Nuclear Meltdown Watch

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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jul 20, 2014 3:18 pm

JUL 15, 2014
Fukushima's Children are Dying 福島の子供たちが死んでいく
Fukushima's Children are Dying
福島の子供たちが死んでいく

Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times (40x) normal.
福島第一原発の複数の原子炉爆発事故から39ヶ月。周辺地域の子供たちの甲状腺がんの発生率が通常の40倍に急上昇している。
More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people-nearly 200,000 kids-tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.
福島県立医科大学がおこなった調査によると、約20万人の子供たちを含む37万5千人の若い対象者のうち48%以上が前がん症状の結節や嚢胞が発症し、その率はさらに増加している。
More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three would be expected, says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
通常は3種ほどの小児がんが予想されるはずが、120種以上の小児がんが示されている、と『放射能と公衆衛生プロジェクト』の主任管理官、ジョセフ・マンガーノ氏は述べている。
The nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public health tragedy. Some have actually asserted that "not one person" has been affected by Fukushima's massive radiation releases, which for some isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30.
原子力産業とその擁護者たちは、この公衆衛生上の悲劇を否定し続けている。広島原爆で放出された放射性同位元素量の30倍を超える、福島原発からの大量の放射能放出で傷害を受けたものは「一人もいない」と断言する関係者も存在する。
But the deadly epidemic at Fukushima is consistent with impacts suffered among children near the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island and the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, as well as findings at other commercial reactors.
しかし、福島での重篤な小児甲状腺がんなどの大量発症は、1979年スリーマイル島原発事故や1986年チェルノブイリ原発爆発事故後の、あるいは他の原子力発電所周辺での子供たちに発症している病気の調査結果と一致している。
But a wide range of independent studies confirm heightened infant death rates and excessive cancers among the general population. Excessive death, mutation and disease rates among local animals were confirmed by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and local journalists.
更に、(スリーマイル島原発の立地するペンシルベニア州では)ひも付きで無い研究によって、乳幼児死亡率の増加や一般成人におけるがん発症率の増加が確認されているばかりでなく、州の農務省やジャーナリストたちは、地元に生息する動物たちにおける突然死や突然変異や疾患率の増加を確認している。
In the 1980s federal Judge Sylvia Rambo blocked a class action suit by some 2,400 central Pennsylvania downwinders, claiming not enough radiation had escaped to harm anyone. But after 35 years, no one knows how much radiation escaped or where it went. Three Mile Island's owners have quietly paid millions to downwinders victims in exchange for gag orders.
1980年代にシルヴィア・ランボー連邦判事は、中央ペンシルベニア州の原発風下住人2千4百人による集団訴訟を「放出された放射能量は人に害を与えるほどではない」と棄却した。だが35年後現在、放出された放射能量が実際にどれくらいで、どこに流されていったのかも分からないままだ。スリーマイル島原発の所有者たちは、風下犠牲者たちにこっそりと何百万ドルもの口止め料を支払っている。
At Chernobyl, a compendium of more than 5,000 studies has yielded an estimated death toll of more than 1,000,000 people.
また、チェルノブイリで行われた5,000以上もの研究の大要によると推定死者は100万人にものぼる。
The radiation effects on youngsters in downwind Belarus and Ukraine have been horrific. According to Mangano, some 80 percent of the "Children of Chernobyl" born downwinders since the accident have been harmed by a wide range of impacts ranging from birth defects and thyroid cancer to long-term heart, respiratory and mental illnesses. The findings mean that just one in five young downwinders can be termed healthy.
(チェルノブイリ事故)風下のベラルーシとウクライナの若者における放射能汚染の影響は恐ろしい。マンガーノ氏によると、事故以来、風下生まれの『チェルノブイリの子供たち』の約80%が先天性欠損症や甲状腺がん、長期的な心臓、呼吸器系および精神疾患などの傷害を発症させてきた。調査の結果、健康だといえる若い風下住民は5人にたった1人だと報告されている。
Physicians for Social Responsibility and the German chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have warned of parallel problems near Fukushima.
『Physicians for Social Responsibility』(社会的責任を推進する医者たち)と『International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War』(核戦争防止のために働く国際医師団)のドイツ支部も福島原発周辺における同様の問題の発生に対して警告している。
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) has recently issued reports downplaying the disaster's human impacts. UNSCEAR is interlocked with the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, whose mandate is to promote atomic power. The IAEA has a long-term controlling gag order on UN findings about reactor health impacts. For decades UNSCEAR and the World Health Organization have run protective cover for the nuclear industry's widespread health impacts. Fukushima has proven no exception.
『原子放射線の影響に関する国連科学委員会(UNSCEAR)』は、核災害の人的影響を軽視したレポートを最近発行した。 UNSCEARは原子力の利用促進(と管理)を任務とする国連の『国際原子力機関(IAEA)』と連携しているが、 IAEAは、原子力の健康障害に関する国連の調査に長期に渡って箝口令を強いている。何十年もUNSCEARと『世界保健機関 (WHO)』は、原子力産業の広範な健康への影響の隠蔽を図ってきたが、福島も例外ではない。
In response, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the German International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have issued a ten-point rebuttal, warning the public of the UN's compromised credibility. The disaster is "ongoing" say the groups, and must be monitored for decades. "Things could have turned for the worse" if winds had been blowing toward Tokyo rather than out to sea (and towards America).
それに対して、『Physicians for Social Responsibility 』とドイツの『International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War』は10点に渡って反論を展開し、国連の事実歪曲を暴き、人々に警告を発した。福島の核災害は「現在進行中」であり、今後何十年ものモニタリングが必要である。「(事故当時)風向きが海方面(そしてアメリカ)ではなく、東京方面だったら、さらに状況は悪化していた」。
There is on-going risk from irradiated produce, and among site workers whose doses and health impacts are not being monitored. Current dose estimates among workers as well as downwinders are unreliable, and special notice must be taken of radiation's severe impacts on the human embryo.
放射線の照射された食材の流通や放射線照射量や健康がモニタリングされていない原発事故収束作業員など。作業員のみならず、放射能微粒子の流れていった先の住民の累積線量推定値も信頼できない。とりわけ胎児への放射線照射の深刻な影響も考慮しなくてはならない。これらは現在進行形のリスクだ。
UNSCEAR's studies on background radiation are also "misleading," say the groups, and there must be further study of genetic radiation effects as well as "non-cancer diseases." The UN assertion that "no discernible radiation-related health effects are expected among exposed members" is "cynical," say the groups. They add that things were made worse by the official refusal to distribute potassium iodide, which might have protected the public from thyroid impacts from massive releases of radioactive I-131.
自然放射能に関するUNSCEARの研究も「誤解を招く」と医師グループは警告している。放射能の遺伝子への影響だけでなく、癌以外の病気への影響の研究の必要性を訴えている。「放射能に曝露された事故収束作業員への健康への影響は予想されない」という国連の主張は「冷酷だ」と医師グループは述べている。KI(ヨウ化カリウム)の配布を公式に拒否したことにより事態はさらに悪化した。配布されていれば、甲状腺に影響を及ぼす放射性ヨウ素131の大規模な体内摂取から人々を守ることもできた。
Overall, the horrific news from Fukushima can only get worse. Radiation from three lost cores is still being carried into the Pacific. Management of spent fuel rods in pools suspended in the air and scattered around the site remains fraught with danger.
福島からのどんなニュースも恐ろしく、事態の悪化を伝えるばかりだ。いまだに3基の破壊された原子炉から放射能は放出されて、太平洋に流れ出ている。(4号基の)使用済み燃料プールは依然として空中(5階)にあり、原発構内のいたるところに(原子炉の爆発時に)ばら撒かれた放射性廃棄物の管理とともに危険と隣り合わせのままだ。
The pro-nuclear Shinzo Abe regime wants to reopen Japan's remaining 48 reactors. It has pushed hard for families who fled the disaster to re-occupy irradiated homes and villages.
原発推進派の安倍晋三政権は、日本の残りの48基の原子炉を再稼動させようとしている。核災害から逃れた家族たちを、汚染されたままの住居や村に強引に帰そうとしている。
But Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the plague of death and disease now surfacing near Fukushima make it all too clear that the human cost of such decisions continues to escalate-with our children suffering first and worst.
しかし、スリーマイル島、チェルノブイリとであきらかになってきた(放射能汚染による)死や重篤な病は、今、福島でも表面化しつつある。そんな帰村の決定は何よりも子供たちを最も残酷な事態に追い込むものだ。
By: Harvey Wasserman
Translated by: Carole Hisasue & Sam Kanno
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jul 25, 2014 12:48 pm

