ALL our water supplies. Dams don't poison the water. Nuclear power does. Even when dams fail they don't kill for thousands of generations (or even one generation) afterwards! Nuclear power does. Fukushima will poison a lot of water for a long time to come.
Of course it's true that there are no perfect energy solutions and any proposed solution can AND WILL be opposed by someone -- often someone with a vested interest in an alternative system.
Nuclear power was promised to be so perfect it would become "too cheap to meter" but turned out to be the worst solution of all -- and the most expensive. Coal is the second-worst polluter but just about the cheapest energy source. Society has to overcome these obstacles somehow. Finally admitting that Fukushima is the worst nuclear "accident" in history is a good first step towards facing reality. Congratulations on facing reality, Japan.
But if we don't ALL face reality, and shut ALL the nuclear power plants down, Fukushima will be exceeded some day. And then again. And again.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Seething in...
Carlsbad, CA
The author, a computer programmer, has been writing about technology, and warning about nuclear power, for many decades. He has owned (and programmed) dozens of different types of computers in numerous languages. His web sites receive tens of millions of "hits" each year and has a top search engine ranking in hundreds of categories. This man is no Luddite! He loves body surfing in shorts or mountainbiking in full protective gear on a high-tech bike that costs more than his desktop computer. This man is a techno-geek. His book on nuclear power, for adults and children alike, is available as a free download from his web site: www.acehoffman.org
---------------------------------------------------------
Particulate radiation explained
To the Guardian
Conrad Miller, MD
It seems there is a bit of confusion here, perhaps inspired by Mr. Monbiot's eloquence & longstanding status here at the Guardian. Let's share a straight simple example to drive a point home about radiation & the human body & nuclear power. Every nuclear reactor generates between 400-1000 pounds of plutonium every year. There are about 450 reactors in the world, 55 in Japan, 104 in USA. Big point: research has shown, with the beagle dogs in Hanford Washington studies that the lung cancer causing dose of plutonium is one millionth of a gram. That is a very small microscopic particle that is inhaled into the lung. The process of developing cancer often takes 20-30 years - or longer. Plutonium-239 which is generated by fissioning uranium, has a half life of 24,000 years. That means that 24,000 years from now, half of the radioactivity in the plutonium generated today in your nuclear reactor, will still exist, possibly causing cancer over & over again. And this fantastic length of time is only part of the legacy, for scientists have determined that for any radionuclide or radioactive element, one has to worry about its toxicity for harm via radiation emission continuing for 10-20 half lives - known as a radionuclide's 'hazardous life.' That means 240,000 to 480,000 years for plutonium-239.
Now, every particle of plutonium floating from Fukushima across the Pacific & then across the Atlantic that hovers over your head (invisibly) in Merry England will not be inhaled & get down into your lung, where, as an alpha emitter, it will bleep its radioactive energy beams into your cells & their DNA, often killing the cells, or mutating their genetic code. When this happens to your germ cells, as when the liquidators at Chernobyl were exposed to radiation (not just from plutonium; more likely from a slaggy hodge podge of all the possible radionuclides released from the compromised reactor core by the steam explosion and graphite fire) without shielding protection, such mutations in your contribution of DNA can result in your offspring having such birth defects as an eye that is a bubble lying on the outside of your baby's face, or legs that are bizarrely short, or no right arm, or a heart with a misshapen chamber that cannot function properly to sustain life outside of the womb very long.
Back to the plutonium: yes, the tiny alpha particle imbedded in your lung can cause a lung cancer that will kill you, while you wonder how in the world you could've contracted this cancer. There will be no label on its source/cause.
Indeed, you might be able to wave that plutonium particle out of your lung if you didn't kill those crucial cells in your bronchial tree that have those hairs on them called 'cilia.' Smokers eventually kill too many of these cilia-cells off, impairing their ability to clear out debris from their lungs, usually leading to more infections occurring as they develop their emphysema or COPD, standing for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. People with emphysema will be more prone to have that plutonium particle get deeper into their lung sacs & end up with lung cancer. At this time, I am not aware of any study evaluating INCIDENCE of lung cancer in humans, related to exposure to plutonium. However, would you like to be in that study?
Going back to the one millionth of a gram cancer-causing dose: there are 454 grams in one pound. That means, theoretically, if an accident occurs dispersing plutonium in tiny particles into the atmosphere, as in vaporization or a hot massive explosion, as happened at Chernobyl, & also happened with the atomic bombs tested, or used on Nagasaki & Hiroshima, those particles could drift around the globe & possibly cause 454 million lung cancers per pound of plutonium. 20 pounds of plutonium could theoretically cause lung cancer in every human being on Earth! And those particles don't 'die' - if somehow they get out of the cancered, deteriorating, deceased human body, they theoretically could have a next round of killing & cancering for up to 480,000 years. That is the danger of plutonium, & that is the gravest long term threat we humans have invited by developing an industry that produces 400-1000 pounds of plutonium in every ominous unit that is used to produce heat by fissioning uranium to boil water to turn a turbine to produce electricity.
We should also be aware that the 'fallout' we heard about from the atomic bombs exploded upon our planet, is still falling even today, still up there at the top of our atmosphere from the 1940's & thereafter. Nuclear power & Chernobyl & Three Mile Island & Fukushima only add to that lode of tiny particles of plutonium forever falling from the sky.
People should also know that there are more than 500 radionuclides generated in nuclear reactors beside plutonium that can cause cancer: strontium has a hazardous life of 300-600 years. The body takes it in, mistakenly reckoning it is calcium, incorporating it into our bones & bone marrow: unfortunate results>>bone cancer, & leukemia, especially in fast-growing susceptible children. These are being discovered lately in higher concentrations around nuclear plants today, as studies are finally being funded. This occurs as 'noble' gases that we call 'inert,' like krypton & xenon, are routinely intermittently 'vented' from nuclear reactors degenerating into 'daughter products' like strontium.
------------------------------------------------------
Richard Bramhall
bramhall@llrc.org
Low Level Radiation Campaign advice for the people of Japan
Tue, 12 Apr 2011
LLRC.org has been updated with advice and information on how people can calculate their additional cancer risk at various levels of reported fallout.
"Dose" data...
Published by the Japanese government are not a measure of risk. The data are for Caesium 137 which is easy to monitor because it is a strong gamma emitter. The data are a signal for the very likely presence of alpha emitting radionuclides like Uranium and beta emitters like Strontium-90 which are very hard to detect. These contaminants are the real threat to health. No official sources are saying anything about this hazard although hundreds of tonnes of Uranium and Plutonium are missing from the spent fuel ponds. High resolution aerial photos linked from the LLRC site show fuel ponds are absent, following explosions.
Food advice:
Vegetables and other foodstuffs showing more than 50 Bq/Kg Caesium indicate airborne contamination with other radionuclides. LLRC advises food with more than 50 Becquerels per Kg should not be eaten unless there's absolutely no choice.
We recommend that the Japanese government should ask for international food aid supplies to prevent its people eating contaminated food.
Early signs of health damage:
We have received information from people in the Tokyo region stating that they have swollen lymph nodes and sores in their nostrils. These are indicators that they have probably inhaled particles of Plutonium and Uranium.
LLRC advice:
Unless it is absolutely impossible to leave, evacuate to areas where there has been no fallout. We link to Japanese government sites with local data.
To evacuate or not?
We suggest a novel scientific approach to the problem of quantifying the health effects of radioactive pollution.
Put simply, in an area now contaminated to a level of 1 microsievert per hour the fallout raises every individual person's risk of getting cancer in the next 10 years by 11%.
How we know this:
The Japanese authorities are publishing data on contamination levels in the form of hourly dose rates from Caesium137. It is therefore possible to calculate the cancer yield using the same criteria as used by Tondel and colleagues in a robust but conservative study of cancer in Sweden after Chernobyl. Sweden is known to have been contaminated with Uranium fuel although fallout mapping generally used data for Caesium, just as in Japan now, exactly 25 years later. Tondel and colleagues found an 11% increase in cancer incidence for each 100 kiloBecquerels Caesium137 on each square metre of ground. The cancers were expressed (diagnosed) in a ten year period; cancers appearing later than 10 years are of course possible but were not included in Tondel's study. The detailed method has been published on the LLRC site.
The site has simple instructions for calculating the additional risk from fallout.
We recommend you download (free) [URL #1 below] the book on Chernobyl's effect on human, animal and plant life published last year by the New York Academy of Sciences. This book tells the facts as scientists have seen, measured and counted them, free of the dogma of "dose". This means they have not ignored the evidence of their own eyes just because it isn't predicted by the ICRP model.
The Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk are a free download linked from the site [URL #2 below]. They provide scientific material to allow the authorities in Japan to regulate industry discharges on a rational scientific basis and to take precautionary action to protect the public. Unlike the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection the ECRR advice is specifically intended to apply to post-accident scenarios.
Earlier material from the home page has been removed and will be archived on a separate part of the site. For a few hours it will not be visible. We apologise for the delay - the emergency in Japan has placed demands on LLRC at levels we have never before experienced. For the same reason we are not able to answer all emails. We read them all, but there isn't enough time in the day to answer them all.
