Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[Peachtree Pam]

The above article which was linked to on enenews is being questioned as the meltdowns were not caused by the tsunami, but by the earthquake. Here is enenews link:
http://enenews.com/nuclear-engineer-rad ... ctor-audio

I don't see how the article helps the nuclear industry other than the one sentence about the tsunami, which may just be a mistake.

Further down in the discussion someone posts that EU Times has been discredited as (quote) EU Times is CIA agent Sorcha Faal aka David Booth. Long debunked as disinfo, like Snopes. Pay it no mind (end quote).

[seemslikeadream]

Watch: Is Fukushima at risk for another nuclear disaster?
by Michael Okwu
How dangerous is the Fukushima nuclear plant today? (part one)

Altered maps like this one are making their way around the Internet to show the alleged amounts of radiation from Fukushima that's spreading throughout the Pacific. In reality, it's a 2011 map tracing the tsunami's path.
Altered maps like this one are making their way around the Internet to show the alleged amounts of radiation from Fukushima that's spreading throughout the Pacific. In reality, it's a 2011 map tracing the tsunami's path. America Tonight
Watch part two of this report and catch more of America Tonight’s four-part investigative series about Fukushima's continuing fallout.

At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, is struggling to contain the ongoing nuclear disaster. Since the catastrophe almost three years ago, there has been disagreement about whether the plant is safe.

The official line from the Japanese government is that the situation is under control.

“The government is moving to the forefront and we will completely resolve the matter,” said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September, just before Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Summer Olympics.

But others, such as then–Tokyo Gov. Naoki Inose, have said the situation is “not necessarily under control.”

“The government must acknowledge this as a national problem so that we can head toward a real solution,” said Inose, in response to Abe’s comments.

“America Tonight” traveled to Fukushima to find out whether the world still needs to be worried.

'An ongoing crisis'

Journalist David McNeill, who has been covering Japan since 2000, said that another major earthquake could trigger another radioactive disaster.
Journalist David McNeill has been covering Japan since 2000. America Tonight
“I think this is an ongoing crisis,” said David McNeill, a journalist who has lived in Japan since 2000 and has been covering the Fukushima disaster from the beginning. “What you’ve had is a series of ad hoc strategies designed to deal with the crisis that’s right in front of you.”

The events at Fukushima unfolded in a cascade of disasters, each one more frightening than the last: the massive earthquake and tsunami, the nuclear meltdowns, the explosions, the desperate attempts to keep fuel rods from overheating and, finally, the leaks of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.

Now, nearly three years later, the most pressing worry is the spent nuclear fuel rods, which are still precariously stored in a pool above the damaged and unstable Reactor 4. McNeill said there are thousands of nuclear fuel rods in Reactor 4, which must be extracted one by one. Last month TEPCO began the delicate, and dangerous, yearlong task of transferring those fuel rods — more than 1,300 in all, amounting to some 400 tons of uranium — to a safer location. Some experts have pointed out the serious risks of this process, McNeill said.

“For example, if there was another earthquake, another major earthquake, it could trigger another radioactive disaster,” he said.

But the real headache comes from the hundreds of tons of melted radioactive fuel in Reactors 1, 2 and 3. McNeill said that TEPCO only has “the vaguest idea” of where the molten fuel sits, and a constant flow of water is necessary to keep the molten uranium from heating up. TEPCO has built thousands of tanks to store the daily flood of contaminated water, but it is running out of space.

“The tanks have mushroomed all over the power plant,” McNeill said. “Because if they don’t keep it cool, it heats up, radiation escapes and then we’re back to square one.”

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How dangerous is the Fukushima nuclear plant today? (part two)

If there was ... another major earthquake, it could trigger another radioactive disaster.
David McNeill
Journalist
If the melted radioactive fuel weren’t enough, there’s also the issue of the groundwater. After years of denial, TEPCO admitted in the fall that contaminated groundwater is flowing into the Pacific at the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool every week. It’s this deluge of radioactive water that worries many Americans.

In March 2012, about a year after the incident, the groundwater reached the international date line, according to Michio Aoyama, a scientist at the Meteorological Institute of Japan, who has spent his career studying the spread of radiation from nuclear tests and has now turned his attention to Fukushima.

Aoyama calculates that the radiation will slowly sink, before harmlessly decaying over decades as Pacific currents turn most of the groundwater toward Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

“So I can say that the people in the Western Coast are safe,” he said.

Since TEPCO captures most of the contaminated groundwater in a port outside the plant, Aoyama said few areas outside of Fukushima are affected.

“Simply saying, the seafood expected from the levels of radioactivity in the seawater is only 2 percent of the regulation limit,” he said. “So I eat the seafood every day.”

Nearly three years after the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, there remains concern about whether another disaster is right around the corner.
Nearly three years after the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, there remains concern about whether another disaster is right around the corner. America Tonight
Aoyama’s take is very different from a map that’s making the rounds on social media, which claims to show radiation from Fukushima spreading throughout the Pacific. But it’s actually an altered map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tracing the tsunami’s path in 2011. American officials say there is no evidence of unsafe fish in the American food supply.

These reports are reassuring, but all bets are off if TEPCO doesn’t come up with a long-term strategy to plug the leaking plant.

“The whole system is all completely ad hoc,” McNeill said. “It’s been set up as an emergency for a situation that nobody ever predicted.”

Pacific wasteland

Even with plans to build a massive ice wall to help reduce the source of contaminated water, there's still doubt as to whether TEPCO will be forced to dump some of the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.
Even with plans to build a massive ice wall to help reduce the source of contaminated water, there's still doubt as to whether TEPCO will be forced to dump some of the contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. America Tonight
About 700 tons of contaminated water are generated on a daily basis at Fukushima Daiichi, and America Tonight visited TEPCO to find out what it plans to do. Masayuki Ono, a TEPCO spokesman, said that one of the aims is to reduce the source of the contaminated water. To do so, TEPCO plans to build a massive $470 million ice wall around the plant and install a new system to deal with the contaminated water.

There’s still uncertainty, though, about whether some of this tainted water will end up in the Pacific.

“Our policy is to physically decontaminate the water to a sufficiently safe and harmless level in order to reduce the risk it poses,” Ono said.

At that point, TEPCO will inevitably dump the water into the ocean, according to McNeill. “Once they get the water decontaminated to a level where people will accept it can be dumped into the ocean, they will do it,” he said. “They have to do it, because there’s no way that they cannot do it.”

The question is whether the water will truly be decontaminated to a safe level. If TEPCO’s latest strategy fails, it’s possible that the more dangerous forms of radiation won’t get filtered out.

“If TEPCO releases of all of the contaminated water without removing the strontium-90, it’s a big problem for the whole Pacific, especially the whole western part,” Aoyama said. “It’s true.”

And even if all goes well, Fukushima Daiichi itself will remain on the edge of disaster — an undefused bomb for decades to come.

“The government said it will take 30 to 40 years to decommission the plant, so there’s always the potential for another problem to come up,” McNeill said. “And that’s what keeps some people awake at night.”

Tune in Thursday, Jan. 9, for the conclusion of our Return to Fukushima series: “Japan’s nuclear crossroads — Back to nuclear or transition to renewables?”

[seemslikeadream]

General News 1/11/2014 at 12:34:17
Toll of U.S. Sailors Devastated by Fukushima Radiation Continues to Climb
By Harvey Wasserman (about the author)

The roll call of U.S. sailors who say their health was devastated when they were irradiated while delivering humanitarian help near the stricken Fukushima nuke is continuing to soar.
So many have come forward that the progress of their federal class action lawsuit has been delayed. Petitions are now circulating worldwide on their behalf at http://www.nukefree.org and elsewhere.