Japanese monkeys' abnormal blood linked to Fukushima disaster – study
Primates in Fukushima region found to have low white and red blood cell levels and radioactive caesium

Damian Carrington
theguardian.com, Thursday 24 July 2014 11.34 EDT

Wild monkeys in the Fukushima region of Japan have blood abnormalities linked to the radioactive fall-out from the 2011 nuclear power plant disaster, according to a new scientific study that may help increase the understanding of radiation on human health.

The Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) were found to have low white and red blood cell levels and low haemoglobin, which the researchers say could make them more prone to infectious diseases.

But critics of the study say the link between the abnormal blood tests and the radiation exposure of the monkeys remains unproven and that the radiation doses may have been too small to cause the effect.

The scientists compared 61 monkeys living 70km (44 miles) from the the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant with 31 monkeys from the Shimokita Penisula, over 400km (249 miles) from Fukushima. The Fukushima monkeys had low blood counts and radioactive caesium in their bodies, related to caesium levels in the soils where they lived. No caesium was detected in the Shimokita troop.

Professor Shin-ichi Hayama, at the Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University in Tokyo, told the Guardian that during Japan’s snowy winters the monkeys feed on tree buds and bark, where caesium has been shown to accumulate at high concentrations.

“This first data from non-human primates — the closest taxonomic relatives of humans — should make a notable contribution to future research on the health effects of radiation exposure in humans,” he said. The work, which ruled out disease or malnutrition as a cause of the low blood counts, is published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports.

White blood cell counts were lowest for immature monkeys with the highest caesium concentrations, suggesting younger monkeys may be more vulnerable to radioactive contamination. Hayama noted: “Abnormalities such as a decreased blood cell count in people living in contaminated areas have been reported from Chernobyl as a long-term effect of low-dose radiation exposure.” But other blood measures did not correlate with caesium levels, which vary with the seasons.

Prof Geraldine Thomas, at Imperial College London, said the Chernobyl studies were not “not regarded as scientifically validated” and that the correlations between the caesium and low blood counts in the Fukushima study were not statistically strong.

“Unfortunately this is yet another paper with insufficient power to distinguish real effects and relevance to human health,” she said. “We know that one of the most damaging health effects comes from fear of radiation, not radiation itself.” She also noted that people, unlike the monkeys, could avoid eating contaminated food from the Fukushima region.

Another critic, Prof Jim Smith, at the University of Portsmouth, said: “I am highly sceptical of the claim. The levels of radiocaesium in the Fukushima monkeys are about the same as those found in sheep in some parts of the UK following the Chernobyl accident, i.e. extremely low in terms of damage to the animals themselves. I think it much more likely that the apparently low blood cell counts are caused by something other than radiation.”

Prof Hayama said that caesium levels were used as an indicator of the radiation exposure of the monkeys. “The low haematological values in the Fukushima monkeys could have therefore been due to the effect of any radioactive materials,” he said. “We did not conclude the low-blood cell counts are caused by caesium but so far we cannot find other reasons except radiation.”

Engineers at Fukushima are currently working to contain thousands of tonnes of irradiated water groundwater by next March by surrounding the four damaged reactors by an underground frozen wall.

Other research published on Wednesday showed children, teenagers and young adults living near two UK nuclear power stations since the 1990s are not at an increased risk of developing cancer.



New strategy for Fukushima trench water
24 July 2014
New approaches to removing the contaminated water from trenches around units 2 and 3 at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant are being explored after attempts to freeze it failed.
The trenches contain highly-contaminated water that has flowed from the main power plant buildings - a mixture of injected cooling water and groundwater that has leaked into the basements.
In April, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) attempted to freeze the water in the trench outside of unit 2 before removing it. By freezing it, the company hoped to prevent more water flowing from the unit's basement and refilling the trench. This operation is separate to the one to construct a wall of frozen soil around all four Fukushima Daiichi units to prevent groundwater flowing through the buildings and then into the sea.
Tepco said that, despite the success of early experiments, "it has proved exceptionally difficult" to freeze the trench water. This, it said, is due to the constant flow of water into and out of the trench because of the pumping of water from the unit's basement.
The company said that it has now discussed various new strategies for dealing with the trench water with Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority. These include upgrading the capacity of the freezing system; suppressing the flow of the water; and, exploring alternatives means of freezing the water.
Tepco said it has already increased the flow of coolant into the trench water and is considering adding ice or dry ice to the water to help freeze it. If these measures do not work, the company may install additional coolant pipes. Efforts may also be made to stem the flow of water from the reactor buildings by grouting holes, such as spaces around pipes passing through the building's walls.
Tepco plans to implement at least some of these new strategies by the end of this month.
Site superintendent Akira Ono said, "We are committed to these efforts and will continue to pursue these alternatives until we have successfully removed the water from the trenches."
Efforts to freeze the trench water at unit 3 have yet to begin, the company noted, but said that once it has successfully frozen the water it will take 3-4 months to remove it from each unit.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby coffin_dodger » Fri Jul 25, 2014 2:05 pm

from the article above:
“We know that one of the most damaging health effects comes from fear of radiation, not radiation itself.”