The site links to a video [URL #3 below] showing radiation levels on a dangerous journey approaching from the south.
URLs:
Chernobyl Book:
http://tinyurl.com/3bf4fjf
ECRR book:
http://www.euradcom.org/2011/ecrr2010.pdf
Entering the evacuation zone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9iJ3pPuL8
---------------------------------------------------------
Amy Goodman interview with Thomas Breuer: "It's way worse..."
"Greenpeace has done calculations with scientists already three weeks ago, where we figured out that this accident is in a scale 7 accident. And we are wondering why the government of Japan needs three weeks to come to the same conclusion, especially because they must have way better data than we have. So, what it means now, they wasted three weeks of not informing the public about the real, real risks of this accident...
"So, from my point of view, it is not equal to Chernobyl, it is way worse..."
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/12/nuclear_catastrophe_in_japan_not_equal
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Radioactive fallout from Fukushima approaching same levels as Chernobyl
Thursday, March 24, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
http://www.naturalnews.com/031836_radioactive_fallout_Fukushima.html
(NaturalNews) Despite all the desperate efforts by world governments to downplay the severity of the release of radioactive material from Fukushima, world radiation sensors are revealing the ugly truth about the Fukushima catastrophe that the nuclear industry doesn't want you to know: The radioactive fallout is now as much as 73 percent of the daily radiation emitted from Chernobyl following its meltdown disaster. That's the story on Iodine-131, the radioactive iodine isotope that's now spreading across the globe.
Similarly, the amount of caesium-137 being released by Fukushima has now reached 60 percent of that released by Chernobyl.
Radiation spreading across oceans and continents
This is the data from the global network of radiation sensors that were originally installed to monitor the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). They were designed to detect illegal nuclear weapons testing events, but now they're proving to be quite effective at picking up the massive release of deadly radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power complex -- which is still burning, by the way.
The monitoring stations are located in Alaska, Hawaii, Montreal and other cities, indicating that the radiation fallout from Fukushima now spans oceans and continents.
Because Fukushima continues to leak radiation into the environment, its total radioactive output may yet exceed that of Chernobyl. There's certainly a lot more fuel at Fukushima than there ever was at Chernobyl: 1,760 tons of nuclear fuel versus just 180 tons at Chernobyl.
So Fukushima has ten times the amount of fresh and spent fuel as Chernobyl. And it's still spewing radiation every second. The food and water in Japan is already contaminated, the oceans are radioactive, the air is radioactive, neutron beams are jetting out of the nuclear facility, it's raining yellow water, workers are being hospitalized with radiation burns, and still the nuclear industry says stop worrying... it's all safe!
Fukushima quickly rising to the top of the list of the world's worst nuclear disasters
It only leads me to wonder: How much worse is this going to get? We were told just this week that the reactors had their power restored, that the crisis was over, remember? The mainstream media has already blown past this story and doesn't express much concern at all over the situation. Yet this Fukushima catastrophe is quickly moving into the top position as the world's worst nuclear power plant disaster -- even as the media plays it down!
Fukushima may yet out-Chernobyl Chernobyl!
So where does all this radiation end up? Well, according to the Japanese and American governments, it all just magically fades away and there's nothing at all to worry about. But NaturalNews readers know better: This radiation ends up in the food, in the water, and circulating throughout the environment. Where will this end? No one knows for sure. But if there's one thing we've all learned from watching Tokyo this past week, it's that the time to get prepared is right now!
ACTION ITEMS:
• Always have at least 10 - 20 gallons of extra fresh water stored in your house or apartment. No matter what! Tokyo residents just found out the hard way that depending on tap water is a risky gambit.
• Always have extra food available, just in case. Next week on NaturalNews, by the way, we will be announcing the launch of a new line of long-term storable superfoods and organic foods packed in #10 steel cans (using BPA-free bags inside the cans).
• If you don't yet have potassium iodide or a source of natural iodine, and you're in an area that could be hit by radiation fallout, it's a wise idea to have some just in case. The NaturalNews Store has potassium iodide back in stock today (as of this writing) and is shipping all orders containing *only* potassium iodide in 1-2 working days.
• Don't allow yourself to be caught unprepared by a natural or man-made disaster. Governments lie to you about disasters, almost as a rule. They always wait too long to tell people to do something, and by that time everybody's in a panic. So to avoid all that, get prepared in advance so you're safe, confident and not contributing to the supply shortage problems.
Remember, in any given emergency, the people who prepared in advance are those who help ease the supply lines and ultimately leave more supplies available for others who didn't prepare. So in any given city, the more people who have prepared in advance, the fewer people will panic and the lower the burden will be on emergency supplies.
That's why preparedness makes such obvious sense. Only a fool would tell Americans to avoid being prepared for the unknown -- especially in a time when nuclear power plants are on the verge of catastrophic 'dirty bomb' meltdown events.
Stay safe, folks. Even if it means just getting the basics squared away. If you drink anything out of the 2-liter bottles, just save those bottles and fill 'em with water. That's a start!
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
http://www.naturalnews.com/031836_radioactive_fallout_Fukushima.html
(NaturalNews) Despite all the desperate efforts by world governments to downplay the severity of the release of radioactive material from Fukushima, world radiation sensors are revealing the ugly truth about the Fukushima catastrophe that the nuclear industry doesn't want you to know: The radioactive fallout is now as much as 73 percent of the daily radiation emitted from Chernobyl following its meltdown disaster. That's the story on Iodine-131, the radioactive iodine isotope that's now spreading across the globe.
Similarly, the amount of caesium-137 being released by Fukushima has now reached 60 percent of that released by Chernobyl.
Radiation spreading across oceans and continents
This is the data from the global network of radiation sensors that were originally installed to monitor the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). They were designed to detect illegal nuclear weapons testing events, but now they're proving to be quite effective at picking up the massive release of deadly radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power complex -- which is still burning, by the way.
The monitoring stations are located in Alaska, Hawaii, Montreal and other cities, indicating that the radiation fallout from Fukushima now spans oceans and continents.
Because Fukushima continues to leak radiation into the environment, its total radioactive output may yet exceed that of Chernobyl. There's certainly a lot more fuel at Fukushima than there ever was at Chernobyl: 1,760 tons of nuclear fuel versus just 180 tons at Chernobyl.
So Fukushima has ten times the amount of fresh and spent fuel as Chernobyl. And it's still spewing radiation every second. The food and water in Japan is already contaminated, the oceans are radioactive, the air is radioactive, neutron beams are jetting out of the nuclear facility, it's raining yellow water, workers are being hospitalized with radiation burns, and still the nuclear industry says stop worrying... it's all safe!
Fukushima quickly rising to the top of the list of the world's worst nuclear disasters
It only leads me to wonder: How much worse is this going to get? We were told just this week that the reactors had their power restored, that the crisis was over, remember? The mainstream media has already blown past this story and doesn't express much concern at all over the situation. Yet this Fukushima catastrophe is quickly moving into the top position as the world's worst nuclear power plant disaster -- even as the media plays it down!
Fukushima may yet out-Chernobyl Chernobyl!
So where does all this radiation end up? Well, according to the Japanese and American governments, it all just magically fades away and there's nothing at all to worry about. But NaturalNews readers know better: This radiation ends up in the food, in the water, and circulating throughout the environment. Where will this end? No one knows for sure. But if there's one thing we've all learned from watching Tokyo this past week, it's that the time to get prepared is right now!
ACTION ITEMS:
• Always have at least 10 - 20 gallons of extra fresh water stored in your house or apartment. No matter what! Tokyo residents just found out the hard way that depending on tap water is a risky gambit.
• Always have extra food available, just in case. Next week on NaturalNews, by the way, we will be announcing the launch of a new line of long-term storable superfoods and organic foods packed in #10 steel cans (using BPA-free bags inside the cans).
• If you don't yet have potassium iodide or a source of natural iodine, and you're in an area that could be hit by radiation fallout, it's a wise idea to have some just in case. The NaturalNews Store has potassium iodide back in stock today (as of this writing) and is shipping all orders containing *only* potassium iodide in 1-2 working days.
• Don't allow yourself to be caught unprepared by a natural or man-made disaster. Governments lie to you about disasters, almost as a rule. They always wait too long to tell people to do something, and by that time everybody's in a panic. So to avoid all that, get prepared in advance so you're safe, confident and not contributing to the supply shortage problems.
Remember, in any given emergency, the people who prepared in advance are those who help ease the supply lines and ultimately leave more supplies available for others who didn't prepare. So in any given city, the more people who have prepared in advance, the fewer people will panic and the lower the burden will be on emergency supplies.
That's why preparedness makes such obvious sense. Only a fool would tell Americans to avoid being prepared for the unknown -- especially in a time when nuclear power plants are on the verge of catastrophic 'dirty bomb' meltdown events.
Stay safe, folks. Even if it means just getting the basics squared away. If you drink anything out of the 2-liter bottles, just save those bottles and fill 'em with water. That's a start!
