Malu 'Aina

My read is that it is likely that Fukushima is going to get seriously worse .  It has the potential to make Chernobyl look minor in comparison.  I hope I am wrong but the article I recently sent out about “What they are covering up at Fukushima” and the article below point to dire global consequences.
Jim Albertini

Published on Thursday, March 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Fukushima Radiation: Some Difficult Truths

by Ritt Goldstein

As radiation counts elevate in Japan, news of nuclear contamination spreading across a widening spectrum of life and its necessities, official pronouncements continue to play down events’ gravity.  While some have questioned whether this is being pursued to promote calm, or perhaps the nuclear industry, the result has left many either skeptical of official claims or simply reassured by them.  It seems time for some difficult facts.

Reports of false ‘nuclear rain’ warnings have made it to the news; but, just recently, so did valid rain warnings from local Japanese officials.  And during the Chernobyl accident radioactive rain did occur, particularly striking some areas in Sweden.

It’s been estimated that “five percent of the released caesium-137 from the Chernobyl accident was deposited in Sweden due to heavy rainfall on 28-29 April 1986”.

Since Chernobyl, assorted scientific studies have demonstrated what one such effort termed the “serious impact of the Chernobyl accident on the environmental conditions in Sweden.”  To this day, in some areas of the country Chernobyl’s legacy does remain a concern.  And Sweden is a long way from Chernobyl.

While numerous proponents of nuclear power pursue what seems an exercise in surrealism, continuing to yet extoll ‘the benefits’ of ‘clean and safe’ nuclear energy, perhaps we should consider why so many trust that ‘the unthinkable’ can never occur…at least until it does.

It was 27 April 1986 when radiation alarms sounded at Sweden’s Försmark nuclear power plant, radiation upon workers’ clothing being the cause, though it would soon be discovered that the source of this radiation was not a local one.  Hours after the alarm, the then USSR began revealing Chernobyl’s nuclear accident, an accident across the Baltic Sea and many hundreds of miles to the southeast.  Meanwhile, not far up Sweden’s Baltic Coast from Försmark sat the city of Gävle, a city almost a thousand miles from Chernobyl, but soon a place to be lastingly impacted by it.

It was twenty-one years after the Chernobyl fire, in May 2007, when one Swedish paper headlined “Swedes still dying from Chernobyl radiation”, Gävle and what is occurring there figuring prominently in the english-language article.  A heavy rainstorm had struck the small city in 1986, doing so as a cloud of Chernobyl’s fallout was overhead.

Prevailing winds at that time had driven radioactive clouds from Chernobyl over parts of Scandinavia, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) providing a report upon the early amounts of radiation registered in Chernobyl’s aftermath, a report where Gävle is again significantly featured.  A recent article on Time.com, “Fukushima: Chernobyl Redux?”, describes the immediate effect Chernobyl had upon Gävle.

Quoting from Time: “I remember that after Chernobyl there was a town in Northern Sweden called Gavle. The radioactive cloud went over the town and it started raining heavily and there was a lot of deposition of radioactive particulate material that was caught into surfaces of roads and buildings. There was a high level of cesium-137. When we went there and waved our Geiger counters about the counters maxed out–it was that bad.”

According to a 2006 Swedish study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, it appears Sweden experienced approximately a thousand excess cancer fatalities because of Chernobyl, the number expected to increase, the cases concentrated proportional to the levels of radioactive exposure.  As might be imagined, there were other health effects as well, such as effects with an impact upon unborn children.

A 2007 study performed by the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Reasearch, a Cambridge Massachusetts based think tank, examined the cognitive effects of Chernobyl’s radiation upon Swedish children.  It found evidence that: “fetal exposure to ionizing radiation damages cognitive ability at radiation levels previously considered safe.”

Notably, this journalist lives about a ninety minute drive from Gävle, and I only heard of the cognitive problems through a chance meeting while food shopping.  I was told that an unusually high number of pregnancies during the peak radiation period had resulted in children with cognitive issues, the above report suggesting the accuracy of that information.  But only some years ago, I personally had lived in Gävle; though, I had no idea of its relationship to Chernobyl until I took up residence there.