Tell that to 500 Rems, Madam. :sarcasm
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby Col. Quisp » Fri Jul 25, 2014 4:45 pm

I read a comment on ENENews recently that said in 2016, the cesium from Chernobyl will become barium and it will be the Nuclear Fall, meaning sunlight will start to not get through and food production will be greatly reduced, bringing on a hell on earth. And by 2041, Fuku cesium will become barium, and we'll be in Nuclear Winter. Or in other words - a dead planet. Well, heck, let me just copy/paste the comment by Ontological:

"2041 when Fuku Cs134/137 becomes Barium crystals in the air, and basically the lights go out as solar incoming light gets reflected back almost completely by then. 2016 is when Chernobyl Cs becomes Barium. It is non water soluble and is toxic metal crystal. Food production by then will be primarily indoors, and there will be suffering at extreme levels just due to Chernobyl's ongoing Cs/Barium change. The followed by yet another ongoing Cs addition to the atmosphere. Darkness and sever radiation is our future. Nuclear Fall is 2 years away. Nuclear Winter begins in 2041, if anything survives Nuclear Fall."
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jul 25, 2014 9:10 pm

Col. Quisp » Fri Jul 25, 2014 3:45 pm wrote:I read a comment on ENENews recently that said in 2016, the cesium from Chernobyl will become barium and it will be the Nuclear Fall, meaning sunlight will start to not get through and food production will be greatly reduced, bringing on a hell on earth. And by 2041, Fuku cesium will become barium, and we'll be in Nuclear Winter. Or in other words - a dead planet. Well, heck, let me just copy/paste the comment by Ontological:

"2041 when Fuku Cs134/137 becomes Barium crystals in the air, and basically the lights go out as solar incoming light gets reflected back almost completely by then. 2016 is when Chernobyl Cs becomes Barium. It is non water soluble and is toxic metal crystal. Food production by then will be primarily indoors, and there will be suffering at extreme levels just due to Chernobyl's ongoing Cs/Barium change. The followed by yet another ongoing Cs addition to the atmosphere. Darkness and sever radiation is our future. Nuclear Fall is 2 years away. Nuclear Winter begins in 2041, if anything survives Nuclear Fall."


Hiya Quisp. Great to see you.

The above quoted matter is not how it works. Presumably this prediction about 2016 is based on the fact that it will be 30 years since the disaster, because:

Caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30.17 years. About 95 percent decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium: barium-137m


Unstable elements or isotopes of elements are radioactive -- which means that samples of these elements constantly release high-energy alpha and beta particles and gamma rays -- precisely because they decay over periods that, given the ultra-zillions of atoms in every grain of sand, are regular and predictable. 95 percent of Caesium decay is into Barium-137m, while 5 percent of the decay produces other isotopes.

A half-life is the period over which one-half of a given quantity of a radioactive isotope turns into a different element through the process of radioactive decay. This does not mean, as the ENENews item suggests, that all of the Caesium-137 (or 95 percent of it) is still Caesium but is going to turn into Barium instantaneously at the end of its 30-year half-life. That premise is so wrong and abusive of the scientific terms that it might as well be telling you the earth is flat. No element turns instantly into another on a schedule, they all do so over periods. (The faster the period, the more radioactive element because it is releasing the alpha/beta/gamma at a faster rate.)

I suspect the author of the above quote understands this, and is engaging in disinfo, possibly to discredit concerns about nuclear power by persuading some of its sincere opponents to believe in obviously wrong science.

After one half-life, only one-half of the original quantity remains. After two half-lives, one-quarter remains. The significance of the half-life of Caesium therefore is that, today, as of 2014, almost half of the Caesium released into the atmosphere by the Chernobyl disaster has already turned into Barium. Thus the predicted disaster of a permanent global winter caused by Barium crystals has already happened.

Or not, as things appear.

The rate of Barium generation is now going to be slower, such that only another quarter of the original Caesium from Chernobyl is going to become Barium through 2046.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby Col. Quisp » Sun Jul 27, 2014 5:20 pm

thanks for clarifying and setting me straight. I've been trying to verify his / her statement and cannot find anything on the subject. Isn't barium what's in chemtrails? if so, why are we not all dead yet from that?

btw, it was not an ENE news item, but rather a comment someone posted to a news item about caribou.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby cptmarginal » Sat Aug 16, 2014 12:51 am

Lockheed goes global to build its nuclear business

Image

In a nondescript strip mall across town from the heavy security of its fighter jet operations, defense contractor Lockheed Martin opens its doors each day to a rotating crew of Chinese engineers.

While the U.S. and Chinese governments spar over the theft of classified military data, Lockheed has entered into a deal with China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. to help build that country’s next generation of nuclear plants.

The only hitch is that the Chinese want their own engineers working on the project. As a military contractor, Lockheed has to be sensitive about employing foreign nationals anywhere where classified military technology is being developed. So it found alternative digs near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Nowhere is the outlook for nuclear power brighter than in China, where the government is on a campaign to clean up the country’s air. Most of China’s electricity is generated by burning coal, which casts a lung-wrenching haze over its major cities. One of China’s goals is to add to its existing fleet of around 15 nuclear power plants. Analysts believe China will build between 60 and 100 more nuclear plants over the next four decades.

Right now Lockheed has a contract to engineer its reactor control system for China through 2017. But Michael Syring, director of nuclear systems for Lockheed, says the company believes the project will lead to a longer-term relationship helping China develop its nuclear sector.

Lockheed and other U.S. nuclear technology companies are looking for new markets in the wake of 2011’s Fukushima meltdown in Japan. The United States and most Western European countries are backing away from nuclear power. That means Lockheed and other companies worldwide that build nuclear plants are scrambling to court power companies in Asia and Eastern Europe.