Bay area lawyer Charles Bonner says a re-filing will wait until early February to accommodate a constant influx of sailors from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and other American ships.

Within a day of Fukushima One's March 11, 2011, melt-down, American "first responders" were drenched in radioactive fallout. In the midst of a driving snow storm, sailors reported a cloud of warm air with a metallic taste that poured over the Reagan.

Then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan, at the time a nuclear supporter, says "the first meltdown occurred five hours after the earthquake." The lawsuit charges that Tokyo Electric Power knew large quantities of radiation were pouring into the air and water, but said nothing to the Navy or the public.

Had the Navy known, says Bonner, it could have moved its ships out of harm's way. But some sailors actually jumped into the ocean just offshore to pull victims to safety. Others worked 18-hour shifts in the open air through a four-day mission, re-fueling and repairing helicopters, loading them with vital supplies and much more. All were drinking and bathing in desalinated water that had been severely contaminated by radioactive fallout and runoff.

Then Reagan crew members were enveloped in a warm cloud. "Hey," joked sailor Lindsay Cooper at the time. "It's radioactive snow."


The metallic taste that came with it parallels the ones reported by the airmen who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and by Pennsylvania residents downwind from the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island.

When it did leave the Fukushima area, the Reagan was so radioactive it was refused port entry in Japan, South Korea and Guam. It's currently docked in San Diego.

The Navy is not systematically monitoring the crew members' health problems. But Cooper now reports a damaged thyroid, disrupted menstrual cycle, wildly fluctuating body weight and more. "It's ruined me," she says.

Similar complaints have surfaced among so many sailors from the Reagan and other U.S. ships that Bonner says he's being contacted by new litigants "on a daily basis," with the number exceeding 70.

Many are in their twenties, complaining of a terrible host of radiation-related diseases. They are legally barred from suing the U.S. military. Tepco denies that any of their health problems could be related to radiation from Fukushima. The company also says the U.S. has no jurisdiction in the case.

The suit was initially dismissed on jurisdictional grounds by federal Judge Janis S. Sammartino in San Diego. Sammartino was due to hear the re-filing Jan. 6, but allowed the litigants another month to accommodate additional sailors.

Bonner says Tepco should be subject to U.S. law because "they are doing business in America " Their second largest office outside of Tokyo is in Washington DC."

Like the lawsuit, the petitions ask that Tepco admit responsibility, and establish a fund for the first responders to be administered by the U.S. courts.

In 2013 more than 150,000 citizens petitioned the United Nations to take control of the Fukushima site to guarantee the use of the best possible financial, scientific and engineering resources in the attempted clean-up.

The melted cores from Units One, Two and Three are still unaccounted for. Progress in bringing down Unit Four's suspended fuel assemblies is murky at best. More than 11,000 "hot" rods are still scattered around a site where radiation levels remain high and some 300 tons of radioactive water still flow daily into the Pacific.

But with U.S. support, Japan has imposed a state secrets act severely restricting reliable news reporting from the Fukushima site.

So now we all live in the same kind of dark that enveloped the USS Reagan while its crew was immersed in their mission of mercy.

Petitions in the sailors' support are circulating worldwide on NukeFree.org, MoveOn, Avaaz,RootsAction and elsewhere.


Harvey Wasserman edits http://www.nukefree.org, where petitions are circulating on the sailors' behalf. He wrote Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth.

[seemslikeadream]

Mayor of Town That Hosted Fukushima Nuclear Plant Says He Was Told: “No Accident Could Ever Happen”

Protests Grow in Japan: "We Want to Bring Our Message to the World to Stop Nuclear Power Plants"

Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of the town of Futaba where part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. The entire town was rendered uninhabitable by the nuclear disaster.


We speak with Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of the town of Futaba where part of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant is located. The entire town was rendered uninhabitable by the nuclear disaster. We ask him what went through his mind after the earthquake and tsunami hit on March 11, 2011. "It was a huge surprise, and at the time I was just hoping nothing that had happened at the nuclear power plant. However, unfortunately there was in fact an accident there," Idogawa recalls. He made a decision to evacuate his town before the Japanese government told people to leave. "If I had made that decision even three hours earlier, I would have been able to prevent so many people from being exposed to radiation." For years he encouraged nuclear power development in the area; now he has become a vocal critic. He explains that the government and the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company, always told him, "’Don’t worry, Mayor. No accident could ever happen.’ Because this promise was betrayed, this is why I became anti-nuclear."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Music from the film Nuclear Nation: The Fukushima Refugees Story. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. This is the third day of our broadcast from Tokyo, Japan, and the final day. We are talking about moving in on the third anniversary of the Fukushima disaster. Nineteen thousand people died or went missing on that day, March 11th, 2011, and the days afterwards, when the earthquake triggered a tsunami, and three of the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down.

We’re joined right now by Futaba’s former mayor, Katsutaka Idogawa. For years, he embraced nuclear power. Now he has become a vocal critic. He is featured in the film Nuclear Nation.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! And thank you for traveling two hours to join us here at the studios of NHK International for this conversation. Mayor, explain what happened on that day—special thanks to Mary Joyce, who is translating for you today—on that day, March 11, 2011, and the days afterwards, when you decided it was time for the thousands of people who lived in your town, Futaba, to leave.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] On that day, there was an earthquake of the scale of something we’d never experienced before. It was a huge surprise. And at the time, I was just hoping that nothing had happened to the nuclear power plant. However, unfortunately, there was in fact an accident there. And then I worked with the many residents, and thinking about how I could fully evacuate them from the radiation.

AMY GOODMAN: You made a decision to evacuate your town before the Japanese government told the people in the area to do this, but not before the U.S. government told Americans to leave the area and other governments said the same.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes, the Japanese government’s information to evacuate became much later than that, and my mistake at the time was initially waiting to hear that. If I had made the decision even three hours earlier, I would have been able to prevent so many people from being so heavily exposed to radiation; however, as a result of that, unfortunately, several hundreds of people were directly affected by this radiation.

AMY GOODMAN: Where did you decide to move the whole town?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I was originally thinking about this at the time of the earthquake on March 11 first. However, at first, I was waiting to rely on the government information to decide the timing for this.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, you moved the town to a school in the outskirts of Tokyo, is that right? The entire town to an abandoned school? Explain how you set up your government, your whole community, in this one building.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Right at the start, we were unfortunately not able to evacuate all of the residents, and some actually did remain within parts of Fukushima prefecture. And as a result of this, there was actually a gap created between those who were still remaining within the greater Fukushima prefecture area and those who evacuated to Saitama, outside of Tokyo. And the reason for this is we had no access to communication, to information, to mobile phones.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, how long did people stay? How many people were in this school? And what role did the government play? How has the government helped the refugees?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] We were able to evacuate around 1,400 of the residents to Saitama prefecture, outside of Tokyo. So they were saved from the initial first exposure, the most serious exposure to radiation at the time. But many of them, unable to deal with the situation, gradually started to return to different parts of Fukushima prefecture.

AMY GOODMAN: You have not returned back to your town?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes, I am still living in evacuation away from the heavily radiated areas.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the meetings that you have had with the government? You have had a remarkable association of nuclear mayors in Japan, the mayors who live—who preside over towns that have nuclear power plants in them.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] From before the accident, we had always been strongly calling upon the government, and also TEPCO, to make sure that no accident was ever allowed to happen. And they were always telling us, "Don’t worry, Mayor. No accident could ever happen." However, because this promise was betrayed, this is why I became anti-nuclear.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip from Atsushi Funahashi’s new documentary film about the former residents of Futaba, where the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant is partly located. The film is called Nuclear Nation: The Fukushima Refugees Story. And we’re going to go to a part of the film that shows a part of this remarkable meeting of government officials with the atomic mayors, the nuclear mayors of Japan.