Dr. Helen Caldicott Says Japan Crisis Can Dwarf Chernobyl Disaster
Jan Lundberg
24 March 2011
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/715/1/
Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock has just produced a definitive interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott, the world's foremost anti-nuclear activist and authority. Listen to it now at Ecoshock.net. Here are some notes I took from the broadcast:
• Smoke has been reported rising from the Fukushima unit number 3. If it's from fuel-cooling pools that contain plutonium, that's a major (to put it mildly) disaster.
• one millionth of a gram of plutonium ingested causes cancer.
• Geiger counter radiation levels have been reassuring for the West Coast of North America. But the real question for public health is "internal emitters" (e.g. Strontium attached to bone) -- that cause cancer and gene mutations -- versus external radiation measurements that cannot discern isotopes.
• Long lived isotopes versus quickly degrading ones: the big question for our gene pool.
• Fuel-cooling pools pose a far worse threat than reactors. In the U.S. the fuel pools are not backed up with cooling systems!
• A large part of Japan is damaged permanently.
• Random genetic engineering is being done for the rest of humanity's future.
• A peaceful Egypt-kind of revolution is needed against the nuclear psychosis.
• Caldicott commissioned a "Nuclear-free, carbon-free" study. She says "Renewable energy can supply all the energy America needs by 2040."
The last point reveals a weakness in the anti-nuclear movement as well as in the climate protection movement. When today's energy appetite is justified by cleaner energy -- as in an obese person's switching the source of calories instead of cutting way back on them and getting significant exercise -- little good can come of it. The "clean energy" vision has a lot of baggage, such as a petroleum infrastructure that is giving out.
A basic lack of understanding of energy plagues many intelligent people who haven't examined petroleum's attributes and role. There is no overall substitute possible for cheap petroleum and its many uses. Even more dangerous, the Holy Grail of abundant "clean energy" someday for a huge consumer economy's "needs" causes tragic delay in slashing energy use now. We must question the need for today's energy consumption by establishing much lower energy use -- lifestyle change -- that needs to happen so that mass curtailment and restructuring can begin now.
To begin to gear up to meet the 2040 goal that Dr. Caldicott called for is folly in that it is off-target, and ignores the realities of overpopulation. But because she is so right on some vital levels, she is able to make an uninformed statement such as the last one in the above list. I have met this wonderful activist, and we're in agreement with her new statement that the Japan crisis may be positive for sinking the nuclear industry and then even getting on to the task of dealing with the weapons problem.
Alex Smith produced and offered an important show on March 21 on the nuclear crisis, not released on Culture Change. To make up for this lapse, we asked him for his next report. He has responded with an excellent must-listen show, referenced above. His website is ecoshock.org. Here is the note he sent Culture Change on March 23:
Hi Jan
Here is a hot one to send out to your list: this morning I interviewed Dr. Helen Caldicott about the Japanese nuclear crisis. This may be the first long interview she's given, or at least that I've seen or heard. And she is on fire!
The second part of this week's program is Kathy McMahon, the Peak Oil shrink, on digesting really bad news, plus the nuke problems in New England. She's one smart lady.
Plus a bit of news straight from NHK World today, as four reactors burn in Japan, with all workers evacuated. Hardly any bottled water left in Tokyo, and nurseries can't find what they need to feed babies, now that the tap water is radioactive.
Radiation found in fields 40 kilometers north of Fukushima runs 5 cm. deep, and an expert expects it will last at least 30 years. A big part of Japan is lost to agriculture, if not to human habitation. Certainly the tens of thousands of nuclear refugees from Fukushima itself and neighboring villages are not going home. Not in their lifetimes.
Caldicott says this is the big one.
More information from Dr. Helen Caldicott is on her website: nuclearfreeplanet.org
Facebook: Dr. Helen Caldicott
24 March 2011
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/715/1/
Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock has just produced a definitive interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott, the world's foremost anti-nuclear activist and authority. Listen to it now at Ecoshock.net. Here are some notes I took from the broadcast:
• Smoke has been reported rising from the Fukushima unit number 3. If it's from fuel-cooling pools that contain plutonium, that's a major (to put it mildly) disaster.
• one millionth of a gram of plutonium ingested causes cancer.
• Geiger counter radiation levels have been reassuring for the West Coast of North America. But the real question for public health is "internal emitters" (e.g. Strontium attached to bone) -- that cause cancer and gene mutations -- versus external radiation measurements that cannot discern isotopes.
• Long lived isotopes versus quickly degrading ones: the big question for our gene pool.
• Fuel-cooling pools pose a far worse threat than reactors. In the U.S. the fuel pools are not backed up with cooling systems!
• A large part of Japan is damaged permanently.
• Random genetic engineering is being done for the rest of humanity's future.
• A peaceful Egypt-kind of revolution is needed against the nuclear psychosis.
• Caldicott commissioned a "Nuclear-free, carbon-free" study. She says "Renewable energy can supply all the energy America needs by 2040."
The last point reveals a weakness in the anti-nuclear movement as well as in the climate protection movement. When today's energy appetite is justified by cleaner energy -- as in an obese person's switching the source of calories instead of cutting way back on them and getting significant exercise -- little good can come of it. The "clean energy" vision has a lot of baggage, such as a petroleum infrastructure that is giving out.
A basic lack of understanding of energy plagues many intelligent people who haven't examined petroleum's attributes and role. There is no overall substitute possible for cheap petroleum and its many uses. Even more dangerous, the Holy Grail of abundant "clean energy" someday for a huge consumer economy's "needs" causes tragic delay in slashing energy use now. We must question the need for today's energy consumption by establishing much lower energy use -- lifestyle change -- that needs to happen so that mass curtailment and restructuring can begin now.
To begin to gear up to meet the 2040 goal that Dr. Caldicott called for is folly in that it is off-target, and ignores the realities of overpopulation. But because she is so right on some vital levels, she is able to make an uninformed statement such as the last one in the above list. I have met this wonderful activist, and we're in agreement with her new statement that the Japan crisis may be positive for sinking the nuclear industry and then even getting on to the task of dealing with the weapons problem.
Alex Smith produced and offered an important show on March 21 on the nuclear crisis, not released on Culture Change. To make up for this lapse, we asked him for his next report. He has responded with an excellent must-listen show, referenced above. His website is ecoshock.org. Here is the note he sent Culture Change on March 23:
Hi Jan
Here is a hot one to send out to your list: this morning I interviewed Dr. Helen Caldicott about the Japanese nuclear crisis. This may be the first long interview she's given, or at least that I've seen or heard. And she is on fire!
The second part of this week's program is Kathy McMahon, the Peak Oil shrink, on digesting really bad news, plus the nuke problems in New England. She's one smart lady.
Plus a bit of news straight from NHK World today, as four reactors burn in Japan, with all workers evacuated. Hardly any bottled water left in Tokyo, and nurseries can't find what they need to feed babies, now that the tap water is radioactive.
Radiation found in fields 40 kilometers north of Fukushima runs 5 cm. deep, and an expert expects it will last at least 30 years. A big part of Japan is lost to agriculture, if not to human habitation. Certainly the tens of thousands of nuclear refugees from Fukushima itself and neighboring villages are not going home. Not in their lifetimes.
Caldicott says this is the big one.
More information from Dr. Helen Caldicott is on her website: nuclearfreeplanet.org
Facebook: Dr. Helen Caldicott
Vexing Mess: Experts perplexed, citizens stop sex
Ace Hoffman 3/21/11
Dear Readers,
Fukushima Dai-ichi may still be getting worse, not better.
The birth rate is bound to decline in Northern Japan. Whether by choice or by biological influence, no one will be sure. Sperm counts will drop and spontaneous abortions will rise. Many people will not WANT to have babies. It happened after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It happened after Chernobyl. It will happen here to. We're only human.
Radiation monitors were blown out when the buildings exploded, or simply stopped working at some point. Readings at the plant are generally unknown, and whatever is known is seldom presented to the public.
Today, spinach, milk, and water were all reported poisoned with radiation in various places in Japan. Radiation readings 1,600 times normal were detected TWENTY KILOMETERS from the plant, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Levels were reported to be over 160 microsieverts per hour.
No one should ever believe that a ten-mile evacuation planning zone is good enough anymore. Or that evacuation zones are the answer.
The truth of what's coming over the U.S. border, here where I live, is hard to know. I finally ordered my very own radiation detector -- but it's not scheduled to be shipped until the middle of May!
Dr. Conrad Miller recommends people in California start taking KI and says he's prescribed it "more than a thousand times" for other reasons as a doctor, and has never seen a side effect in anyone. He points out that the accident has already happened, the radioactive isotopes are in the air and falling now, and the side effects of taking KI (if they happen), are typical for any allergic reaction, and will presumably go away when you stop taking the KI.
Dr. Miller additionally say's he'll "probably" take it soon himself (he lives on Long Island, New York). Dr. Miller's videos are available online here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/conradmillermd
But I should point out that as far as I know, readings are NOT elevated in California... yet...
The following are the four main barriers to radioactive releases in these types of nuclear power plants, from the outermost layer to the innermost:
1) Outer walls of a fairly airtight building. These have been blown away at three reactors.
2) Primary Containment Vessel (large steel structure with cement base and large posts inside to hold the Reactor Pressure Vessel). Hopefully these are all intact but it seems unlikely.