“The French, the Russians, the Koreans are all competing for contracts,” said Daniel S. Lipman, executive director for policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group in Washington, D.C. “Right now, there are five plants being built in the United States. Sixty-seven are being built abroad.”
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby Col. Quisp » Sat Aug 16, 2014 3:13 pm

Great --- just what we need. More Chinese junk.

did you see the articles about the horses in SoCal? It's on ENENews. Sickening, just sickening. Many are afflicted with a "mystery" disease causing their skin to burn and come off, eyes swollen shut. Coincidentally, there was a surge of elevated gamma rays 2.5 weeks ago, as one of the comments notes.

http://enenews.com/tv-heartbreaking-mys ... reer-video
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby cptmarginal » Sat Aug 16, 2014 8:48 pm

Jake Adelstein's "Japan Subculture Research Center" site published this excellent in-depth article recently:

The Ides Of October: Japan’s nuclear reprocessing “dream” is the world’s nightmare

"Japan is the last state without nuclear weapons to still reprocess spent nuclear fuel."

Japan plans to restart its troubled nuclear fuel reprocessing facility, Rokkasho (六ヶ所再処理工場) in October of this year, but is that a good idea? Experts say Japan should simply shutter its nuclear reprocessing plants & avoid making more dangerous plutonium. Why doesn’t this happen? We decided to see if we could explain. Here is our short primer on the nuclear fuel cycle follies of the land of the rising sun.

Why do most nuclear power dependent countries including Japan want to reprocess spent nuclear fuel?

This is a very good question. If you have no idea what reprocessing nuclear fuel is all about, please hold on. We’ll get to that. Let’s talk a little bit about nuclear plants in general.


Why do most nuclear power dependent countries including Japan want to reprocess spent nuclear fuel?

The Rokkasho plutonium plant was built to end Japan’s dependence on imported uranium, oil, gas and coal. Most countries started civilian reprocessing to acquire plutonium breeder reactors, like the Monju breeder reactor, in Japan. It turned out that such reactors are much more expensive and much less reliable than water-cooling reactors. Currently, the argument in Japan is that spent fuel pools are filling up and it is necessary to have a place where to send the spent fuel. Rokkasho is the only place.

Image
This chart shows how nuclear fuel reprocessing would work ideally. “Let’s recycle our limited important resources!” Yes, let’s. Just don’t spill any plutonium or let the bad kids get any.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby smoking since 1879 » Sat Aug 16, 2014 11:00 pm

aww, MOX there in the middle, bless.

lest we forget ...

Image
image source : http://www.popularresistance.org/50-reasons-we-should-fear-the-worst-from-fukushima/

unit 3 had a little MOX in it

we are all downwinders now

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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 20, 2014 2:26 pm

NO ONE WANTS YOU TO KNOW HOW BAD FUKUSHIMA MIGHT STILL BE
By Johnny Magdaleno Aug 19 2014

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Fukushima nuclear workers and their supporters raise their fists in front of TEPCO headquarters during a rally in Tokyo on March 14, 2014. Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images

Last month, when the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced it would move forward with its plan to construct an “ice wall” around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s failed reactors, it seemed like a step backwards. In June, the utility company in charge of decommissioning the plant—which was ravaged by a tsunami in March 2011—indicated that its initial attempt at installing a similar structure had flopped. Its pipes were apparently unable to freeze the ground, despite being filled with a -22°F chemical solution.

Similar techniques have been successfully used by engineers to build underwater car tunnels and mine shafts. But Dr. Dale Klein, an engineer and expert on nuclear policy, isn’t so sure it’ll produce the same results on a project of this magnitude. He says that although freezing the ground around reactors one through four might help corral the water that’s being used by TEPCO as a coolant, there’s little technical understanding of how the natural water sources surrounding the plant might respond. “As the water comes down the mountains towards the ocean, it’s not clear to me that [TEPCO] really know how it is going to move around that frozen barrier,” he said in an interview with VICE.

“But it has to go somewhere,” he continued. “It’s such a complicated site and problem, and I don’t know if they fully understand that yet.”

It’s worrying to hear doubt from someone like Klein, whose expertise ranges from politics to pedagogy. He was appointed to chair the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission by President Bush in 2006 and, after stepping down in 2009, he served as the organization’s commissioner in 2010. Now, in addition to being associate director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas, he’s part of an international TEPCO advisory panel and visits Japan three to four times a year to work with officials as they struggle to helm a largely ad hoc clean-up effort.

Aside from TEPCO’s unwillingness to consider other engineering solutions, his main point of criticism about Japan’s largest utility company is rooted in one that countless others have voiced since the earthquake (and subsequent tsunami): a suspicious disregard for keeping the public informed.

“When rumors start circulating, TEPCO needs to come forward right away and say, ‘This is what we know, this is what we don’t know,’ rather than staying silent,” Klein said. “They give off the perception that they’re covering up something, when that isn’t what they’re doing at all.”

But it’s hard to give TEPCO the benefit of the doubt when misinformation, lying, and a sub-par approach to safety culture have been central to this quagmire since before the natural disasters. While it’s rarely constructive to point fingers in a time of crisis, it’s worth noting that TEPCO has been reprimanded by the Japanese government, international scientists, peace-keeping organizations, global media outlets, and both anti- and pro-nuclear advocates for its unwillingness to disclose key details at a time when they are desperately needed. Coupled with the unmitigated radiation still pouring into Pacific waters, this helps explain why a Japanese judicial panel announced in late July that it wants TEPCO executives to be indicted.

This negligence can be traced back to the Fukushima plant’s meltdown. Just three months after the plant was crippled, the Wall Street Journal came out with a report culled from a dozen interviews with senior TEPCO engineers saying its operators knew some reactors were incapable of withstanding a tsunami. Since the Daiichi plant’s construction in the late 1960s, engineers had approached higher-ups to discuss refortifying the at-risk reactors, but these requests were denied due to concerns over renovation costs and an overall lack of interest in upgrading what was, at the time, a functioning plant. In 2012, it came to light that one such cost-cutting measure was the use of duct tape to seal leaking pipes within the plant.

A year after the Wall Street Journal report, TEPCO announced that the Daiichi plant’s meltdown had released 2.5 times more radiation into the atmosphere than initially estimated. The utility cited broken radiation sensors within the plant’s proximity as the main reason for this deficit and, in the same statement, claimed that 99 percent of the total radiation released from the Daiichi plant occurred during the last three weeks of March 2011. That last part turned out to be untrue—a year later, in June 2013, TEPCO admitted that almost 80,000 gallons of contaminated water had been leaking into the Pacific Ocean every day since the meltdown. As of today, that leak continues.



Relatives of tsunami victims offer prayers at the site of their house that was swept by tsunami at Namie, near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on the third anniversary. Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

This year marked the disaster’s third anniversary, but new accounts of mismanagement and swelling radiation levels continue to surface. In February, TEPCO revealed that groundwater sources near the Daiichi plant and 80 feet from the Pacific Ocean contained 20 million becquerels of the harmful radioactive element Strontium-90 per gallon (one becquerel equals one emission of radiation per second). Even though the internationally accepted limit for Strontium-90 contamination in water hovers around 120 becquerels per gallon, these measurements were hidden from Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority for nearly four months. As a response, the national nuclear watchdog agency censured TEPCO for lacking a “fundamental understanding of measuring and handling radiation.”