BANRI KAIEDA: [translated] The future of energy production and Japanese energy policy is currently being debated, and this is something we’ve communicated to you. Regarding the details of this review, I believe it’s important to clearly define the terms as soon as possible. Thank you very much.
MARC CARPENTIER, Narrator: The industry minister leaves his seat in the first five minutes.
GOSHI HOSONO: [translated] The central and prefectural governments are working on the annual health check guidelines. Based on what we’ve researched until now, the impact of radiation on children appears negligible. However, we will endeavor to keep you apprised of any developments.
MARC CARPENTIER: The nuclear crisis minister follows suit, citing official duties.
CHAIRPERSON: [translated] And now, we’d like to open the floor for comments. Please raise your hands. OK, go ahead.
MAYOR KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I’m representing Futaba. I want to know why we’re being made to feel this way. It’s frustrating. What does the nuclear power committee think? When you came and explained it to us, you lied, saying it was safe and secure. But we, who trusted and believed you, can no longer live in our own town.
AMY GOODMAN: That last voice was the mayor at the time of Futaba, Katsutaka Idogawa, who is with us today in our Tokyo studio. Futaba is where part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. He was speaking, addressing this meeting of government officials and nuclear mayors from around Japan in August of 2011. You just heard, oh, the voices of Goshi Hosono, who was the nuclear crisis minister of Japan, and Banri Kaieda, a minister of the economy, trade and industry. And after each of them spoke, they politely took their leave of the room before the mayors could address them, so they did not hear the Futaba mayor’s statement about the lies from the government. Talk about that particular meeting.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] At the time, we were calling for a strong response and attention from the government since the disaster. However, they didn’t even try to listen to what we were calling for. And they continued to not even try to make efforts to fulfill their responsibilities or promise to us. And so, they continued to appear before us, those who were suffering directly from the disaster, but instead of listening to something which would maybe be difficult for their ears to hear, they would just leave the room, not even listen to us at all. And within those who were left in the room were some government officials, including some who were directly the ones who told me that no accident would ever happen. However, no matter what I would try to appeal and say to them, it would not have any effect, so instead I turned around and appealed and spoke to my colleagues, my fellow residents, and I tried to tell them what was really happening, the situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Mayor Katsutaka Idogawa, you were a fierce proponent of nuclear power. You were pushing for two more reactors to be built even closer to Futaba than the others. You were proud of getting tens of millions of dollars for your town for hosting these reactors. How did you make your transition to being one of the most vocal government officials against all nuclear power?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I had been supporting the nuclear power plants in our town on the condition that no accident, no disaster, would be allowed to occur. It was not necessarily that I was actually totally in favor of the nuclear power plants; however, the situation that was in places without the nuclear power plants there, our city would be losing the financial benefits and perhaps unable to go forward economically. The city was actually on the brink of bankruptcy beforehand. And so, in order to try and prevent the city from going into this kind of economic breakdown, I saw that building the new two reactors was perhaps the only way.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip, another clip of Nuclear Nation, that gives us a little background on the town of Futaba.

MARC CARPENTIER: Futaba’s farming history goes back over a thousand years. In winter months, people had to leave town for work in the city. Reactors 5 and 6 came online in 1978 and ’79. Money flowed in from the government, and the townspeople found themselves with lots of extra cash. They built roads, a library, a sprawling sports center, and made major upgrades to the infrastructure.
AMY GOODMAN: Nuclear Nation, talking about nuclear refugees, the nuclear refugees of Futaba. And we’re joined by the former mayor, who made the decision, on his own, right after the earthquake, to move his entire town, to evacuate it to Tokyo, being deeply concerned about the levels of radiation and feeling that the government was lying to them about the dangers in the area. This was a mayor, Katsutaka Idogawa, who was fiercely for nuclear power, was proud to be able to get two more reactors in his town to build the economy, to get tens of millions of dollars, and then turned around after the meltdown, after the earthquake, the tsunami and the ultimate meltdown of three of the six existing reactors.

Mayor, right now, you are not the only one who turned around in office. Naoto Kan, the prime minister, also a fierce proponent, is now speaking out all over the world against nuclear power. But just this week, as we flew in to Japan, the government of Prime Minister Abe, the most conservative government since World War II, announced that it wants to build more reactors in Japan. How are you organizing? What are you doing now?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Without being able to even deal with the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the position to promote nuclear power still is something which is just unthinkable to me. And I believe it’s really important for the prime minister to look at what he’s actually been responsible for and have regret and really deal with what they have done, before they can actually go forward and do anything. And the disaster now is bigger than anything we can cope with. It’s a disaster on an international level, and huge consequences, so he needs to really recognize this.

AMY GOODMAN: So who’s driving the push for more nuclear power? The country, already 30 percent dependent for its energy on nuclear power, had plans to make the country more than 50 percent by 2030. But after this catastrophe, who is pushing for these nuclear power plants?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] The nuclear power system is constructed to use huge amounts of public tax. And this is a very tasty, shall we say, position or situation for the large corporations. They were really behind this push. However, much public taxpayers’ money is being used behind this. And I believe it’s so important to prevent our taxes from being used for any of this kind.

AMY GOODMAN: What has happened to the Fukushima refugees today?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] There are so many people who want to evacuate but don’t have the means to be able to actually do that and are still living in this situation, who want to do something, but they have no support. And another huge issue is those who are still forced to be living within the greater Fukushima prefecture area do not have access to full health measurements, health treatments, and the kind of support that they need. And they’re also told that any diseases or sickness that they have is not caused by radiation.

AMY GOODMAN: You are traveling the world. Can you tell us the countries you’ve been to and why you’re speaking there?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I’m working with people all around the world, speaking with people who are working against nuclear power in their own areas.

AMY GOODMAN: You went to Finland?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] I went to Finland to speak with people who are working against the construction of nuclear power plants in their areas, because they knew our situation and what happened to us, and we’re trying to work together to prevent this from ever happening to them.

AMY GOODMAN: In the United States, a nuclear power plant has not been built in close to 40 years, very much because of the anti-nuclear movement and the cost of what it means to build a nuclear power plant and what to do with the waste. But President Obama has talked about a nuclear renaissance and is pushing for the building of several new plants for the first time in decades. What message would you share with him?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] The nuclear power disaster is not just of Fukushima. This is a disaster of all humanity, of the entire world. There is a Japanese saying, and its meaning is that, well, any kind of disaster, three times is the limit. And we have had the three large disasters: one in the United States, one at Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. The Earth will not be able to cope with any further nuclear disasters. For the children of the future, the future generations, I hope that we can stop this now.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the alternative?

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Well, I’ve heard in U.S. there is shale gas, for example. But as well as other forms of energy, I believe it’s also very important now to look at how we can have lifestyles that rely less on energy, that use less energy more efficient in our homes and in our offices. And Prime Minister Koizumi is also suggesting this.

AMY GOODMAN: Prime Minister Koizumi, very significant that a conservative former prime minister also came out against nuclear power.

KATSUTAKA IDOGAWA: [translated] Even he looked at the actual situation. And I believe that Prime Minister Koizumi really visited places affected by nuclear power to really see what is happening, and he’s really speaking sincerely now.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for joining us on Democracy Now!, Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of the town of Futaba, where part of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is located. The entire town was rendered uninhabitable by the nuclear meltdown. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Stay with us. After break, crowdsourcing radiation monitoring. We’ll look at how a group called Safecast has helped Japanese civilians turn their smartphones into Geiger counters. Stay with us.