3) Reactor Pressure Vessel. At least one of these may be damaged. All are still in danger of catastrophic failures, especially if they run out of boron or if seaweed plugs up the reactor's water channels. "We're not out of the woods yet" is a common pronouncement from the talking heads on television today.
4) The last barrier to prevent fission products and fuel (uranium and plutonium) escaping is the fuel cladding, made of zirconium, in steel rods with hundreds of pellets in each rod. It's presumably what been burning, when things burn at the site. When that happens, fission products are released, which gathered between fuel and the inner wall of the cladding.
Keeping fission products from escaping is what the cladding is there for: To keep the Cesium-137, Iodine-131, Strontium-90 and an ugly rainbow of other isotopes isolated from the human environment. Those deadly elements -- the ones they talk about in science fiction movies -- are being released at Fukushima Dai-ichi.
Everything that breaks off is undoubtedly being washed out to sea, to enter life's many food chains. What doesn't burn or oxidize and go up in smoke or steam, that is.
Fuel claddings are never perfect, and fuel clad cracking has been a recurrent problem for the nuclear industry.
Plutonium in the fuel is another problem. The cladding burns at one temperature, the uranium / plutonium burns at another, higher temperature. MOX fuel has plutonium but of course, so does uranium-based fuel: It builds up in the reactor at the rate of about 500 pounds per year. So any fuel that has melted, has probably released plutonium into the environment, whether it was from the MOX reactor or not.
When all is said and done -- and who knows when that will be -- a perfect accounting of what's missing from the reactor site will be impossible. TEPCO records can't be trusted, and employees who might know the truth are very likely to be too sick to testify, or dead.
The spent fuel pools appeared to be burning again today. Smoke or -- hopefully -- only steam has been seen rising from two reactors at the site. Workers were pulled away because of high radiation levels -- again. Things are still very out of control.
Regarding exposure levels here in America: It's probably still true that if you smoke cigarettes, stopping smoking today will still make more of a difference for your overall health and life expectancy than the radiation plume now descending all around us will make to you as an individual.
Smoking, of course, kills tens of millions of people every year. Japan has a very high rate of smoking, which will probably increase the effect of the radiation on their bodies, since the smoking already weakens their lungs. This will be true for anyone experiencing any chemical assault or other biological assault at the same time as this "little" wave of radiation passes by and through us, falls on our food... This will tip some people over the edge. The authorities might blame increased deaths on a late flu, on some virus that's might be going around. And it might be true that such a thing caught hold and DID spread around -- because of weakened immune systems!
And then, later... cancer. This accident is something no expert who understands the dangers ever wanted to see. And yet so many activists and experts alike have said to me in the past, "IT WILL TAKE AN ACCIDENT." Well, here it is, folks. If we don't use this incident to shut down nuclear power, then there will be another incident. And another. And another.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Using my HEPA filters in...
Carlsbad, CA
The author has been studying nuclear disasters, real or imagined, for many decades. This one was easily imagined.
----------------------------------------------
Interactive live map of cross-referenced radiation readings:
http://www.rdtn.org/
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
Dear Readers,
Fukushima Dai-ichi may still be getting worse, not better.
The birth rate is bound to decline in Northern Japan. Whether by choice or by biological influence, no one will be sure. Sperm counts will drop and spontaneous abortions will rise. Many people will not WANT to have babies. It happened after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It happened after Chernobyl. It will happen here to. We're only human.
Radiation monitors were blown out when the buildings exploded, or simply stopped working at some point. Readings at the plant are generally unknown, and whatever is known is seldom presented to the public.
Today, spinach, milk, and water were all reported poisoned with radiation in various places in Japan. Radiation readings 1,600 times normal were detected TWENTY KILOMETERS from the plant, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Levels were reported to be over 160 microsieverts per hour.
No one should ever believe that a ten-mile evacuation planning zone is good enough anymore. Or that evacuation zones are the answer.
The truth of what's coming over the U.S. border, here where I live, is hard to know. I finally ordered my very own radiation detector -- but it's not scheduled to be shipped until the middle of May!
Dr. Conrad Miller recommends people in California start taking KI and says he's prescribed it "more than a thousand times" for other reasons as a doctor, and has never seen a side effect in anyone. He points out that the accident has already happened, the radioactive isotopes are in the air and falling now, and the side effects of taking KI (if they happen), are typical for any allergic reaction, and will presumably go away when you stop taking the KI.
Dr. Miller additionally say's he'll "probably" take it soon himself (he lives on Long Island, New York). Dr. Miller's videos are available online here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/conradmillermd
But I should point out that as far as I know, readings are NOT elevated in California... yet...
The following are the four main barriers to radioactive releases in these types of nuclear power plants, from the outermost layer to the innermost:
1) Outer walls of a fairly airtight building. These have been blown away at three reactors.
2) Primary Containment Vessel (large steel structure with cement base and large posts inside to hold the Reactor Pressure Vessel). Hopefully these are all intact but it seems unlikely.
3) Reactor Pressure Vessel. At least one of these may be damaged. All are still in danger of catastrophic failures, especially if they run out of boron or if seaweed plugs up the reactor's water channels. "We're not out of the woods yet" is a common pronouncement from the talking heads on television today.
4) The last barrier to prevent fission products and fuel (uranium and plutonium) escaping is the fuel cladding, made of zirconium, in steel rods with hundreds of pellets in each rod. It's presumably what been burning, when things burn at the site. When that happens, fission products are released, which gathered between fuel and the inner wall of the cladding.
Keeping fission products from escaping is what the cladding is there for: To keep the Cesium-137, Iodine-131, Strontium-90 and an ugly rainbow of other isotopes isolated from the human environment. Those deadly elements -- the ones they talk about in science fiction movies -- are being released at Fukushima Dai-ichi.
Everything that breaks off is undoubtedly being washed out to sea, to enter life's many food chains. What doesn't burn or oxidize and go up in smoke or steam, that is.
Fuel claddings are never perfect, and fuel clad cracking has been a recurrent problem for the nuclear industry.
Plutonium in the fuel is another problem. The cladding burns at one temperature, the uranium / plutonium burns at another, higher temperature. MOX fuel has plutonium but of course, so does uranium-based fuel: It builds up in the reactor at the rate of about 500 pounds per year. So any fuel that has melted, has probably released plutonium into the environment, whether it was from the MOX reactor or not.
When all is said and done -- and who knows when that will be -- a perfect accounting of what's missing from the reactor site will be impossible. TEPCO records can't be trusted, and employees who might know the truth are very likely to be too sick to testify, or dead.
The spent fuel pools appeared to be burning again today. Smoke or -- hopefully -- only steam has been seen rising from two reactors at the site. Workers were pulled away because of high radiation levels -- again. Things are still very out of control.
Regarding exposure levels here in America: It's probably still true that if you smoke cigarettes, stopping smoking today will still make more of a difference for your overall health and life expectancy than the radiation plume now descending all around us will make to you as an individual.
Smoking, of course, kills tens of millions of people every year. Japan has a very high rate of smoking, which will probably increase the effect of the radiation on their bodies, since the smoking already weakens their lungs. This will be true for anyone experiencing any chemical assault or other biological assault at the same time as this "little" wave of radiation passes by and through us, falls on our food... This will tip some people over the edge. The authorities might blame increased deaths on a late flu, on some virus that's might be going around. And it might be true that such a thing caught hold and DID spread around -- because of weakened immune systems!
And then, later... cancer. This accident is something no expert who understands the dangers ever wanted to see. And yet so many activists and experts alike have said to me in the past, "IT WILL TAKE AN ACCIDENT." Well, here it is, folks. If we don't use this incident to shut down nuclear power, then there will be another incident. And another. And another.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Using my HEPA filters in...
Carlsbad, CA
The author has been studying nuclear disasters, real or imagined, for many decades. This one was easily imagined.
----------------------------------------------
Interactive live map of cross-referenced radiation readings:
http://www.rdtn.org/
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Space Brother, Where Art Thou?
March 15th, 2011
Skylaire Alfvegren
http://forteanswest.com/wordpress-mu/blog/2011/03/15/o-space-brother-where-art-thou/
With vaguely optimistic recollections of UFO sightings around Chernobyl at the time of its meltdown, I recalled that some people in the area swore that strange craft appeared, directed beams at the site, and somehow prevented further catastrophe. While our hearts and sympathies are all with the Japanese people, those on the West Coast can’t help but worry about radiated repercussions beyond that country’s borders.
There is no doubt that whatever radiation released will be downgraded and covered up, that whether or not prevailing winds will carry it to the west coast of the United States, remains to be seen. But to give an idea of how much Californians trust their government and their media, army surplus stores in Los Angeles were already sold out of potassium iodine by Saturday afternoon.
“I lived through seven years with the Marines, three years in Vietnam, I got sprayed with Agent Orange,” barked Mr. Ramirez, proprietor of the Surplus Value Center in Silverlake, when I called to see what he might have on hand. “I’m still here. People are over-reacting.” That may be so, but when was the last time anyone remembers watching video of a nuclear reactor exploding?