And last month, TEPCO told reporters that 14 different rice paddies outside Fukushima’s exclusion zone were contaminated in August 2013, after a large piece of debris was removed from one of the Daiichi plant’s crippled reactors. The readings were taken in March 2014, but TEPCO didn’t publicize their findings until four months later, at the start of July—meaning almost a year had passed since emissions had begun to accumulate at dangerous levels in Japan’s most sacred food.

The list, unfortunately, goes on. This is merely the abridged account of TEPCO’s backpedalling and PR shortfalls. It begs many questions, but the most perplexing one is: Why? Why has a crisis that is gaining traction as the worst case of nuclear pollution in history—worse, emission-wise, than Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Chernobyl—being smothered with internal censorship? If omission of information isn't intentional, like Dr. Klein suggests, why haven’t these revelations led to a stronger institutional effort to contain Fukushima and reduce the chance that irregularities go unnoticed or unreported?

When I asked past Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr. Helen Caldicott these questions, she was quick to respond: “Because money matters more than people.”

Dr. Caldicott was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School when she became president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an American organization of doctors against nuclear warfare, climate change, and other environmental issues, in 1978. The organization, along with its parent body the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, a year after Caldicott left.

Last September, Caldicott organized a symposium at the New York Academy of Medicine entitled, “The Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima,” and has a book coming out on the issue this October. Her expertise on the subject is founded on academic research, but also her lifelong role as a doctor practicing preventative medicine in the nuclear age.

“Japan produces parts for nuclear reactors, like reactor containment vessels,” she said in an interview with VICE. “They’re heavily invested in nuclear power, even though they actually have access to nine times more renewable energy than Germany.”

Although Caldicott says what separates Fukushima from Chernobyl is the continuous leakage of radioactive material, in her eyes they’re unified by an institutionalized effort to keep the veil from lifting. “The Japanese government took three months to tell the world that there had been three meltdowns, even though the meltdowns had taken place in the first three days,” she said. “They’re not testing the food routinely. In fact, they’re growing food in highly radioactive areas, and there are stories that the most radioactive food is being canned and sold to third-world countries.”

“Some doctors in Japan are starting to get very worried about the fact that they’re seeing an increase in diseases but they’re being told not to tell their patients that the diseases are related to radiation,” she continued. “This is all because of money. Bottom line.”

The money she refers to isn’t only rooted in Japan’s export of nuclear reactor parts, or the fact that the economy is starting to reclaim its reign over Japan’s national consciousness. It’s threaded throughout a history of collusion and secretive deals that extend beyond TEPCO’s record. Late last month, a longterm vice president of the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO), which sourced nearly 50 percent of its electricity from nuclear power sources like Fukushima before the 2011 accident, revealed to Japanese reporters that the company’s president donated approximately $3.6 million to seven different Japanese prime ministers and other political figures between 1970 and 1990. The amount officials received was based on how much their incumbency profited the nuclear and electric energy sectors.

And if it’s not money that lies beneath these multi-faceted attempts at obscuring information about Fukushima, it’s the fear of mass hysteria. When it was revealed that the United Nations-affiliated pro-nuclear group International Atomic Energy Association made a deal with local government officials in Fukushima to classify information that might stoke public concern (like, observers speculate, cancer rates and radiation levels), civilian fears of a cover-up campaign crept out of the mischief associated with conspiracy and into the gravity of a situation that feels more and more surreal.



Norio Tsuzumi (center, standing), vice president of TEPCO, and employees bow their heads to apologize to evacuees at a shelter in Koriyama. Ken Shimizu/AFP/Getty Images

Despite these efforts, plenty has come to light. As of August 2014, we know that radiation levels around the Fukushima area continue to rise, even after three years of containment attempts. We know that doctors have found 89 cases of thyroid cancer in a study of less than 300,000 children from the Fukushima area—even though the normal incidence rate of this disease among youths is one or two for every million. We know that Japanese scientists are still reluctant to publicize their findings on Fukushima due to a fear of getting stigmatized by the national government.

We also know that US sailors who plotted a relief effort in Fukushima immediately after the disaster have reportedly been experiencing a well-up of different cancers, that monkeys living outside Fukushima’s restricted zone have lower blood cell counts than those living in other parts of northern Japan, and that the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War’s thorough critique of a recent Fukushima report by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiation shows how the international community is severely underestimating the effects of the crisis.

Whether or not TEPCO’s ice wall will be as successful as the company’s lead engineers expect is ultimately dependent on trial. But Dr. Klein, Dr. Caldicott, and others have their own ideas of what should have been done, and what might still need doing in the near future.

“I would like to see them try external pumps a bit more to see if they can slow the inflow of water,” said Dr. Klein. This would involve placing mechanical pumps upstream from the water sources and away from the plant, to collect and contain the water before it passes over the damaged reactors. “Before the accident occurred, they were moving about 27,000 gallons of water a day around the site.”

“The problem is that TEPCO has hardly invited in the international community to help to try and solve the problem,” says Dr. Caldicott. “A huge company like [Florida-based engineering group] Bechtol, which makes reactors and is a very good engineering company, should have been invited in by the Japanese government to try and propose a way to deal with these problems in an engineering fashion.”

At the same time, she recognizes that it’s not only up to Japan. “There should be an international consortium of global experts from France, from Russia, from the United States, and Canada, putting their heads together with the Japanese and working out solutions,” she said.

Others believe that Japan needs to look northwest, towards the Kremlin. Chernobyl gave Russia and Ukraine a level of experience in handling nuclear failures that stands apart from most of the world.

But even though the ecological effects of Fukushima continue to be hotly debated by scientific organizations and the public, Dr. Klein wants to take a step back from the conversation in order to move towards the endgame. “I’d like to see a completely safe operation. It’s complicated,” he concedes, “but we need to help support the Japanese clean-up efforts whenever we can.”

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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 21, 2014 7:41 am

US sailors prepare for fresh legal challenge over Fukushima radiation
$1bn lawsuit accuses Tepco of failing to avoid the accident and of lying about radiation levels that have caused health problems to themselves and their families stationed in Japan

Suzanne Goldenberg in San Diego

The Guardian, Wednesday 20 August 2014 08.00 EDT

Tsunami and Fukushima accident : USS Ronald Reagan sailors during Operation Tomodachi
Sailors scrub the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan to remove potential radiation contamination following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images
The first time it occurred to James Jackson that there could be lasting damage from his US Navy service during Japan’s tsunami and nuclear disaster came when his eldest son, Darius, was diagnosed with leukaemia.