[Iamwhomiam]

I found the latter part of the interview to be of more interest, (after the break), citizens' monitoring efforts to corroborate or invalidate the government's reporting.

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Sunday, January 19, 2014 by Common Dreams
Crippled Fukushima Reactor Springs Another Mysterious Leak
Tepco said the amount of radioactive material in the just-found leak is unknown because the radiation in the reactor building is already so high

- Common Dreams staff

Uncontained: Water possibly tainted with radiation pours into a drain (lower right), on Saturday on the first floor of reactor No. 3 at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant. (Photo: KYODO)
Japanese media is reporting yet another mysterious and previously undetected leak inside one of the crippled nuclear Fukushima reactors this weekend.

According to Asahi Shimbum, citing an announcement from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, a "new water leak, possibly from the effort to cool a crippled reactor, has been detected on the first floor of a reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant."

It remained unclear whether the leak was coming from water coolant pipes being pumped into the containment unit or if radioactive water from the cooling pools themselves was leaking out.

As the Japan Times reports:

The camera of a rubble-removing robot operating inside the No. 3 building has captured images of a 30-cm-wide water leak, the beleaguered utility said Saturday. It also claimed that none of the water has leaked outside the building so far.

Tepco, as the utility is known, is perpetually pumping water into reactors 1 through 3 to keep their melted cores cool, but leaks have been spotted in parts of No. 3′s containment vessel. Tepco is investigating whether the water spotted by the camera is actually the coolant.

The radiation level on the first floor of the No. 3 reactor is a relatively high 30 millisieverts per hour. Tepco said the amount of radioactive material in the just-found leak is unknown because the radiation in the reactor building is already high.

[Peachtree Pam]

America’s Nuclear Radiation Cover Up 1946-1958 – Barbaric Racism

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/01/24 ... ic-racism/

The Public Broadcasting Industry paid for and is now suppressing a documentary film “Nuclear Savage” that explored nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands 1946-1958 ~ that exposed Pacific Islanders to deadly overdoses of radiation just to send a message and get more data on killing and maiming people:

by Allen L Roland

The Republic of the Marshall Islands covers nearly a million square miles of picturesque islands, thriving coral atolls, and crystal clear blue waters …. undoubtedly one of the most interesting places in the world to live and visit and evidently to bomb.

It was a Pacific island paradise… until the United States tested nuclear weapons and conducted secret human radiation experiments from 1948 to 1954.Experiments that would remain top-secret for decades….Until now…

islandThe U.S. Army performed nuclear weapons testing on Bikini from 1948 to 1954 and established a missile testing range in Kwajalein. On March 1st, 1954, the US Government conducted the BRAVO nuclear test (Project 4.1) which was 1000 times larger than the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima.

Project 4.1 is the study of the response of human beings exposed to significant beta and gamma radiation due to fall out from high yield weapons (nuclear bombs). In other words, the Pacific Islanders were treated as savages and guinea pigs so the US Government could send a message as to its military might and the effect on those who dare to oppose it.

In 2005, director Adam Horowitz started work on “Nuclear Savage,” his second documentary about the American military use and abuse of the Marshall Islands.

As William Boardman writes in Reader Supported News ~ Horowitz has a contract with Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC), which describes itself as “a national non-profit media arts organization” whose mission “is to support, advance and develop programming that enhances public recognition of and appreciation for Pacific Islander history, culture, and society.” Among its efforts to carry out this mission, PIC supported the production of “Nuclear Savage” with $100,000 passed through to Horowitz from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Horowitz delivered a completed, 87-minute version of “Nuclear Savage” in October 2011 – the same month it was nominated for Best Environmental Film at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival. That was also the same month various public broadcasting officials started putting up roadblocks to keep the movie off the air, a delaying tactic that continues into 2014. FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) reported the story in detail as “Nuclear Stalemate” in Extra!

PIC summarizes the film this way: “Some use the term ‘savage’ to refer to people from primitive cultures, but nuclear experimentation pushed savagery to new levels. In the 1950s, the U.S. conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands, vaporizing islands and exposing entire populations to fallout. The islanders on Rongelap received near fatal doses of radiation from one test, and were then moved onto a highly contaminated island to serve as human guinea pigs for 30 years. Filmmaker Adam Jonas Horowitz spent 25 years collecting material – including original footage, archival clips, and unpublished secret documents – to create this unforgettable and ironic portrait of American cynicism, arrogance, and racism. Winner of festival awards in Paris, Chicago and Mexico City.”

See outstanding William Boardman article:

Here is the 8 minute trailer video which features Adam Horowitz describing America’s most horrific and barbaric act of racism ~

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Friday, January 24, 2014 by Common Dreams
The Fukushima Secrecy Syndrome – From Japan to America
by Ralph Nader

(Photo: AP)
Last month, the ruling Japanese coalition parties quickly rammed through Parliament a state secrets law. We Americans better take notice.

Under its provisions the government alone decides what are state secrets and any civil servants who divulge any “secrets” can be jailed for up to 10 years. Journalists caught in the web of this vaguely defined law can be jailed for up to 5 years.

Government officials have been upset at the constant disclosures of their laxity by regulatory officials before and after the Fukushima nuclear power disaster in 2011, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

"The Obama administration must become more alert to authoritarian trends in Japan that its policies have been either encouraging or knowingly ignoring – often behind the curtains of our own chronic secrecy."

Week after week, reports appear in the press revealing the seriousness of the contaminated water flow, the inaccessible radioactive material deep inside these reactors and the need to stop these leaking sites from further poisoning the land, food and ocean. Officials now estimate that it could take up to 40 years to clean up and decommission the reactors.

Other factors are also feeding this sure sign of a democratic setback. Militarism is raising its democracy-menacing head, prompted by friction with China over the South China Sea. Dismayingly, U.S. militarists are pushing for a larger Japanese military budget. China is the latest national security justification for our “pivot to East Asia” provoked in part by our military-industrial complex.

Draconian secrecy in government and fast-tracking bills through legislative bodies are bad omens for freedom of the Japanese press and freedom to dissent by the Japanese people. Freedom of information and robust debate (the latter cut off sharply by Japan’s parliament in December 5, 2013) are the currencies of democracy.

There is good reason why the New York Times continues to cover the deteriorating conditions in the desolate, evacuated Fukushima area. Our country has licensed many reactors here with the same designs and many of the same inadequate safety and inspection standards. Some reactors here are near earthquake faults with surrounding populations which cannot be safely evacuated in case of serious damage to the electric plant. The two Indian Point reactors that are 30 miles north of New York City are a case in point.

The less we are able to know about the past and present conditions of Fukushima, the less we will learn about atomic reactors in our own country.

Fortunately many of Japan’s most famous scientists, including Nobel laureates, Toshihide Maskawa and Hideki Shirakawa, have led the opposition against this new state secrecy legislation with 3,000 academics signing a public letter of protest. These scientists and academics declared the government’s secrecy law a threat to “the pacifist principles and fundamental human rights established by the constitution and should be rejected immediately.”

Following this statement, the Japan Scientists’ Association, Japan’s mass media companies, citizens associations, lawyers’ organizations and some regional legislatures opposed the legislation. Polls show the public also opposes this attack on democracy. The present ruling parties remain adamant. They cite as reasons for state secrecy “national security and fighting terrorism.” Sound familiar?