Initially, one of the places I had lived was on the shore of a picturesque lake, the village it was in being about a half hour from the city’s center.  I was struck by how lovely it was, until I learned one couldn’t eat the fish, and it wasn’t a good idea to do too much swimming, radiation being a problem.

Twenty years after Chernobyl, in 2006, Swedish National Television (SVT) did a news piece titled “Chernobyl still affects Gävle every day” (Tjernobyl påverkar ännu Gävle-vardagen).  Among other items, it discusses how wild game is checked for radiation, and how residents now often travel to pick the wild berries or mushrooms that they once collected locally.

The effects of radiation proved lasting, and recent news reports revealed radiation has entered Japan’s food chain, affecting farm produce and milk, many levels of contamination being high multiples of the regulation limits.

Emphasizing what many perceive as a substantive part of the ongoing problem, The New York Times quoted Japan’s deputy chief cabinet secretary, Tetsuro Fukuyama, as observing that he would let his own children “eat the spinach” from Fukushima.  But such ‘understatement’ has not been confined to Japan, the IAEA itself stating that only “up to four thousand” cancer fatalities will result from Chernobyl.

In contrast to IAEA fatality figures, a 2006 Greenpeace report forecast 100,000 cancer deaths, and a 2010 book by leading Eastern European scientists utilizing original ‘Slavic language’ documents (“Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”), claims a death toll of 985,000.

While some uncertainties exist, there are hard facts.  The recent findings of contamination in Tokyo’s water supply is one of them, another being a New York Times report that Japan’s broader “contamination levels are well beyond what you’d expect from what is in the public domain”.  The report added that this suggested problems “were deeper than had been publicly acknowledged.”

Gävle is about a thousand miles from Chernobyl, and the amount of nuclear fuel present at Chernobyl during the 1986 accident is reported as about 180 tons, none of which contained plutonium, an element much more toxic than the uranium used in standard reactor fuel.  Estimates of the amount of nuclear fuel present at Fukushima are roughly in the 2000 ton range, dwarfing Chernobyl, and one of the six reactors (number 3) does use a mixture of plutonium and uranium, ‘mox’.

If nothing else, it would appear nuclear power is not the ‘clean, safe, inexpensive and reliable’ energy source some claim.  As to what nuclear power is, both its past and ongoing catastrophes seem to amply define it.
Ritt Goldstein

Ritt Goldstein (ritt1997@hotmail.com) is an American investigative political journalist based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, Spain’s El Mundo and Denmark’s Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.
—

What They’re Covering Up at Fukushima

By HIROSE TAKASHI

Introduced by Douglas Lummis

Okinawa

Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex.  Probably his best known book is  Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they’re safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?

He did the TV interview that is partly translated below somewhat against his present impulses.  I talked to him on the telephone today (March 22 , 2011) and he told me that while it made sense to oppose nuclear power back then, now that the disaster has begun he would just as soon remain silent, but the lies they are telling on the radio and TV are so gross that he cannot remain silent.

I have translated only about the first third of the interview (you can see the whole thing in Japanese on you-tube), the part that pertains particularly to what is happening at the Fukushima plants.  In the latter part he talked about how dangerous radiation is in general, and also about the continuing danger of earthquakes.

After reading his account, you will wonder, why do they keep on sprinkling water on the reactors, rather than accept the sarcophagus solution  [ie., entombing the reactors in concrete. Editors.] I think there are a couple of answers.  One, those reactors were expensive, and they just can’t bear the idea of that huge a financial loss.  But more importantly, accepting the sarcophagus solution means admitting that they were wrong, and that they couldn’t fix the things.  On the one hand that’s too much guilt for a human being to bear.  On the other, it means the defeat of the nuclear energy idea, an idea they hold to with almost religious devotion.  And it means not just the loss of those six (or ten) reactors, it means shutting down all the others as well, a financial catastrophe.  If they can only get them cooled down and running again they can say, See, nuclear power isn’t so dangerous after all.  Fukushima is a drama with the whole world watching, that can end in the defeat or (in their frail, I think groundless, hope) victory for the nuclear industry.  Hirose’s account can help us to understand what the drama is about. Douglas Lummis

Hirose Takashi:  The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and the State of the Media

Broadcast by Asahi NewStar, 17 March, 20:00

Interviewers: Yoh Sen’ei and Maeda Mari

Yoh: Today many people saw water being sprayed on the reactors from the air and from the ground, but is this effective?