I recalled, also, reading about a UFO Museum in Japan, located in some out of the way place. Wouldn’t you know, it was in Fukushima. Maybe I’m deranged for getting teary-eyed looking at some tourist’s photos of the quaint museum this morning… but the naive optimist in me hopes, somehow, that the beings so lovingly recreated inside the octogonal building might shine their beams on what’s left of Fukushima.
After being inundated with images of destruction so horrific as to not be believable, these photos from the museum made me break down completely.
Maybe, just maybe… the Fukushima UFO Museum was located on higher ground. Stupid, I know, to be pining for something so insignificant in the wake of such destruction. But it’s not about the museum. It’s about the people who created it. Am I so desensitized? The horrors of Haiti, of Indonesia, are still with us, but their images are of people and places far away… as are these. But somehow, for me, this little museum puts a much more personal face on things.
I have to go cry now… these photos and more can be found here:
http://blog.juergenspecht.com/2009/make-contact-in-the-ufo-contact-museum-in-fukushima/index.html
Ace Hoffman Postings on Fukushima
We're not out of the wood, by any means Ace Hoffman
3/13/11
Dear Readers,
The explosion at the Fukushima MOX plant (unit 3) looks far worse than the explosion yesterday at Fukushima Unit 1.
They are assuming it was a hydrogen gas explosion, but what happened to the spent fuel pool there? This explosion appears to be larger than the one yesterday, which destroyed the top part of Fukushima 1. These buildings are huge, these are huge explosions. This is awful.
White clouds were coming up from Unit 1 again today, which shouldn't be happening if it's under control. So it's not under control. Unit 2 apparently isn't under control, either. Having huge explosions on either side can't make things easier. Other reactors in Japan are also in trouble.
And the New York Times is saying that radioactive releases could continue for MONTHS.
May I respectfully take this moment to ask San Onofre and Diablo Canyon to shut down forever? What kind of warning do those guys want, anyway? Acts of God aren't good enough? Man's folly exposed says nothing?
The nuclear industry has been telling us for nearly 25 years that nothing as bad as Chernobyl (ONE MILLION DEAD) could EVER happen again. By the time it's over, THIS could be MUCH, MUCH WORSE.
In 2010, according to TEPCO, the operator of the site, there were already more than 10,000 spent fuel assemblies located at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex, mostly in spent fuel pools.
After Chernobyl the nuclear industry ignored cancer clusters, deformities, heart problems, and thus, undercounted the death toll a thousand different ways. But a compendium of thousands of studies, published by the New York Academy of Sciences, put the number at close to a million.
After Hiroshima / Nagasaki and all the atomic bomb testing, health effects were carefully and deliberately downplayed, too. Determining which new cancers have been caused by Fukushima won't be easy EVEN IF a million people die in and around Japan, and another million die around the rest of the planet. The winds and waters move these poisons around very quickly.
There is no way to know how much radiation is being released, or how much will reach the United States. It should be noted, however, that the Japanese military used free-floating balloons to try to bomb America during World War Two. Nearly ten thousand were launched and over a thousand bomb-balloons reportedly got through.
That's the way the winds go.
There's spent fuel in numerous locations around these reactors, including huge pools with four-foot thick concrete walls -- located ABOVE the reactors in these models. These pools need nearly constant water supplies.
Fuel in dry casks, also located at the site, have a few feet of concrete and a few inches of steel protecting them. That's not nearly good enough. In an accident, the dry casks can't simply be doused in water even if you could get near enough to throw the water on them.
The United States wants to build Yucca Mountain because dry casks aren't really a very safe or practical solution. But Yucca Mountain, planned for a seismically active area, isn't a good solution, either. So they just endlessly debate the matter and keep the plants running (and try to build new ones).
Right now, the entire core of any of these stricken reactors in Japan could be turned to rubble in an instant -- pulverized or "rubbleized". This is not a "nuclear explosion," which is not possible, but it would be very, very bad. The resulting reactor vessel steam explosion could, for example, blow the 20,000 pound top of the reactor pressure vessel half a mile high. All four reactors at Fukushima could explode in sequence: Bing bing bing bing, one after another. But that wouldn't even be the worst of it. All that spent fuel is in danger, too.
We're not out of the wood, by any means. We're not even out of the demolition derby.
Yours,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
----------------------------------------------------
Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html
-----------------------------------------------------
Fukushima III explosion on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ
Wow.
-----------------------------------------------------
1945 Japanese Balloon Bombs to North America:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO6-96Pyi0o
***
Meltdowns and false assurances...
Ace Hoffman
3/13/11
Dear Readers,
If you think things are getting better in Japan, find another news source...
"We're still expecting to see another 7 to 8 earthquake..." -- expert interviewed by the BBC just now. He stated that at least one aftershock is usually within a digit of the main quake, although this main quake was the fifth largest ever recorded, so historic data are rare. Anything could happen.
So every nuclear reactor in Japan that isn't in dire trouble already, might be at any moment. A least three nuclear reactors in Japan have been ruined permanently, two of which have had "partial" fuel melts, many are releasing unmeasured volumes of radiation into the air and water, and the nuclear industry just watches and assures us they are "clean and green" and -- oh look, those highly skilled workers (who don't know when to call in the bucket brigade) may have managed to prevent a catastrophic explosion / meltdown!
(Note: That explosion yesterday at Fukushima 1 was NOT the reactor pressure vessel exploding, which may yet happen and if it does, that could start spent fuel pool fires and additional meltdowns of nearby reactors.)
There have been more than 200 earthquakes of 5.0 or greater in the area recently, and more than 20 above 6.0. "NO one can predict earthquakes" added the expert.
Below are some recent communications from the BBC, followed by a comment in the New York Times by former NRC commissioner Nils Diaz, an apologist for the nuclear industry. Nils Diaz is wrong to think that if this had happened here, the meltdowns that have apparently occurred would not have occurred. He claims that American power plant operators would have acted more quickly. Dumping sea water or boric acid into a reactor ruins the reactor, and there is no reason to think we wouldn't have also waited too long. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise. For example, here in America, the Monticello nuclear reactor was found to have an inoperable Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) after operating for 30 years. Shipping bolts had been left on the baffles, and no one noticed. Had it been needed (as the ECCS was at multiple reactors in Japan), it wouldn't have been available.
So what did AMERICAN reactor operators do? Remove the bolts? Yep. Shut the reactor down until the bolts were removed? Nope.
They waited 12 hours before shutting down the reactor, because regulations said they COULD wait that long if they wanted to. The operators might have thought they could fix the ECCS in that amount of time, though it's unlikely. By the 11th hour they surely knew they weren't going to complete the task in time, BUT THEY KEPT THE REACTOR GOING.
Because an operating reactor makes money for its owners. And the regulators said they could. It's a good thing they didn't have an earthquake during those 12 hours, or a tornado or other natural disaster. Good thing nobody flipped the wrong switch and they actually needed the ECCS.
Subsequent investigations of the Fukushima ongoing disaster -- perhaps after the involved personnel have died of their radiation exposures -- might blame faulty equipment, confusing signals, or any number of things that would trip up a U.S. operator too. Nils Diaz's comments are nearly racist, actually.
And just plain wrong. It can happen here today too, tomorrow, or any time. And American nuclear operators are just as bull-headed about keeping the plants online "come hell or high water" as everyone else. These were, after all, American nuclear reactors, built by American firms. Undoubtedly American "experts" were immediately called upon to assist or advise the Japanese operators.
What's happening in Japan can happen here, too.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
NIRS fact sheet on the situation in Japan:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf
Belona fact sheet:
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/mox_reactor_coolant_loss
From the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698
1721: More on the Tokai nuclear power plant: A report submitted to the Ibaraki prefectural government by the Japan Atomic Power Company said that one of the two pumps being used to cool the water of a suppression pool for the plant's nuclear reactor had stopped working, according to the Kyodo news agency. However, the other pump was still working and there was no problem with cooling the reactor, the prefectural government said. All control rods were set in completely at the reactor, it added.
1710: The crisis has renewed concern in other countries about the safety of atomic power. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it represented a turning point for the world. She said that safety standards at her own country's nuclear power stations would now be reviewed. In the United States, Senator Joe Lieberman said Washington needed to put the brakes on the development of nuclear power plants until lessons were learned from what had happened in Japan.
1706: The news about Tokai comes as the authorities battle to prevent a meltdown at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi complex. Sea water is being pumped into three overheating reactors there. The plant was rocked by an explosion on Saturday, which blew off the roof of one reactor building. Meanwhile, a state of emergency has been declared at a second nuclear site. The International Atomic Energy Agency said increased levels of radiation had been detected at Onagawa, close to the area worst hit by the tsunami.
From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13nuclear-industry.html
“They would rather wait and do things in a perfect manner instead of doing it as good as it needs to be now,” Mr. Diaz said. “And this search for perfection has often led to people sometimes hiding things or waiting too long to do things.”
...
In the case of Saturday’s blast, experts said that problem was avoidable.
Mr. Diaz said that a comprehensive nuclear power plant safety program developed in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have prevented a similar accident at any of the nation’s nuclear facilities.