History is always present in the minds of many Japanese people. They know what happened in Japan when the unchallenged slide toward militarization of Japanese society led to the intimidating tyranny that drove the invasion of China, Korea and Southeast Asia before and after Pearl Harbor. By 1945, Japan was in ruins, ending with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The American people have to be alert to our government’s needless military and political provocations of China, which is worried about encirclement by surrounding U.S.-allied nations and U.S. air and sea power. Washington might better turn immediate attention to U.S. trade policies that have facilitated U.S. companies shipping American jobs and whole industries to China.

The Obama administration must become more alert to authoritarian trends in Japan that its policies have been either encouraging or knowingly ignoring – often behind the curtains of our own chronic secrecy.

The lessons of history beckon.

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Monday, February 3, 2014 by Common Dreams
50 Reasons We Should Fear the Worst from Fukushima
by Harvey Wasserman
japanfukushimaFukushima’s missing melted cores and radioactive gushers continue to fester in secret.

Japan’s harsh dictatorial censorship has been matched by a global corporate media blackout aimed—successfully—at keeping Fukushima out of the public eye.

But that doesn’t keep the actual radiation out of our ecosystem, our markets … or our bodies.

Speculation on the ultimate impact ranges from the utterly harmless to the intensely apocalyptic .

But the basic reality is simple: for seven decades, government Bomb factories and privately-owned reactors have spewed massive quantities of unmonitored radiation into the biosphere.

The impacts of these emissions on human and ecological health are unknown primarily because the nuclear industry has resolutely refused to study them.

Indeed, the official presumption has always been that showing proof of damage from nuclear Bomb tests and commercial reactors falls to the victims, not the perpetrators.

And that in any case, the industry will be held virtually harmless.

This “see no evil, pay no damages” mindset dates from the Bombing of Hiroshima to Fukushima to the disaster coming next … which could be happening as you read this.

Here are 50 preliminary reasons why this radioactive legacy demands we prepare for the worst for our oceans, our planet, our economy … ourselves.

1. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), the U.S. military initially denied that there was any radioactive fallout, or that it could do any damage. Despite an absence of meaningful data, the victims (including a group of U.S. prisoners of war) and their supporters were officially “discredited” and scorned.

2. Likewise, when Nobel-winners Linus Pauling and Andre Sakharov correctly warned of a massive global death toll from atmospheric Bomb testing, they were dismissed with official contempt … until they won in the court of public opinion.

3. During and after the Bomb Tests (1946-63), downwinders in the South Pacific and American west, along with thousands of U.S. “atomic vets,” were told their radiation-induced health problems were imaginary … until they proved utterly irrefutable.

4. When British Dr. Alice Stewart proved (1956) that even tiny x-ray doses to pregnant mothers could double childhood leukemia rates, she was assaulted with 30 years of heavily funded abuse from the nuclear and medical establishments.

5. But Stewart’s findings proved tragically accurate, and helped set in stone the medical health physics consensus that there is no “safe dose” of radiation … and that pregnant women should not be x-rayed, or exposed to equivalent radiation.

6. More than 400 commercial power reactors have been injected into our ecosphere with no meaningful data to measure their potential health and environmental impacts, and no systematic global data base has been established or maintained.

7. “Acceptable dose” standards for commercial reactors were conjured from faulty A-Bomb studies begun five years after Hiroshima, and at Fukushima and elsewhere have been continually made more lax to save the industry money.

8. Bomb/reactor fallout delivers alpha and beta particle emitters that enter the body and do long-term damage, but which industry backers often wrongly equate with less lethal external gamma/x-ray doses from flying in airplanes or living in Denver.

9. By refusing to compile long-term emission assessments, the industry systematically hides health impacts at Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc., forcing victims to rely on isolated independent studies which it automatically deems “discredited.”

10. Human health damage has been amply suffered in radium watch dial painting, Bomb production, uranium mining/milling/enrichment, waste management and other radioactive work, despite decades of relentless industry denial.

11. When Dr. Ernest Sternglass, who had worked with Albert Einstein, warned that reactor emissions were harming people, thousands of copies of his Low-Level Radiation (1971) mysteriously disappeared from their primary warehouse.

12. When the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Chief Medical Officer, Dr. John Gofman, urged that reactor dose levels be lowered by 90 percent, he was forced out of the AEC and publicly attacked, despite his status a founder of the industry.

13. A member of the Manhattan Project, and a medical doctor responsible for pioneer research into LDL cholesterol, Gofman later called the reactor industry an instrument of “premeditated mass murder.”

14. Stack monitors and other monitoring devices failed at Three Mile Island (1979) making it impossible to know how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it impacted and how.

15. But some 2,400 TMI downwind victims and their families were denied a class action jury trial by a federal judge who said “not enough radiation” was released to harm them, though she could not say how much that was or where it went.

16. During TMI’s meltdown, industry advertising equated the fallout with a single chest x-ray to everyone downwind, ignoring the fact that such doses could double leukemia rates among children born to involuntarily irradiated mothers.

17. Widespread death and damage downwind from TMI have been confirmed by Dr. Stephen Wing, Jane Lee and Mary Osbourne, Sister Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Sternglass, Jay Gould, Joe Mangano and others, along with hundreds of anecdotal reports.

18. Radioactive harm to farm and wild animals downwind from TMI has been confirmed by the Baltimore News-American and Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

19. TMI’s owner quietly paid out at least $15 million in damages in exchange for gag orders from the affected families, including at least one case involving a child born with Down’s Syndrome.

20. Chernobyl’s explosion became public knowledge only when massive emissions came down on a Swedish reactor hundreds of miles away, meaning that—as at TMI and Fukushima—no one knows precisely how much escaped or where it went.

21. Fukushima’s on-going fallout is already far in excess of that from Chernobyl, which was far in excess of that from Three Mile Island.

22. Soon after Chernobyl blew up (1986), Dr. Gofman predicted its fallout would kill at least 400,000 people worldwide.

23. Three Russian scientists who compiled more than 5,000 studies concluded in 2005 that Chernobyl had already killed nearly a million people worldwide.

24. Children born in downwind Ukraine and Belarus still suffer a massive toll of mutation and illness, as confirmed by a wide range of governmental, scientific and humanitarian organizations.

25. Key low-ball Chernobyl death estimates come from the World Health Organization, whose numbers are overseen by International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations organization chartered to promote the nuclear industry.

26. After 28 years, the reactor industry has still not succeeded in installing a final sarcophagus over the exploded Chernobyl Unit 4, though billions of dollars have been invested.

27. When Fukushima Units 1-4 began to explode, President Obama assured us all the fallout would not come here, and would harm no one, despite having no evidence for either assertion.

28. Since President Obama did that, the U.S. has established no integrated system to monitor Fukushima’s fallout, nor an epidemiological data base to track its health impacts … but it did stop checking radiation levels in Pacific seafood.

29. Early reports of thyroid abnormalities among children downwind from Fukushima, and in North America are denied by industry backers who again say “not enough radiation” was emitted though they don’t know how much that might be.

30. Devastating health impacts reported by sailors stationed aboard the USS Ronald Reagan near Fukushima are being denied by the industry and Navy, who say radiation doses were too small to do harm, but have no idea what they were.

31. While in a snowstorm offshore as Fukushima melted, sailors reported a warm cloud passing over the Reagan that brought a “metallic taste” like that described by TMI downwinders and the airmen who dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima.

32. Though it denies the sailors on the Reagan were exposed to enough Fukushima radiation to harm them, Japan (like South Korea and Guam) denied the ship port access because it was too radioactive (it’s now docked in San Diego).

33. The Reagan sailors are barred from suing the Navy, but have filed a class action against Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), which has joined the owners at TMI, the Bomb factories, uranium mines, etc., in denying all responsibility.