Darius, now 15, spent a month in hospital in early 2013, soon after his diagnosis. “I thought I was going to have to bury him,” Jackson recalled. The teenager who aspired to play college basketball now has a catheter in his chest and is too frail to run the length of the court.

Jackson, a navy information technologist, was stationed with his family at Yokosuka, Japan, when an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear plant in March 2011, causing a triple meltdown.

He acknowledges he can’t know for sure why Darius got leukaemia – but Jackson remains convinced there is a connection to the radiation escape from the Fukushima disaster and he blames the Japanese electric company, Tepco.

On 25 August, a district court judge in San Diego will decide whether the Jacksons – and around 110 other US navy sailors and marines – can proceed with a $1bn lawsuit that accuses Tepco of failing to avoid the accident and of lying about the levels of radiation from the stricken reactors, putting US personnel at risk.

“I don’t think the navy or the United States government would have let us stay there in the region. They would have gotten us out of there probably within the first 48, or 72 hours if they knew then what they know now,” Jackson said. “The issue is that we have this large company, this large enterprise, feeding the Japanese government and the rest of the world bad information. They could have come to the forefront and said: ‘hey we need help’, instead of trying to put a blanket over it.”

Relief effort

Some 77,000 US navy sailors and marines took part in the huge relief effort after Japan’s cascading disasters, called Operation Tomodachi, or friend.

The 110 sailors suing Tepco represent only a small fraction of that number, and the lawsuit does not have the support of the US navy establishment. The navy maintains US sailors serving in Japan received only small, non-harmful doses of radiation. Medical experts also say radiation levels were too low to harm those involved.

“Radiation exposure to US personnel supporting Operation Tomodachi did not present any risks greater than risks normally accepted during everyday life,” Lieutenant Chika Onyekanne said in an email.

But the lawsuit – and a number of unexplained illnesses among veterans of Operation Tomodachi – have attracted attention in the US, especially among anti-nuclear activists.

The lawsuit alleges a number of the sailors and their children suffered thyroid and other cancers, leukaemia, birth defects, and a variety of medical conditions including infertility after they were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Some of the sailors were also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One of the sailors named in the lawsuit, helicopter mechanic Theodor Holcomb, who served on the USS Reagan aircraft carrier, died of a rare cancer on 24 April. The lawsuit seeks $1bn for a medical monitoring and treatment fund.

The case is one of a number of lawsuits brought against Tepco in US and Japanese courts after the accident on 11 March 2011.

An aerial view of damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant after an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the cooling systems in March 2011.
An aerial view of damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant after an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the cooling systems in March 2011. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images
An earlier suit brought by the sailors was dismissed in April. Tepco said: “It is wholly implausible … to posit that military commanders in charge of thousands of personnel and armed with some of the world’s most expensive equipment relied instead only on the press releases and public statements of a foreign electric utility company.”

A judicial panel in Japan on 31 July said three former Tepco executives should face criminal charges for the disaster, finding they overlooked the risk of an earthquake or tsunami, and failed to take adequate measures to prevent an accident.

Several investigations since the accident have found that Tepco and Japan’s nuclear regulator failed to bring the Fukushima plant up to international safety standards.

Researchers at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 2012 found that Tepco and the regulatory agency failed to plan for major earthquakes or tsunamis and that the meltdown could have been prevented if the company had taken steps to protect an emergency power supply for the reactor’s cooling system.

An investigating commission appointed by the Japanese parliament found Tepco and government regulator were over-confident and failed to invest adequate time and money to prepare for earthquake or a nuclear meltdown. The 2012 commission report rejected Tepco’s argument that the tsunami was impossible to predict, saying this was based on a “safety myth”. The commission also said Tepco tried to hide data regarding damage to the reactors.

The current case hinges on whether the court in San Diego agrees that Tepco should have done more to avoid a meltdown, according to their lawyer, Charles Bonner.

“This case to do with the fact that Tepco, this multi-trillion dollar company … did not do enough to eliminate the foreseeable risk to anyone of dealing with the hazards of a nuclear meltdown,” Bonner told the Guardian.

The sailors and marines suing Tepco also have to prove that radiation exposure was a substantive factor in their illness, Bonner said. Lawyers for Tepco refused to comment on the case.

Radioactive cloud

When the 9.0 earthquake struck Japan, unleashing a 14 metre tsunami, the US Navy immediately mobilised the US aircraft carrier, USS Ronald Reagan, and sailors at its bases in Japan, for a relief effort.

As the Reagan neared the coast of Japan, it was enveloped in a radioactive cloud. The commander put the ship in lockdown, advising sailors not to drink or shower in the water, and ordering them to stay below deck.

At the time, Lieutenant Steve Simmons was in peak physical condition. He spent his off-duty hours on the Reagan doing P90X insanity workouts. He said he initially accepted his commanders’ assurances that there was no threat from the radiation. “I could say I was foolish and pushed the ‘I believe’ button, because those who were telling us that were supposed to know what they were doing,” he said. “I later found just a couple of months ago that they were picking up radiation levels on the ship 30 times higher than what Tepco had reported.”


‘This is 100% Tepco’s problem’
By late 2011, Simmons, now 36, was back in the US, with his wife and three children, and driving to work in the northern Virginia suburbs when he experienced a blackout. The episode – accompanied by high fevers, swollen lymph nodes and muscle spasms – was the start of a physical deterioration that, by the time of his retirement from the navy last month, left Simmons confined to a wheelchair.

Military doctors have yet to reach a diagnosis on his deteriorating condition, Simmons said. But he and his wife, Summer, are convinced it was caused by radiation poisoning. “Nobody can change the fact of what happened but they can change how people are taken care of,” he said. “A lot of the marines and sailors suffering from ailments, they were young. They don’t have the privilege of having 10 plus years in the service, fighting different bureaucracies, trying to get help with their medical bills.”

On shore, sailors like Jackson and Mike Sebourn, an aviation maintenance chief based in Atsugi, Japan, were also mobilised for the relief effort. In early April, Sebourn was promoted to radiation decontamination officer, issued with a handheld radiation device, Tyvek suit and respirator, and charged with cleaning up helicopters flying relief missions into the tsunami zone. “I was the guy on the ground taking the background readings every day.”

He felt no ill effects at the time, Sebourn said. But his son Kimi, who was then eight, went through bouts of extreme nausea and severe nose bleeds, missing a month of school. “The kid could not stop throwing up, over and over and over. It happened every single day, at least once a day, and sometimes twice a day,” he said. “Not knowing what was wrong with my son was absolutely heartbreaking and just tore me up inside.”