Hirose:  . . . If you want to cool a reactor down with water, you have to circulate the water inside and carry the heat away, otherwise it has no meaning. So the only solution is to reconnect the electricity.  Otherwise it’s like pouring water on lava.

Yoh: Reconnect the electricity – that’s to restart the cooling system?

Hirose:  Yes.  The accident was caused by the fact that the tsunami flooded the emergency generators and carried away their fuel tanks.  If that isn’t fixed, there’s no way to recover from this accident.

Yoh: Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner/operator of the nuclear plants] says they expect to bring in a high voltage line this evening.

Hirose: Yes, there’s a little bit of hope there.  But what’s worrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic pictures show (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV).  This is just a cartoon.  Here’s what it looks like underneath a reactor container (shows a photograph).  This is the butt end of the reactor.  Take a look.  It’s a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes.  On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors.  Only the engineers know.  This is where water has been poured in.  This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy.  Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there.  And it’s salt water, right?  You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens?  You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze.  They won’t move.  This will be happening everywhere.  So I can’t believe that it’s just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate.  I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this.  You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter – maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can’t understand it.

Yoh: It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools that contain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4.  This morning 30 tons.  Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons from five trucks.  That’s nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up.  Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?

Hirose:  In principle, it can’t.  Because even when a reactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperature down to where it is barely safe.  Now it’s a complete mess inside, and when I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes.  I assume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and that they have accepted that they face death by staying there.  And how long can they last?  I mean, physically.  That’s what the situation has come to now.  When I see these accounts on television, I want to tell them, “If that’s what you say, then go there and do it yourself!”  Really, they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoid panic.  What we need now is a proper panic.  Because the situation has come to the point where the danger is real.

If I were Prime Minister Kan, I would order them to do what the Soviet Union did when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, the sarcophagus solution, bury the whole thing under cement, put every cement company in Japan to work, and dump cement over it from the sky.  Because you have to assume the worst case.  Why?  Because in Fukushima there is the Daiichi Plant with six reactors and the Daini Plant with four for a total of ten reactors.  If even one of them develops the worst case, then the workers there must either evacuate the site or stay on and collapse.  So if, for example, one of the reactors at Daiichi goes down, the other five are only a matter of time.  We can’t know in what order they will go, but certainly all of them will go.  And if that happens, Daini isn’t so far away, so probably the reactors there will also go down.  Because I assume that workers will not be able to stay there.

I’m speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low.  This is the danger that the world is watching.  Only in Japan is it being hidden.  As you know, of the six reactors at Daiichi, four are in a crisis state.  So even if at one everything goes well and water circulation is restored, the other three could still go down.  Four are in crisis, and for all four to be 100 per cent repaired, I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic.  If so, then to save the people, we have to think about some way to reduce the radiation leakage to the lowest level possible.  Not by spraying water from hoses, like sprinkling water on a desert.  We have to think of all six going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low.  Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan; it generally takes about a week.  That is, with a wind speed of two meters per second, it could take about five days for all of Japan to be covered with radiation.  We’re not talking about distances of 20 kilometers or 30 kilometers or 100 kilometers.  It means of course Tokyo, Osaka.  That’s how fast a radioactive cloud could spread. Of course it would depend on the weather; we can’t know in advance how the radiation would be distributed.  It would be nice if the wind would blow toward the sea, but it doesn’t always do that.  Two days ago, on the 15th, it was blowing toward Tokyo.  That’s how it is. . . .

Yoh: Every day the local government is measuring the radioactivity.  All the television stations are saying that while radiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. They compare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan.  What is the truth of the matter?