34. A U.S. military “lessons learned” report from Fukushima’s Operation Tomodachi clean-up campaign notes that “decontamination of aircraft and personnel without alarming the general population created new challenges.”

35. The report questioned the clean-up because “a true decontamination operations standard for ‘clearance’ was not set,” thereby risking “the potential spread of radiological contamination to military personnel and the local populace.”

36. Nonetheless, it reported that during the clean-up, “the use of duct tape and baby wipes was effective in the removal of radioactive particles.”

37. In league with organized crime, Tepco is pursuing its own clean-up activities by recruiting impoverished homeless and elderly citizens for “hot” on-site labor, with the quality of their work and the nature of their exposures now a state secret.

38. At least 300 tons of radioactive water continue to pour into the ocean at Fukushima every day, according to official estimates made prior to such data having been made a state secret.

39. To the extent they can be known, the quantities and make-up of radiation pouring out of Fukushima are also now a state secret, with independent measurement or public speculation punishable by up to ten years in prison.

40. Likewise, “There is no systematic testing in the U.S. of air, food and water for radiation,” according to University of California (Berkeley) nuclear engineering Professor Eric Norman.

41. Many radioactive isotopes tend to concentrate as they pour into the air and water, so deadly clumps of Fukushima’s radiation may migrate throughout the oceans for centuries to come before diffusing, which even then may not render it harmless.

42. Radiation’s real world impact becomes even harder to measure in an increasingly polluted biosphere, where interaction with existing toxins creates a synergy likely to exponentially accelerate the damage being done to all living things.

43. Reported devastation among starfish, sardines, salmon, sea lions, orcas and other ocean animals cannot be definitively denied without a credible data base of previous experimentation and monitoring, which does not exist and is not being established.

44. The fact that “tiny” doses of x-ray can harm human embryos portends that any unnatural introduction of lethal radioactive isotopes into the biosphere, however “diffuse,” can affect our intertwined global ecology in ways we don’t now understand.

45. The impact of allegedly “minuscule” doses spreading from Fukushima will, over time, affect the minuscule eggs of creatures ranging from sardines to starfish to sea lions, with their lethal impact enhanced by the other pollutants already in the sea.

46. Dose comparisons to bananas and other natural sources are absurd and misleading as the myriad isotopes from reactor fallout will impose very different biological impacts for centuries to come in a wide range of ecological settings.

47. No current dismissal of general human and ecological impacts—”apocalyptic” or otherwise—can account over time for the very long half-lives of radioactive isotopes Fukushima is now pouring into the biosphere.

48. As Fukushima’s impacts spread through the centuries, the one certainty is that no matter what evidence materializes, the nuclear industry will never admit to doing any damage, and will never be forced to pay for it (see upcoming sequel).

49. Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, warned that it is a form of suicide to raise radiation levels within Earth’s vital envelope, and that if he could, he would “sink” all the reactors he helped develop.

50. “Now when we go back to using nuclear power,” he said in 1982, “I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it.”

As Fukushima deteriorates behind an iron curtain of secrecy and deceit, we desperately need to know what it’s doing to us and our planet.

It’s tempting to say the truth lies somewhere between the industry’s lies and the rising fear of a tangible apocalypse.

In fact, the answers lie beyond.

Defined by seven decades of deceit, denial and a see-no-evil dearth of meaningful scientific study, the glib corporate assurances that this latest reactor disaster won’t hurt us fade to absurdity.

Fukushima pours massive, unmeasured quantities of lethal radiation into our fragile ecosphere every day, and will do so for decades to come.

Five power reactors have now exploded on this planet and there are more than 400 others still operating.

What threatens us most is the inevitable next disaster … along with the one after that … and then the one after that …

Pre-wrapped in denial, protected by corporate privilege, they are the ultimate engines of global terror.

[seemslikeadream]

Japanese gov't eyes dumping toxic water from Fukushima plant into sea
Photo: EPA
The Japanese government on Monday held talks with the National Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations with an aim to seek the association's approval for dumping groundwater from a crippled power plant in Fukushima Prefecture into the sea.

Officials from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) sought the approval from the head of the fisheries association, stating that the level of radioactive contamination in the water would be far less than the legal limit, with levels being checked before each discharge.
Hiroshi Kishi, the head of the fisheries association, heard from ministry officials how they plan to allay the fears of the local fishing community in the prefecture, who have seen their industry's reputation and sales battered by radioactive leaks and preventable accidents at the Daiichi nuclear complex, following multiple meltdowns there after an earthquake-triggered tsunami in March 2011.
Kishi told a local news conference that his association would carefully consider the ministry's proposal after a thorough review of the contents of METI's overture.
The local fishing community, as well as prefectural officials, however, have voiced concerns about the discharge plan, alongside the wider international community.
The government, on Jan. 15, green-lit a revival and restructuring plan for Tokyo Electric Power Co, (TEPCO), the operator of the stricken nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture, that will see the embattled utility receive 4 trillion yen (38.3 billion US dollars) in additional state backing.
In addition TEPCO will see the sale by the end of fiscal 2016 of some of its 50.1 percent stake it holds under an agreement to assist the utility's huge compensation burden, following the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.
With a fresh injection of capital, sceptics of TEPCO dumping toxic water into the Pacific Ocean, which lies adjacent to the crippled plant, believe that other methods need to be traversed before a final decision is made, in the interests of safety in the area and the potential for radioactive materials to spread to marine life if they're released into the sea.
But according to the central government here, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), TEPCO is struggling to contain massive influxes of contaminated water on a daily basis and must now weigh the risks of dumping excess radioactive water into ocean.
Noting that groundwater flowing into the complex and its reactor buildings is adding to TEPCO's struggle to store the contaminated water in makeshift storage tanks, some of which have sprung leaks causing radioactive materials to be released into the sea, Juan Carlos Lentijo, head of the IAEA's mission floated the idea of releasing radioactive water into the ocean when on a recent mission to the stricken facility in December.
"Controlled discharge is a regular practice in all the nuclear facilities in the world. And what we are trying to say here is to consider this as one of the options to contribute to a good balance of risks and to stabilize the facility for the long term," Lentijo said.
Lentijo added that TEPCO should weigh the possible damaging effects of discharging toxic water against the total risks involved in the overall decommissioning work process.
Voice of Russia, Xinhua

[seemslikeadream]

FEBRUARY 10, 2014

New Suit Against Tokyo Electric Power
U.S. Sailors Sick From Fukushima Radiation
by HARVEY WASSERMAN
Citing a wide range of ailments from leukemia to blindness to birth defects, 79 American veterans of 2011’s earthquake/tsunami relief Operation Tomadachi (“Friendship”) have filed a new $1 billion class action lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power.

The suit includes an infant born with a genetic condition to a sailor who served on the USS Ronald Reagan as radiation poured over it during the Fukushima melt-downs, and an American teenager living near the stricken site. It has also been left open for “up to 70,000 U.S. citizens [who were] potentially affected by the radiation and will be able to join the class action suit.”

The re-filing comes as Tepco admits that it has underestimated certain radiation readings by a factor of five. And as eight more thyroid cancers have surfaced among children in the downwind region.Two new earthquakes have also struck near the Fukushima site.

The amended action was filed in federal court in San Diego on Feb. 6, which would have been Reagan’s 103rd birthday. It says Tepco failed to disclose that the $4.3 billion nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was being heavily dosed from three melt-downs and four explosions at the Fukushima site. The Reagan was as close as a mile offshore as the stricken reactors poured deadly clouds of radiation into the air and ocean beginning the day after the earthquake and tsunami. It also sailed through nuclear plumes for more than five hours while about 100 miles offshore. The USS Reagan (CVN-76) is 1,092 feet long and was commissioned on July 12, 2003. The flight deck covers 4.5 acres, carries 5,500 sailors and more than 80 aircraft.