***
Quotes collected by Ace Hoffman:
========================================
"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details." -- Paul Brians (author; quote is from: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction)
----------------------------------------------
“When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” -- Sinclair Lewis (first American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 2.7.1885 - 1.10.1951)
----------------------------------------------
"There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist." -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, 1992)
----------------------------------------------
"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." -- Sun Tzu (Chinese general b.500 BC)
----------------------------------------------
"The most intolerable reactor of all may be one which comes successfully to the end of its planned life having produced mountains of radioactive waste for which there is no disposal safe from earthquake damage or sabotage." -- A. Stanley Thompson (a pioneer nuclear physicist who later realized the whole situation)
----------------------------------------------
"Any dose is an overdose." -- Dr. John W. Gofman (another pioneer nuclear physicist who saw the light (9.21.1918 - 8.15.2007))
----------------------------------------------
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." -- Octavia Butler (science fiction writer, 7.22.1947 - 2.24.2006)
----------------------------------------------
"If you want real welfare reform, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to reduce poverty, you focus on a good education, good healthcare, and a good job.
If you want a stable middle class, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to have citizens who can participate in democracy, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
And if you want to end the violence, you could build a million new prisons and you could fill them up, but you never end this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and the skill and the intellect and the character of our children. You focus on a good education, good health care and a good job.
And other than that, I don't feel strongly about anything."
-- Paul Wellstone (US Senator, D-Minnesota, 7.21.1944 - 10.25.2002)
----------------------------------------------
"There are no warlike peoples - just warlike leaders." -- Ralph Bunche (8.7.1903 - 12.9.1971)
----------------------------------------------
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson
----------------------------------------------
"Officials from the San Onofre nuclear reactor said the warning siren that went off yesterday was just a malfunction and no one should worry. Hey, I worry, if they can't even get the siren to work right, what the hell are they doing with the reactor??" Jay Leno 1/20/10
----------------------------------------------
"Please send this to everyone you know!" -- Ace Hoffman (original collector of the above quotes, January, 2008)
***
Things are really bad, folks...
Ace Hoffman
3/14/11
Dear Readers,
I'm aghast. Frightened. Shaking. This is the worst day of my life.
Helen Caldicott said on the radio earlier tonight: "This could be much worse than Chernobyl."
Chernobyl killed about a million people.
And this could be worse?!?
This figure, a million people, is denied by the nuclear industry, but was the conclusion after researchers assessed over five thousand individual studies. The final report was translated into English last year, and published in the United States by the New York Academy of Sciences.
That's fifty times greater than the common figure for the next-worst industrial disaster in history -- Bhopal, India. And four times worse than the worst "natural" disaster in history, the Indonesia tsunami of 2004.
Which, thankfully, didn't severely damage any nuclear power plants, although one reactor site thousands of miles from the epicenter was closed for many months afterwards.
Not one thing that is happening in Japan right now comes as a surprise to knowledgeable so-called "anti-nuclear activists" around the world. We saw it coming decades ago. We really did. No one should deny us that.
Not one step in the horror that is unfolding went unpredicted.
We even presented decades-old historic documents proving our case, such as CARTOONS showing the worries about airplane impacts. And worries about earthquakes. And tsunamis. We kept saying something like this was inevitable. Containments would be breached. Radiation would be released. Deaths will occur globally forever.
THIS WAS UNTHINKABLE. But we thought it out.
It will happen again. That's the really unthinkable part.
Even as this horror unfurls, the bravado of the employees at America's nuclear power plants is unimaginable. Moments ago, a reporter in a live broadcast said the nuclear industry would have lot of new data to figure out what to do next, to keep things safe!
But instead, they'll deny that even a 7.1 earthquake can happen here. And only a "tiny" tsunami...
San Onofre, in Southern California (and downwind from Fukushima-Daiichi) is only built to a 7.0 earthquake standard. It is right near the Pacific Ocean, only "protected" by a 25-foot sea wall. That wouldn't have resisted these waves, or the Indonesian waves of 2004.
ACTUAL tsunami waves washing over San Onofre (and Diablo Canyon) might be HUNDREDS of feet high because nearby underwater canyons can create skyscraper-high waves of water.
Scare tactics? I'm so tired of being accused of scare tactics! The public has a right to know that their participation in opposing nuclear power is required to get these awful nuclear power plants shut down forever -- which HAS to happen, or else THIS will keep happening.
The media also needs to have a better understanding of what's happening. But how can anyone be asked to understand what is going on, when even the experts don't know what is happening inside the containment buildings, let alone inside the reactors pressure vessels themselves? They know that pumping more water into them helps. But even that is very hard to do. And isn't good for the water.
Telling the truth about what's happening right now isn't a scare tactic. Even more than a hundred miles from the site of the accident, the U.S. Navy was getting so irradiated (the equivalent of an entire month's "normal" radiation exposure per hour, we're told) that they lumbered out of the area as fast as their TWO NUCLEAR REACTORS ON BOARD COULD CARRY THEM.
Lucky they didn't blow a gasket in their rush to save themselves.
Three -- now I hear four -- nuclear reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi have suffered explosions. This is unprecedented. And workers are being pulled away... it will get even worse if no one mans the pumps! (See below).
The nuclear industry calls this a great surprise, unpredictable. We'll just build to higher standards, they say, as they continue to run there old reactors despite the dangers.
But we predicted it! We even predicted cascading nuclear accidents!
Harvey Wasserman, like Helen Caldicott a distinguished critic of nuclear power, whose comments have fallen on deaf ears for years ... sounded like he was crying, as I have been, on the interview today. Things are really, really bad.
This is a silent genocide. The deaths will occur for decades, centuries, and millennia to come.
If the winds blow the poisons here, as they typically do, our children will be the first to suffer. Our infants, our fetuses... our pregnant young mothers. No racial or religious group did this to us, industrial arrogance brings these ill winds. We are in for a dousing. A black rain. Parts of Japan may be getting radioactive soot rain-outs, called fallout, right now. And Korea, China, etc... And this isn't even as bad as it can get.
The spent fuel pools: One of them is draining itself. They can't seem to prevent it. Several reactor pressure vessels might suffer a steam explosion at any moment. If the pools empty, then inevitably the fuel will soon catch fire and burn.
This is awful. Thanks, Toshiba. Thanks, Hitachi. Thanks, General Electric. Thanks, nuclear industry.
THIS event, as bad as it is and as bad as it might become, is fair warning for what might happen at every other nuclear site around the world. NO NEW NUKES! is not nearly enough. NO NUKES! Scrap the old ones.
It's now well past too late. We don't need to wait 20 years for a new set of studies of the health effects.
Everywhere along the coast where the tsunami struck, people will be moving back and rebuilding their homes. But around Fukushima-Daiichi, they won't be moving back in our lifetime. And the exclusion zone was just expanded again, and probably will be again. Or should be.
Actions have always spoken louder than words. Acts of God, acts of Mother Nature, have always trumped arrogance. Acts of arrogance should be followed by acts of contrition. But if you expect the nuclear industry to fold, don't hold your breath.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Hoping San Onofre is spared until we can shut it down forever and get the waste stored properly! (Catch-22: There is no proper storage of the waste.)
One-minute tutorial on wind patterns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPT6VWZ9mk
***
Fukushima News 3-14-11
Ace Hoffman
3/14/11
Dear Readers,
Today's news is worse than yesterday's, which was worse than the day before. Now THREE reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility (or perhaps I should say, former nuclear power facility) are permanently disabled -- damaged by the introduction of boric acid and sea water in a desperate measure to prevent a full-scale disaster. It might work yet... it might not. This "hail mary" approach has to work perfectly three times... seaweed clogging the pipes could spell doom...
The reactor cores are apparently already in some state of partial meltdown. The exact conditions inside the reactor pressure vessels are unknown. The three reactors that are in trouble are, not coincidentally, the three that were operating at the time the earthquake struck. They automatically shut down, but all the backup generators failed when the tsunami struck an hour later
Unpredictable? Not at all!
Read my own blogs, or read any of a thousand other activists who have been warning about these sorts of problems for YEARS!
Yet, even recently, at San Onofre in California, the backup generators have failed to start in scheduled TESTS because required maintenance had not been not performed. How will they perform in an emergency?
California's four operating nuclear reactors are Pressurized Water Reactors. The reactors at Fukushima are all Boiling Water Reactors. The differences are not particularly important at the moment: Both types are dangerous. Both need to be eliminated from the earth. There is no type of reactor which is safe from catastrophic fuel melting, burning, vaporizing, or otherwise escaping into the environment.
If you didn't believe it before, remember that THIS basic reactor design is more than 50 years old. Tried and true? So they said. For half a century we've been told that nothing like this could possibly happen anywhere: A cascade of nuclear reactor accidents.
Now we're being told that we're in "uncharted territory" and nobody knows what to do... the nuclear industry admits there are lessons to be learned from this. Yes, there is one lesson. It's this: SHUT 'EM DOWN NOW. All of them forever.
Below are the four main points from today's British Mail Online, about fallout coming to America. These headlines are terrifying.
From:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366055/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-America-nuclear-alert-Fukushima-explosion.html
'Worst-case scenario' could send nuclear cloud across Pacific
30,000ft winds would carry radioactive material across the ocean
U.S.S. Ronald Reagan hit by month's radiation in just one hour
Japanese reactors are very similar to 23 in America
Let's hope this doesn't get any worse. Don't think it can't.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
I've released another version of the Chernobyl winds video, this time centered over Fukushima. Here's the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPT6VWZ9mk
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Subscribe to my free newsletter today!
Email: ace@acehoffman.org
3/13/11
Dear Readers,
The explosion at the Fukushima MOX plant (unit 3) looks far worse than the explosion yesterday at Fukushima Unit 1.
They are assuming it was a hydrogen gas explosion, but what happened to the spent fuel pool there? This explosion appears to be larger than the one yesterday, which destroyed the top part of Fukushima 1. These buildings are huge, these are huge explosions. This is awful.
White clouds were coming up from Unit 1 again today, which shouldn't be happening if it's under control. So it's not under control. Unit 2 apparently isn't under control, either. Having huge explosions on either side can't make things easier. Other reactors in Japan are also in trouble.
And the New York Times is saying that radioactive releases could continue for MONTHS.
May I respectfully take this moment to ask San Onofre and Diablo Canyon to shut down forever? What kind of warning do those guys want, anyway? Acts of God aren't good enough? Man's folly exposed says nothing?
The nuclear industry has been telling us for nearly 25 years that nothing as bad as Chernobyl (ONE MILLION DEAD) could EVER happen again. By the time it's over, THIS could be MUCH, MUCH WORSE.
In 2010, according to TEPCO, the operator of the site, there were already more than 10,000 spent fuel assemblies located at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex, mostly in spent fuel pools.
After Chernobyl the nuclear industry ignored cancer clusters, deformities, heart problems, and thus, undercounted the death toll a thousand different ways. But a compendium of thousands of studies, published by the New York Academy of Sciences, put the number at close to a million.
After Hiroshima / Nagasaki and all the atomic bomb testing, health effects were carefully and deliberately downplayed, too. Determining which new cancers have been caused by Fukushima won't be easy EVEN IF a million people die in and around Japan, and another million die around the rest of the planet. The winds and waters move these poisons around very quickly.
There is no way to know how much radiation is being released, or how much will reach the United States. It should be noted, however, that the Japanese military used free-floating balloons to try to bomb America during World War Two. Nearly ten thousand were launched and over a thousand bomb-balloons reportedly got through.
That's the way the winds go.
There's spent fuel in numerous locations around these reactors, including huge pools with four-foot thick concrete walls -- located ABOVE the reactors in these models. These pools need nearly constant water supplies.
Fuel in dry casks, also located at the site, have a few feet of concrete and a few inches of steel protecting them. That's not nearly good enough. In an accident, the dry casks can't simply be doused in water even if you could get near enough to throw the water on them.
The United States wants to build Yucca Mountain because dry casks aren't really a very safe or practical solution. But Yucca Mountain, planned for a seismically active area, isn't a good solution, either. So they just endlessly debate the matter and keep the plants running (and try to build new ones).
Right now, the entire core of any of these stricken reactors in Japan could be turned to rubble in an instant -- pulverized or "rubbleized". This is not a "nuclear explosion," which is not possible, but it would be very, very bad. The resulting reactor vessel steam explosion could, for example, blow the 20,000 pound top of the reactor pressure vessel half a mile high. All four reactors at Fukushima could explode in sequence: Bing bing bing bing, one after another. But that wouldn't even be the worst of it. All that spent fuel is in danger, too.
We're not out of the wood, by any means. We're not even out of the demolition derby.
Yours,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
----------------------------------------------------
Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.html
-----------------------------------------------------
Fukushima III explosion on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_N-wNFSGyQ
Wow.
-----------------------------------------------------
1945 Japanese Balloon Bombs to North America:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO6-96Pyi0o
***
Meltdowns and false assurances...
Ace Hoffman
3/13/11
Dear Readers,
If you think things are getting better in Japan, find another news source...
"We're still expecting to see another 7 to 8 earthquake..." -- expert interviewed by the BBC just now. He stated that at least one aftershock is usually within a digit of the main quake, although this main quake was the fifth largest ever recorded, so historic data are rare. Anything could happen.
So every nuclear reactor in Japan that isn't in dire trouble already, might be at any moment. A least three nuclear reactors in Japan have been ruined permanently, two of which have had "partial" fuel melts, many are releasing unmeasured volumes of radiation into the air and water, and the nuclear industry just watches and assures us they are "clean and green" and -- oh look, those highly skilled workers (who don't know when to call in the bucket brigade) may have managed to prevent a catastrophic explosion / meltdown!
(Note: That explosion yesterday at Fukushima 1 was NOT the reactor pressure vessel exploding, which may yet happen and if it does, that could start spent fuel pool fires and additional meltdowns of nearby reactors.)
There have been more than 200 earthquakes of 5.0 or greater in the area recently, and more than 20 above 6.0. "NO one can predict earthquakes" added the expert.
Below are some recent communications from the BBC, followed by a comment in the New York Times by former NRC commissioner Nils Diaz, an apologist for the nuclear industry. Nils Diaz is wrong to think that if this had happened here, the meltdowns that have apparently occurred would not have occurred. He claims that American power plant operators would have acted more quickly. Dumping sea water or boric acid into a reactor ruins the reactor, and there is no reason to think we wouldn't have also waited too long. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise. For example, here in America, the Monticello nuclear reactor was found to have an inoperable Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) after operating for 30 years. Shipping bolts had been left on the baffles, and no one noticed. Had it been needed (as the ECCS was at multiple reactors in Japan), it wouldn't have been available.
So what did AMERICAN reactor operators do? Remove the bolts? Yep. Shut the reactor down until the bolts were removed? Nope.
They waited 12 hours before shutting down the reactor, because regulations said they COULD wait that long if they wanted to. The operators might have thought they could fix the ECCS in that amount of time, though it's unlikely. By the 11th hour they surely knew they weren't going to complete the task in time, BUT THEY KEPT THE REACTOR GOING.
Because an operating reactor makes money for its owners. And the regulators said they could. It's a good thing they didn't have an earthquake during those 12 hours, or a tornado or other natural disaster. Good thing nobody flipped the wrong switch and they actually needed the ECCS.
Subsequent investigations of the Fukushima ongoing disaster -- perhaps after the involved personnel have died of their radiation exposures -- might blame faulty equipment, confusing signals, or any number of things that would trip up a U.S. operator too. Nils Diaz's comments are nearly racist, actually.
And just plain wrong. It can happen here today too, tomorrow, or any time. And American nuclear operators are just as bull-headed about keeping the plants online "come hell or high water" as everyone else. These were, after all, American nuclear reactors, built by American firms. Undoubtedly American "experts" were immediately called upon to assist or advise the Japanese operators.
What's happening in Japan can happen here, too.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
NIRS fact sheet on the situation in Japan:
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf
Belona fact sheet:
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/mox_reactor_coolant_loss
From the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698
1721: More on the Tokai nuclear power plant: A report submitted to the Ibaraki prefectural government by the Japan Atomic Power Company said that one of the two pumps being used to cool the water of a suppression pool for the plant's nuclear reactor had stopped working, according to the Kyodo news agency. However, the other pump was still working and there was no problem with cooling the reactor, the prefectural government said. All control rods were set in completely at the reactor, it added.
1710: The crisis has renewed concern in other countries about the safety of atomic power. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it represented a turning point for the world. She said that safety standards at her own country's nuclear power stations would now be reviewed. In the United States, Senator Joe Lieberman said Washington needed to put the brakes on the development of nuclear power plants until lessons were learned from what had happened in Japan.
1706: The news about Tokai comes as the authorities battle to prevent a meltdown at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi complex. Sea water is being pumped into three overheating reactors there. The plant was rocked by an explosion on Saturday, which blew off the roof of one reactor building. Meanwhile, a state of emergency has been declared at a second nuclear site. The International Atomic Energy Agency said increased levels of radiation had been detected at Onagawa, close to the area worst hit by the tsunami.
From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13nuclear-industry.html
“They would rather wait and do things in a perfect manner instead of doing it as good as it needs to be now,” Mr. Diaz said. “And this search for perfection has often led to people sometimes hiding things or waiting too long to do things.”
...
In the case of Saturday’s blast, experts said that problem was avoidable.
Mr. Diaz said that a comprehensive nuclear power plant safety program developed in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have prevented a similar accident at any of the nation’s nuclear facilities.
***
Quotes collected by Ace Hoffman:
========================================
"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details." -- Paul Brians (author; quote is from: Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction)
----------------------------------------------
“When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” -- Sinclair Lewis (first American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, 2.7.1885 - 1.10.1951)
----------------------------------------------
"There is no such thing as a pro-nuclear environmentalist." -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa, 1992)
----------------------------------------------
"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." -- Sun Tzu (Chinese general b.500 BC)
----------------------------------------------
"The most intolerable reactor of all may be one which comes successfully to the end of its planned life having produced mountains of radioactive waste for which there is no disposal safe from earthquake damage or sabotage." -- A. Stanley Thompson (a pioneer nuclear physicist who later realized the whole situation)
----------------------------------------------
"Any dose is an overdose." -- Dr. John W. Gofman (another pioneer nuclear physicist who saw the light (9.21.1918 - 8.15.2007))
----------------------------------------------
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery." -- Octavia Butler (science fiction writer, 7.22.1947 - 2.24.2006)
----------------------------------------------
"If you want real welfare reform, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to reduce poverty, you focus on a good education, good healthcare, and a good job.