Hirose: For example, yesterday.  Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour.  With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn’t explain what this means.  All of the information media are at fault here I think.  They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space.  But that’s one millisievert per year.  A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.  Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose.  You call that safe? And what media have reported this?  None.  They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it.  The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping.  What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside.  These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say?  They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance.  I want to say the reverse.  Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body.  What happens?  Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.  That’s a thousand times a thousand: a thousand squared.  That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.”  Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion.  Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

Yoh: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning.  Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose: That’s right.  When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go.  The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children.  Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments.  What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air.  Their instruments don’t eat.  What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material. . . .

Yoh: So damage from radioactive rays and damage from radioactive material are not the same.

Hirose:  If you ask, are any radioactive rays from the Fukushima Nuclear Station here in this studio, the answer will be no.  But radioactive particles are carried here by the air.  When the core begins to melt down, elements inside like iodine turn to gas.  It rises to the top, so if there is any crevice it escapes outside.

Yoh: Is there any way to detect this?

Hirose: I was told by a newspaper reporter that now Tepco is not in shape even to do regular monitoring.  They just take an occasional measurement, and that becomes the basis of Edano’s statements.  You have to take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that.  And you need to investigate just what is escaping, and how much.  That requires very sophisticated measuring instruments.  You can’t do it just by keeping a monitoring post.  It’s no good just to measure the level of radiation in the air.  Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it’s high, it’s low – that’s not the point.  We need to know what kind of radioactive materials are escaping, and where they are going – they don’t have a system in place for doing that now.

Douglas Lummis is a political scientist living in Okinawa and the author of Radical Democracy. Lummis can be reached at ideaspeddler@gmail.com

Stop Waging Total War
on the Planet!

The U.S. – European attack on Libya in Africa to “protect civilian lives” is a bold face lie.  The African Union opposed the attack. The Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, deplored the broad scope of the bombing campaign saying: “what we want is the protection of civilians and not the shelling of more civilians.”  Let’s be clear.  Like the war on Iraq, the war on Libya is about oil, regime change, and the arrogance, and dominance, of global empire.

Back in 2007 Barack Obama acknowledged:  “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/CandidateQA/ObamaQA/
Libya does not pose an actual or imminent threat to the U.S.  By attacking Libya, without Congressional approval, Obama violated his constitutional power and thereby committed an impeachable offense.  But does anyone care?  Where is the outrage?

The U.S. is openly at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya. It is covertly at war in other countries. It’s been called World War III — one country at a time.  Who is next for U.S. “Shock & Awe” bombing?  Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela?  And to “protect civilian lives” in Bahrain, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia as well?

Meanwhile, radiation continues to spread around the world in the air and in the ocean currents from the Japan nuclear power catastrophe.  It’s been said that our earth, with its oceans and atmosphere can be compared to a fish bowl.  What happens in one part of the bowl, effects the rest of the bowl.

Every aspect of nuclear power — from the mining and milling of uranium,  to the enrichment process,  to the operation of the power plants, to the waste, and to the making of nuclear weapons, poses serious problems to the health and safety of all life on this planet.  The nuclear disaster of Fukushima should be a clear message to every nation on earth: Stop Waging Total War on the Planet!  Turn away from nuclear power, our addictions to oil and war, and a way of life that disregards the imperative of living in harmony with the earth.  We will either change our ways now, or our ARROGANCE OF POWER will be our doom.

No More War!  No Nukes too!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, etc. 5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box AB Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
Phone (808) 966-7622.  Email ja@interpac.net   http://www.malu-aina.org
Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (March 25, 2011 – 497th week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23902

“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources.  Period.”

Radioactivity in Food

Physicians For Social Responsibility, March 23, 2011

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) expressed concern over recent reports that radioactivity from the ongoing Fukushima accident is present in the Japanese food supply. While all food contains radionuclides, whether from natural sources, nuclear testing or otherwise, the increased levels found in Japanese spinach and milk pose health risks to the population. PSR also expressed alarm over the level of misinformation circulating in press reports about the degree to which radiation exposure can be considered “safe.”