By the time Sebourn left the navy in December 2012, his own health had started to decline. He was diagnosed with PTSD. He also had unexplained muscle loss that left his right arm and leg much smaller than his left.

Sebourn admits his ailments may have nothing to do with the nuclear disaster, but he can’t help thinking a connection could emerge over time. “My biggest concern is what the future holds,” he said. “What I worry about is 10 or 15 years down the road, do I come down with radiation sickness, or do I come down with cancer, or does my son come down with cancer? I certainly hope not, but what happens?” he said. “If the worst does happen, am I going to be taken care of?”

But the sailors and marines have a difficult challenge ahead. A peer-reviewed US navy medical study, conducted at the request of Congress, concluded there was no evidence that the sailors aboard the Reagan or at other US navy sites in Japan had received radiation doses that would put them at higher risk of cancer and other diseases.

Indeed, the study found incidence of some cancers was lower among sailors aboard the Reagan than in the general population.

Members of the Japan Nuclear Regulation Authority inspect makeshift water storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Members of the Japan Nuclear Regulation Authority inspect makeshift water storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Photograph: Japan Nuclear Regulation/EPA
“There is no objective evidence that the Ronald Reagan sailors experienced radiation exposures during [the operation] that would result in an increase in the expected numbers of radiogenic diseases over time,” the study said. “The estimated radiation doses for all individuals …were very small and well below levels associated with the occurrence of adverse medical conditions.”

Two independent radiation experts who reviewed the study for the Guardian said they agreed with the conclusions.

Jonathan Links, an environmental health sciences professor at Johns Hopkins University and a consultation on radiation terrorism to the city of Baltimore, said the average eight millirem (mrem) radiation dose received by the sailors was equivalent to eight chest X-rays with modern equipment. “By way of comparison, all of us in Baltimore receive a yearly dose from background radiation of over 300 mrem,” he wrote in an email.

He also said the elapsed time between exposure to a carcinogen and development of cancers was generally far longer - at least five years for leukaemia - than that experienced by the US sailors.

Paddy Regan, professor of nuclear physics at the University of Surrey and an expert witness for nuclear test victims against the UK government, said he had the greatest sympathy for the sailors.

It was clear some were suffering, he said. But the number of cancers among USS Reagan sailors did not in themselves indicate dangerous levels of radiation during the disaster.

“If all of these sailors were exposed to a similar amount of radioactivity and it was above the threshold that definitely causes cancer, you would expect there to be a statistically significant spike,” he said. “It wouldn’t just be one or two people who had cancer.”

The sailors, for their part, say they are prepared for a long hard fight – and for the prospects of a backlash from some of their former shipmates.

For Darius, however, he just wants his illness to be over, and for ordinary life to resume. He is still undergoing treatment for leukaemia, still stuck in hospital instead of spending time with his friends. “I just want to get through all of this so I can start playing sports for high school,” he said. “I want this just to go away, and to just fast forward the next four years so I can play all the sports I want.”
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 03, 2014 7:28 am

For Half of a Dance Duo, a Venture Alone in a Crowd
Eiko, Without Koma, Creates in Philadelphia and Fukushima
By GIA KOURLASOCT. 1, 2014

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‘A Body in Fukushima’
‘A Body in Fukushima’CreditWilliam Johnston

It started ordinarily enough. Eiko, the Japanese choreographer and dancer, was waiting for a train at the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia when she began to notice the space around her, and then, the bodies in that space.

“Everyone is alone,” she said one recent morning at her Midtown Manhattan apartment where she lives with Koma, her husband and artistic partner. “And almost everyone is on a cellphone, reading or talking, especially right before they go to the gate. Then there are people who are just quiet. How could I place myself as one of those people who are kind of sitting, not going anywhere — yet?”

Raising an eyebrow, she emphasized that last word as if she were telling a campfire mystery. “Is she waiting for a train that’s much later?” Eiko asked. “Doesn’t she have a place to go? She’s in that little space between inside and outside: not at home, but not at her destination either. So a sense of this transition, transportation and transformation got me thinking: What if I don’t do Eiko & Koma here? What if I just use my body as my body?”

Fittingly, the notion of solitude and vulnerability has inspired “A Body in a Station,” Eiko’s first solo conceived and performed without Koma, who is nursing an ankle injury. Presented by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the work develops as a series of three-hour performances, once a week, at the 30th Street Station beginning Friday from noon to 3 p.m. Subsequent performances will pick up at the time of day when the last one finished; on Oct. 10, she performs from 3 to 6 p.m.

Also beginning on Friday, at the museum, is “A Body in Fukushima,” an exhibition of photographs by William Johnston featuring Eiko, 62, performing in abandoned train stations in Fukushima, Japan. The images, elegant, bleak and harrowing, place her in a desolate landscape devastated by the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Harry Philbrick, the museum’s director, regards the two projects as bookends. “She uses the phrase, ‘a body,’ in the title of both works,” he said. “Her body is the link between them. They’re radically different places even though they’re train stations.”

Eiko realizes that her “Body” series could expand to many locations. “It’s Fukushima and the 30th Street Station and then all the other places I may go in the future,” she said gleefully. “I am becoming a teenager. Leaving house!”

While Eiko & Koma do not refer to themselves as Butoh artists, their performances are marked by a bracing stillness that gives off the effect of arresting time. In Mr. Johnston’s images, Eiko is often shown lying down or, as she recently demonstrated at her apartment, standing up while exuding the air of reclining. Her long hair cascaded past frail, dangling arms; her head fell to the side as if she were slowly wilting.

Without Koma to dance with, Eiko, as something of a conduit, is drawing energy from the places she inhabits. “Working with her alone in Fukushima was truly amazing,” Mr. Johnston said. “For her, it became a dialogue with all the people who had been there.”

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
By dancing in Philadelphia’s main station, Eiko realizes that she might be an irritant for some hurried travelers. “You will have to accept me,” she said. “So how do I deliver the pleasure of being a nuisance? I think I have a taste for it, and that’s the bottom line: I have a taste for being a nuisance.”

Certainly, she said, political protest is about being a nuisance, too. But while the piece isn’t an overtly political work, as Eiko highlights the liminal experience of a body in a train station she hopes to reveal humanity among the travelers and herself.

Last summer, she performed “Two Women,” a duet with Tomoe Aihara, in an enormous, raw space at Governors Island in New York harbor; throughout, she maintained eye contact with viewers, which emphasized the idea that even though she was performing, collectively we were all bodies in one place. She hopes to do the same at the station.