Reagan crew members reported that in the middle of a snowstorm, a cloud of warm air enveloped them with a “metallic taste.” The reports parallel those from airmen who dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima, and from central Pennsylvanians downwind from Three Mile Island. Crew members drank and bathed in desalinated sea water that was heavily irradiated from Fukushima’s fallout.

As a group, the sailors comprise an especially young, healthy cross-section of people. Some also served on the amphibious assault ship Essex, missile cruiser Cowpens and several others.

The plaintiffs’ ailments parallel those of downwinders irradiated at Hiroshima/Nagasaki (1945), during atmospheric Bomb tests (1946-1963), and from the radiation releases at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). Among them are reproductive problems and “illnesses such as Leukemia, ulcers, gall bladder removals, brain cancer, testicular cancer, dysfunctional uterine bleeding, thyroid illnesses, stomach ailments and a host of other complaints unusual in such young adults.”

One 22-year-old sailor declared to the court that “Upon my return from Operation Tomodachi, I began losing my eyesight. I lost all vision in my left eye and most vision in my right eye. I am unable to read street signs and am no longer able to drive. Prior to Operation Tomodachi, I had 2/20 eyesight, wore no glasses and had no corrective surgery.” Additionally, he said, “I know of no family members who have had leukemia.”

Plaintiff “Baby A.G.” was born to a Reagan crew member on Oct. 15, 2011—seven months after the crew members exposure—with multiple birth defects.

The suit asks for at least $1 billion to “advance and pay all costs and expenses for each of the Plaintiffs for medical examination, medical monitoring and treatment by physicians,” as well as for more general damages.

Both Tepco and the Navy say not enough radiation was released from Fukushima to harm the sailors or their offspring. But neither can say exactly how much radiation that might have been or where it went. The Navy has discontinued a program that might have tracked the sailors’ health in the wake of their irradiation.

After its four days offshore from Fukushima the governments of Japan, South Korea and Guam refused the Reagan port entry because of its high radiation levels. The Navy has since exposed numerous sailors in a major decontamination effort whose results are unclear.

Now docked in San Diego, the Reagan’s on-going safety has become a political hot potato. The $6 billion carrier is at the core of the U.S. Naval presence in the Pacific. Critics say it’s too radioactive to operate or to scrap, and that it should be sunk, as were a number of U.S. ships contaminated by atmospheric Bomb tests in the South Pacific. There are also rumors the Navy is considering deploying the Reagan to a port in Japan, where protests would be almost certain.

Filed on Dec. 12, 2012, the initial suit involved just eight plaintiffs. It was amended to bring the total to 51.

That action was thrown out at the end of 2013 by federal Judge Janis S. Sammartino on jurisdictional grounds.

A January deadline for re-filing this second amended complaint was delayed as additional plaintiffs kept coming forward. Attorneys Paul Garner and Charles Bonner say still more are being processed.

The suit charges Tepco lied to the public—including Japan’s then Prime Minister Naoto Kan—about the accident’s radioactive impacts. Kan says Unit One melted within five hours of the earthquake, before U.S. fleet arrived. Such news is unwelcome to an industry with scores more reactors in earthquake zones worldwide.

The Plaintiffs say Tepco negligently leveled a natural seawall to cut water pumping expenses. The ensuing tsunami then poured over the site’s unprotected power supply, forcing desperate workers to scavenge car batteries from a nearby parking lot to fire up critical gauges. Tepco belatedly dispatched 11 power supply trucks that were immediately stuck in traffic.

Similar reports of fatal cost-cutting, mismanagement and the use and abuse of untrained personnel run throughout the 65-page complaint.

Attorney Bonner will explain much of it on the Solartopia Radio show at 5 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 11.

Some 4,000 supporters have signed petitions at nukefree.org, moveon.org, Avaaz and elsewhere.

Feb. 11—like the eleventh day of every month—will be a worldwide fast day for those supporting the victims of Fukushima’s deepening disaster.

The future of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, the nuclear power industry and a growing group young sailors tragically afflicted by Fukushima’s secret fallout will be hanging in the balance.

[seemslikeadream]

Fukushima: The Story Of A Nuclear Disaster' Reveals New Insight Into Japanese Catastrophe
By Roxanne Palmer
on February 11 2014 5:00 PM

From the cover of "Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster," by David Lochbaum, Edwin Lyman, Susan Stranahan, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS/The New Press
The story of the 2011 catastrophe at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant unfolds in a new book-length account from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group.

“Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster” (The New Press) was penned by David Lochbaum, head of the UCS’s Nuclear Safety Project (and a nuclear engineer for 17 years); Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist in UCS’s Global Security Program; and journalist Susan Stranahan, who led the Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of the Three Mile Island Accident in Dauphin, Pennsylvania (which earned the paper the 1980 Pulitzer Prize in local general reporting).

Lochbaum and his coauthors weave a fast-paced, detailed narrative that moves like a thriller -- but with the consequences painfully real, and the potential for a sequel hanging on the horizon.

“Fukushima Daiichi unmasked the weaknesses of nuclear power plant design and the long-standing flaws in operations and regulatory oversight,” the authors write. “Although Japan must share the blame, this was not a Japanese nuclear accident; it was a nuclear accident that just happened to have occurred in Japan. The problems that led to the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi exist wherever reactors operate.”

Related


The Reason Britain Is Ramping Up Nuclear Power
Fukushima Nuclear Plant Operator Gets Japan Gov't OK For Corporate Overhaul
The book documents the disaster beyond what made it into the papers, with findings and analysis that might be new to you:

1) The initial shutdown of Fukushima’s reactors after the earthquake went according to plan; the real problem was the tsunami:

The Tohoku earthquake began at 2:46 p.m. (Japan time) on March 11, 2011. By 2:47 p.m., the first of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Unit began to automatically shut down, after sensors registered the earthquake.

The real trouble started about 45 minutes later, when the second wave of the tsunami struck. A first wave, 13 feet high, was deflected by the plant’s seawall; the second one was 50 feet high easily surged over the seawall, destroying seawater pumps, smashing doors, and drowning the plant’s electrical system. Power panels and emergency backup generators were inundated, leading to a station blackout.

Nuclear regulators know that a station blackout is one of the worst things that can happen at a nuclear plant: “Without any power to run the pumps and valves needed to provide a steady flow of cooling water, the radioactive fuel would overheat, the remaining water would boil away, and the core would proceed inexorably toward a meltdown.”

2) Just how powerful was that tsunami? Powerful enough to take a Big Apple-sized bite out of Antarctica:

“By the time the waves hit Antarctica, about eight thousand miles south of the epicenter, they still had enough power to break off more than fifty square miles of ice shelf, twice the area of Manhattan.”

3) Serious communication problems hampered recovery efforts in the early hours after the blackout.

“The paging system [within the plant] was disabled; TEPCO [Tokyo Electric Power Company, operator of the plant] had provided only one-hour batteries for some of the mobile units and there was no way to recharge them. Crew members often had to return to the emergency center to report simple details – a time-consuming and risky procedure.”

4) Part of the problem in the response? Japan’s huge nuclear bureaucracy:

At the time, Japan’s 54 commercial nuclear plants are regulated by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. There was also the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) which promotes nuclear energy while also being charged with radiation monitoring. There’s also the Nuclear Safety Commission, an independent agency within the Japanese government’s executive branch, and the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization. Also, Japan’s prefectures took on their own radiation monitoring and evacuation-coordinating efforts.