If you want a stable middle class, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
If you want to have citizens who can participate in democracy, you focus on a good education, good health care, and a good job.
And if you want to end the violence, you could build a million new prisons and you could fill them up, but you never end this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and the skill and the intellect and the character of our children. You focus on a good education, good health care and a good job.
And other than that, I don't feel strongly about anything."
-- Paul Wellstone (US Senator, D-Minnesota, 7.21.1944 - 10.25.2002)
----------------------------------------------
"There are no warlike peoples - just warlike leaders." -- Ralph Bunche (8.7.1903 - 12.9.1971)
----------------------------------------------
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson
----------------------------------------------
"Officials from the San Onofre nuclear reactor said the warning siren that went off yesterday was just a malfunction and no one should worry. Hey, I worry, if they can't even get the siren to work right, what the hell are they doing with the reactor??" Jay Leno 1/20/10
----------------------------------------------
"Please send this to everyone you know!" -- Ace Hoffman (original collector of the above quotes, January, 2008)
***
Things are really bad, folks...
Ace Hoffman
3/14/11
Dear Readers,
I'm aghast. Frightened. Shaking. This is the worst day of my life.
Helen Caldicott said on the radio earlier tonight: "This could be much worse than Chernobyl."
Chernobyl killed about a million people.
And this could be worse?!?
This figure, a million people, is denied by the nuclear industry, but was the conclusion after researchers assessed over five thousand individual studies. The final report was translated into English last year, and published in the United States by the New York Academy of Sciences.
That's fifty times greater than the common figure for the next-worst industrial disaster in history -- Bhopal, India. And four times worse than the worst "natural" disaster in history, the Indonesia tsunami of 2004.
Which, thankfully, didn't severely damage any nuclear power plants, although one reactor site thousands of miles from the epicenter was closed for many months afterwards.
Not one thing that is happening in Japan right now comes as a surprise to knowledgeable so-called "anti-nuclear activists" around the world. We saw it coming decades ago. We really did. No one should deny us that.
Not one step in the horror that is unfolding went unpredicted.
We even presented decades-old historic documents proving our case, such as CARTOONS showing the worries about airplane impacts. And worries about earthquakes. And tsunamis. We kept saying something like this was inevitable. Containments would be breached. Radiation would be released. Deaths will occur globally forever.
THIS WAS UNTHINKABLE. But we thought it out.
It will happen again. That's the really unthinkable part.
Even as this horror unfurls, the bravado of the employees at America's nuclear power plants is unimaginable. Moments ago, a reporter in a live broadcast said the nuclear industry would have lot of new data to figure out what to do next, to keep things safe!
But instead, they'll deny that even a 7.1 earthquake can happen here. And only a "tiny" tsunami...
San Onofre, in Southern California (and downwind from Fukushima-Daiichi) is only built to a 7.0 earthquake standard. It is right near the Pacific Ocean, only "protected" by a 25-foot sea wall. That wouldn't have resisted these waves, or the Indonesian waves of 2004.
ACTUAL tsunami waves washing over San Onofre (and Diablo Canyon) might be HUNDREDS of feet high because nearby underwater canyons can create skyscraper-high waves of water.
Scare tactics? I'm so tired of being accused of scare tactics! The public has a right to know that their participation in opposing nuclear power is required to get these awful nuclear power plants shut down forever -- which HAS to happen, or else THIS will keep happening.
The media also needs to have a better understanding of what's happening. But how can anyone be asked to understand what is going on, when even the experts don't know what is happening inside the containment buildings, let alone inside the reactors pressure vessels themselves? They know that pumping more water into them helps. But even that is very hard to do. And isn't good for the water.
Telling the truth about what's happening right now isn't a scare tactic. Even more than a hundred miles from the site of the accident, the U.S. Navy was getting so irradiated (the equivalent of an entire month's "normal" radiation exposure per hour, we're told) that they lumbered out of the area as fast as their TWO NUCLEAR REACTORS ON BOARD COULD CARRY THEM.
Lucky they didn't blow a gasket in their rush to save themselves.
Three -- now I hear four -- nuclear reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi have suffered explosions. This is unprecedented. And workers are being pulled away... it will get even worse if no one mans the pumps! (See below).
The nuclear industry calls this a great surprise, unpredictable. We'll just build to higher standards, they say, as they continue to run there old reactors despite the dangers.
But we predicted it! We even predicted cascading nuclear accidents!
Harvey Wasserman, like Helen Caldicott a distinguished critic of nuclear power, whose comments have fallen on deaf ears for years ... sounded like he was crying, as I have been, on the interview today. Things are really, really bad.
This is a silent genocide. The deaths will occur for decades, centuries, and millennia to come.
If the winds blow the poisons here, as they typically do, our children will be the first to suffer. Our infants, our fetuses... our pregnant young mothers. No racial or religious group did this to us, industrial arrogance brings these ill winds. We are in for a dousing. A black rain. Parts of Japan may be getting radioactive soot rain-outs, called fallout, right now. And Korea, China, etc... And this isn't even as bad as it can get.
The spent fuel pools: One of them is draining itself. They can't seem to prevent it. Several reactor pressure vessels might suffer a steam explosion at any moment. If the pools empty, then inevitably the fuel will soon catch fire and burn.
This is awful. Thanks, Toshiba. Thanks, Hitachi. Thanks, General Electric. Thanks, nuclear industry.
THIS event, as bad as it is and as bad as it might become, is fair warning for what might happen at every other nuclear site around the world. NO NEW NUKES! is not nearly enough. NO NUKES! Scrap the old ones.
It's now well past too late. We don't need to wait 20 years for a new set of studies of the health effects.
Everywhere along the coast where the tsunami struck, people will be moving back and rebuilding their homes. But around Fukushima-Daiichi, they won't be moving back in our lifetime. And the exclusion zone was just expanded again, and probably will be again. Or should be.
Actions have always spoken louder than words. Acts of God, acts of Mother Nature, have always trumped arrogance. Acts of arrogance should be followed by acts of contrition. But if you expect the nuclear industry to fold, don't hold your breath.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
Hoping San Onofre is spared until we can shut it down forever and get the waste stored properly! (Catch-22: There is no proper storage of the waste.)
One-minute tutorial on wind patterns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPT6VWZ9mk
***
Fukushima News 3-14-11
Ace Hoffman
3/14/11
Dear Readers,
Today's news is worse than yesterday's, which was worse than the day before. Now THREE reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility (or perhaps I should say, former nuclear power facility) are permanently disabled -- damaged by the introduction of boric acid and sea water in a desperate measure to prevent a full-scale disaster. It might work yet... it might not. This "hail mary" approach has to work perfectly three times... seaweed clogging the pipes could spell doom...
The reactor cores are apparently already in some state of partial meltdown. The exact conditions inside the reactor pressure vessels are unknown. The three reactors that are in trouble are, not coincidentally, the three that were operating at the time the earthquake struck. They automatically shut down, but all the backup generators failed when the tsunami struck an hour later
Unpredictable? Not at all!
Read my own blogs, or read any of a thousand other activists who have been warning about these sorts of problems for YEARS!
Yet, even recently, at San Onofre in California, the backup generators have failed to start in scheduled TESTS because required maintenance had not been not performed. How will they perform in an emergency?
California's four operating nuclear reactors are Pressurized Water Reactors. The reactors at Fukushima are all Boiling Water Reactors. The differences are not particularly important at the moment: Both types are dangerous. Both need to be eliminated from the earth. There is no type of reactor which is safe from catastrophic fuel melting, burning, vaporizing, or otherwise escaping into the environment.
If you didn't believe it before, remember that THIS basic reactor design is more than 50 years old. Tried and true? So they said. For half a century we've been told that nothing like this could possibly happen anywhere: A cascade of nuclear reactor accidents.
Now we're being told that we're in "uncharted territory" and nobody knows what to do... the nuclear industry admits there are lessons to be learned from this. Yes, there is one lesson. It's this: SHUT 'EM DOWN NOW. All of them forever.
Below are the four main points from today's British Mail Online, about fallout coming to America. These headlines are terrifying.
From:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366055/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-America-nuclear-alert-Fukushima-explosion.html
'Worst-case scenario' could send nuclear cloud across Pacific
30,000ft winds would carry radioactive material across the ocean
U.S.S. Ronald Reagan hit by month's radiation in just one hour
Japanese reactors are very similar to 23 in America
Let's hope this doesn't get any worse. Don't think it can't.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
I've released another version of the Chernobyl winds video, this time centered over Fukushima. Here's the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPT6VWZ9mk
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Phone: (760) 720-7261
Address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
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Email: ace@acehoffman.org
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