According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual’s risk for the development of cancer.

“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.”

“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “The Japanese government should ban the sale of foods that contain radioactivity levels above pre-disaster levelsand continue to monitor food and water broadly in the area. In addition, the FDA and EPA must enforce existing regulations and guidelines that address radionuclide content in our food supply here at home.”

As the crisis in Japan goes on, there are an increasing number of sources reporting that 100 milliSieverts (mSv) is the lowest dose at which a person isat risk for cancer. Established research disproves this claim. A dose of 100 mSv creates a one in 100 risk of getting cancer, buta dose of 10 mSv still gives a one in 1,000 chance of getting cancer, and a dose of 1 mSv gives a one in 10,000 risk.

Even if the risk of getting cancer for one individual from a given level of food contamination is low, if thousands or millions of people are exposed, then some of those people will get cancer.

Recent reports indicate the Japanese disaster has released more iodine-131 than cesium-137. Iodine-131 accumulates in the thyroid, especially of children, with a half-life of over 8 days compared to cesium-137, which has a half-life of just over 30 years. Regardless of the shorter half-life, doses of iodine-131 are extremely dangerous, especially to pregnant women and children, and can lead to incidents of cancer, hypothyroidism, mental retardation and thyroid deficiency, among other conditions.

“Children are much more susceptible to the effects of radiation, and stand a much greater chance of developing cancer than adults,” said Dr. Andrew Kanter, president-elect of PSR’s Board. “So it is particularly dangerous when they consume radioactive food or water.”

All food containssome radioactivity as a result of natural sources, but also from prior above-ground nuclear testing, the Chernobyl accident, and releases from nuclear reactors and from weapons facilities. The factors that will affect the radioactivityin food after the Fukushima accident are complicated. These include the radionuclides thatthe nuclear reactor emits, weather patterns that control the wind direction and where the radionuclides are deposited, characteristics of the soil (e.g., clays bind nuclides, sand does not) and the nature of the food(leafy plants like spinach are more likely to be contaminated than other plants like rice that have husks, etc.).However, radiation can be concentrated many times in the food chain and any consumption adds to the cumulative risk of cancer and other diseases.

“Reports indicate that the total radioactive releases from the Fukushima reactor have been relatively small so far. If this is the case, then the health effects to the overall population will be correspondingly small,” said Ira Helfand, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “But it is not true to say that it is “safe” to release this much radiation; some people will get cancer and die as a result.”

Japan’s Nuclear Crisis

If I Had the Ear of the Prime Minister, I Would Recommend the “Chernobyl Option”
Michio Kaku, Physicist on March 15, 2011, 12:17 PM
Japanesenucleardisaster

The situation in Japan, as of Tuesday morning, keeps getting worse. We are getting close to the point of no return (the point where we have uncontrolled releases of radiation due to breach of containment).

News & Developments

* 3 reactors have suffered partial meltdowns.
* These three reactors also suffered hydrogen gas explosions
* A fourth unit has a nuclear waste storage site on fire (which can in principle release more radiation than in a standard reactor core).
* Almost all workers, except for 50, have been evacuated. Once all the workers are evacuated, full scale melting is inevitable.
* Unit 2 actually had 100% of its core fully exposed, for about 2 hours. Worse, cracks seem to have formed in the containment vessel, which may be the source of the very high radiation levels.
* Unit 3 uses MOX fuel, which contains some deadly plutonium, one of the most dangerous substances on earth.The utility keeps saying that things are stable, only to see things worsen. This “stability” is the stability of hanging by your fingernails.

If I had the ear of the Prime Minister, I would recommend the “Chernobyl Option.”

* Put the Japanese Air Force on alert
* Assemble a huge fleet of helicopters. Put shielding underneath them.
* Accumulate enough sand, boric acid, and concrete to smother these reactors, to entomb them forever.

This is what the Soviets did in 1986, calling out the Red Air Force and sandbagging the reactor with over 5,000 tons of concrete and sand.

We have not yet hit the point of no return. But when we do, I think the only option left is this one.