“On paper, all these duties and responsibilities may have seemed clear. In practice, however, the system proved unworkable.”

5) Kicked out of your home after a meltdown? Get ready for red tape:

TEPCO said in April 2011 that it would pay 1 million yen (about $12,700) to every household forced to evacuate by the Fukushima disaster.

“If the evacuees needed the money anytime soon, however, they were due for disappointment. TEPCO required them to fill out three forms, one of which contained fifty-six pages and was accompanied by a 156-page instruction booklet. The evacuees, many of whom had been living in crowded shelters, were required to submit receipts for their living expenses. They were expected to provide medical records and proof of lost wages.”

6) TEPCO’s efforts to protect itself from blame and compensation claims soon verged on farce:

After the owners of a golf club about 30 miles from Fukushima Daiichi sued TEPCO for their irradiated links, “the utility countered with a novel defense: the radioactive substances that fell on the course ‘belong to the landowners and not TEPCO’… the utility also argued that radiation levels on the golf course were below allowable levels set for schoolyard, and thus were not a hazard.”

7) The Japanese government was vague about the potential health fallout:

Then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano and other politicians told the public that the amount of radiation leaking from Fukushima “’does not have immediate effects on health’… that expression could be interpreted in two conflicting ways: that the radiation was harmless, or that it might produce cancer, just not right away.”

It could have been even worse, if not for one key thing that Fukushima’s operators did right:

The spent fuel pools -- which store the radioactive fuel rods that have been taken out of reactors -- at many U.S. reactors are crowded, a huge risk should a plant suffer an accident or a terrorist attack. Fukushima’s operators were much more proactive about adopting a system known as “dry storage,” where spent fuel is loaded into sealed metal canisters within concrete and steel casks. The heat from the fuel is removed by passive cooling, meaning workers don’t have to worry about pumping water to keep the fuel from releasing radiation.

The 408 spent fuel assemblies in dry storage at Fukushima were jostled around by the earthquake and temporarily submerged by the inundation of the tsunami wave, but were otherwise unharmed. Unlike the spent fuel in the pools, the fuel in dry storage wasn’t an immediate threat: it didn’t need to be sprayed with fire hoses or have water dumped on it from helicopters to be kept in check.

“There are lessons to be learned from what went wrong at Fukushima,” Lochbaum, Lyman and Stranahan wrote. “There are equally important lessons to be learned from what went right.”

Roxanne Palmer

[smoking since 1879]

Well Roxanne Palmer I guess your cheque is in the mail you shrill.
Best do some research before you go writing articles like that.
Shut all the dirty bomb factories down, or it will happen in your backyard luv.

[hanshan]

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http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/02/cheap-way-protect-radiation.html

A Cheap Way To Protect Ourselves from Radiation?
Posted on February 8, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog


Basic Amino Acid May Help Provide Radiation Protection

We recently reported that a high-tech medicine could virtually render radiation harmless by boosting nitric oxide levels in our body. Indeed, high-level scientists were stunned to find that a treatment which boosts nitric oxide levels can virtually bullet-proof mice from high doses of radiation.

There may be a cheaper, lower-tech way to do the same thing.

Specifically, the basic amino acid L-Arginine – widely available at health food stores and on the web – is a precursor to nitric oxide.

L-Arginine boosts nitric oxide levels, and helps to protect us from radiation.

For example, a team of scientists from the University of Pittsburgh published a study concluding that:


L-arginine is shown to protect hematopoietic progenitor (32D cl 3) cells from death due to exposure to γ radiation ((137)Cs).

Let’s unpack this science-talk …

“Hematopoietic” means “blood cell formation”. In other words, L-Arginine helps to protect our body’s ability to make blood cells.

This sounds boring … but is actually crucial to protecting ourselves from radiation.

Destruction of the hematopoietic system is one of the two primary ways that radiation can kill us.

As Dr. David Roberts – of the Laboratory of Pathology, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health – told us:


Protection against the hematopoietic syndrome [i.e. destruction of the blood cell creation system by radiation] and the gastrointestinal syndrome … are responsible for most deaths caused by lethal total body irradiation.

This is also significant because the Pittsburgh study focused on cesium 137, the biggest danger from Fukushima. As the New York Times notes:


Over the long term, the big threat to human health is cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years.

At that rate of disintegration, John Emsley wrote in “Nature’s Building Blocks” (Oxford, 2001), “it takes over 200 years to reduce it to 1 percent of its former level.”

It is cesium-137 that still contaminates much of the land in Ukraine around the Chernobyl reactor.

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Cesium-137 mixes easily with water and is chemically similar to potassium. It thus mimics how potassium gets metabolized in the body and can enter through many foods, including milk.

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The Environmental Protection Agency says that … once dispersed in the environment … cesium-137 “is impossible to avoid.”

Moreover, a study published in the Journal of Surgical Research found that L-Arginine can help protect the intestines from radiation.

So what?

It’s vitally important because – as Dr. Roberts told us – radiation damage to the stomach and intestines is the other major cause of lethal radiation poisoning.

A study published in the journal Radiation Research also found that L-Arginine can reverse radiation-induced immune dysfunction.

A study published in the Journal of Environmental Pathology, Toxicology and Oncology concludes that L-Arginine helps to protect the lungs from radiation damage.

And a Russian study notes that L-Arginine “prevented an increase in chromosome aberration frequency in bone marrow cells of irradiated mice”.

Important notes: While nitric oxide boosters such as L-Arginine may be exciting possibilities for protecting ourselves from radiation, further studies are needed. And there are in fact many winning strategies for protecting ourselves from radiation.

Any supplement – even if very healthful – can be toxic at too high a dose. Even drinking too much water can kill.


You shouldn’t take any supplements without consulting your doctor or other qualified healthcare provider.

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[hanshan]

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see link for charts


http://enenews.com/govt-doc-cattle-feed-california-dairy-farm-300-pcikg-radioactive-cesium-after-fukushima-tested-9-months-after-being-harvested-berkeley-study-reveals-3500-pcikg-cesium

Published: February 15th, 2014 at 5:43 pm ET
By ENENews
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Gov’t Test: Cattle feed at California dairy farm had 300 pCi/kg of radioactive cesium after Fukushima; 9-month gap between when sample harvested and when received by lab — New UC Berkeley study reveals over 3,500 pCi/kg of cesium deposited on nearby roadside



Measurements of Fission Products from the Fukushima Daiichi Incident in San Francisco Bay Area Air Filters, Automobile Filters, Rainwater, and Food, Dec. 27, 2013: A variety of environmental media were analyzed for fallout radionuclides resulting from the Fukushima nuclear accident by the Low Background Facility (LBF) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, CA. [...] An asphalt berm (curb) along the downslope edge of the road protects the slopes below from rainfall runoff from the road surface. [...] Typically, the sieved material represents at least 80% of the total collected material. For analysis, these sediments are packed into one of the same counting containers as are used for soil samples. These procedures were followed for the samples listed in Table A.5 [right].

The June 9, sample result was 132.4 Bq/kg of cesium 134 + 137 (3,579 pCi/kg).

California Department of Public Health (pdf):


Winter forage vegetation at the California dairy farm had combined cesium 134 + 137 equaling 0.299 pCi/gram or 299 pCi/kg.

Cesium-134 levels would be even higher than reported due to the 9 months of radioactive decay that took place before testing occurred (37.5% into its 2-year half-life).

No reason is stated for the 9-month gap between when the vegetation sample was harvested and when it was tested.

View more California milk testing results here