“I want to have a moment of that one to one,” she said. “So this is not really a finished work presented in a grand place: It’s my laboratory. At Governors Island, more than anything, I realized I need eyes. And I don’t have to be praised. I don’t have to be liked. But if nobody’s there, I don’t really see much point of doing this.”

For her first solo work, Eiko has not sought direction from Koma. “At Governors Island, toward the end of it, by the time I knew it was O.K., he would come,” she recalled. “And then he said crazy things, and I kind of said: ‘There he goes again. I don’t need this!’ ”

They’ve been together for a long time. But she did relent on one point: He suggested changing the seating to make better use of the natural light. “I moved people, and it made my choreography different,” she said. “That was good. He is supportive, but I don’t want any more than that. This is my test.” She laughed. “And I can’t cheat.”

Eiko performs “A Body in a Station” on Friday and on Oct. 10, 17 and 24 at the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia; “A Body in Fukushima” is at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia Friday through April 5; pafa.org.


Fukushima, Three Years Later
BY JEHAN JILLANI

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A telephone booth outside the Momouchi Station, Fukushima. December 2013.
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An abandoned park in Odaka Town. Although residents are allowed to return during daylight hours, few do. April 2014.
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Runoff from bags holding irradiated earth runs through sandy soil in Odaka Town. This runoff is on the grounds of a former middle school. April 2014
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The storm-battered coast of Fukushima, December 2013.




The photographer Jake Price left New York for Japan forty-eight hours after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck, leading to meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, in 2011. “I was aware of how dangerous it would be. I just felt close to the story,” Price told me. He has spent three-and-a-half years documenting the disaster’s effects on the Tohoku region, the site of the power plant, and the worst effects of the earthquake and tsunami.

Price will present his work at the New York Film Festival this Sunday, exhibiting photographs of the region’s changing landscape as well as audio and video recordings. In abandoned towns near the power plant, “nature has taken over civilization,” Price said. “It’s beautiful but it’s a terrible shame, because it’s not a science experiment—it’s the result of abandoned lives, and it’s the consequence of a man-made disaster.” Price mentioned a photograph that shows domesticated plants competing for space with newer wild growth. “I wonder if the domesticated plants will perish or change to survive,” he said.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 16, 2014 8:27 am

Mainstream US Corporate Media Ignore Increased Fukushima Water Radioactivity

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
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Diablo Canyon power plant in California. Will it become the US's Fukushima? (Photo: Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
You have to go to The Japan Times to find out that this week's Typhoon Phanfone caused a significant spike in the radioactive contamination of groundwater at Fukushima:

The radioactive water woes at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant got worse over the weekend after the tritium concentration in a groundwater sample surged more than tenfold this month.

A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. [TEPCO] said Saturday that heavy rain caused by Typhoon Phanfone probably affected the groundwater after the storm whipped through Japan last week.

Some 150,000 becquerels of tritium per liter were measured in a groundwater sample taken Thursday from a well east of the No. 2 reactor. The figure is a record for the well and over 10 times the level measured the previous week.

According to The Japan Times, the news gets worse: "In addition, materials that emit beta rays, such as strontium-90, which causes bone cancer, also shattered records with a reading of 1.2 million becquerels, the utility said of the sample."

Searching through Google news, this writer could not find any coverage in US news (or other Western media, for that matter) of this harrowing development. Ironically, today (October 15) The Wall Street Journal posted an article entitled, "Japan Could Use Fukushima to Develop Safer Nuclear Technology." The Journal reported:

Japan is looking to put nuclear power back online early next year with the expected restarting of two reactors in southern Japan. They would be the first of Japan’s 48 offline reactors to resume operations under new, tougher safety regulations introduced after the 2011 accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

The Wall Street Journal report reflects the support in the business community, the White House and Congress for increased nuclear energy. Instead of viewing Fukushima as an ongoing hotspot representing the peril of nuclear power, the Journal and other nuclear advocates argue Fukushima has provided a good lesson in how to improve atomic energy as a power source.

Of course, the boosters who will profit off of nuclear power don't mention other disasters, such as Chernobyl, or near disasters, such as Three Mile Island. That is because there is no risk-free strategy in pursuing a nuclear power policy. The only certain prevention of a catastrophic event at a nuclear power plant is not to build one in the first place - and to shut down the ones that are currently operating.

BuzzFlash commentator Jackie Marcus recently wrote about the hazardous Diablo Canyon reactors on the California coast:

The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is a carbon copy of Fukushima located off the sea cliffs of Avila Beach. Given climate change disasters, rising sea levels, and a warming earth, which have the potential of producing more tsunamis and cataclysmic Richter 9.0 earthquakes that nobody could have predicted at the time Diablo was built, there should be no question about shutting it down. But the ‘powers that be’ are going to push hard for nuclear power. Environmentalists must not give in. In fact, after Fukushima, it’s insane to accept nuclear power as a “clean and safe” alternative to fossil fuels.

In addition, the Diablo reactors are located just 45 miles from the San Andreas Fault, and they are situated perilously near other secondary fault lines. What lesson could Fukushima provide for a nuclear plant located in an earthquake zone other than to shut it down as soon as possible?

While the US corporate press is covering Ebola in the United States as the lead in almost every news cycle (though not many stories focus on western Africa, where the virus is having a devastating impact), issues of critical concern, such as nuclear power, are largely ignored.

Will it take a Fukushima-like occurrence in the United States to force upon the nuclear industry the scrutiny that it deserves?

If you have confidence that the Fukushima disaster will help build "better" nuclear facilities, consider this sentence from The Japan Times article:

TEPCO has been periodically measuring the concentration of radioactive materials in groundwater at 34 points east of the reactors 1 through 4.

Readings hit record highs at three points after the heavy rain caused by the typhoon, but the utility said it does not know why.

When the private utility running Fukushima doesn't know why radioactive levels in the plant's water spiked to new highs, the only lesson to be learned is that nuclear power plants endanger us all.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Nuclear Meltdown Watch

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:38 pm

Japan's timid coverage of Fukushima led this news anchor to revolt — and he's not alone
PRI's The World
Reporter Sam Harnett
October 17, 2014 · 3:15 PM EDT

Former NHK anchor Jun Hori speaks at a TEDx event in Kyoto, Japan, about opening Japanese journalism to non-traditional sources.

No one is telling Shiga Kamematsu the truth.


It's been three-and-a-half years since 83-year-old Kamematsu left his home, with its rice patties, vegetable fields and 10 cows, fleeing the disaster at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. He still can't go back.

When will it be ready for people again? No one seems to know — or be interested in telling him. “I can’t take my land with me,” he says, “so I don't know what to do. I can't see ahead.”

Kamematsu is one of about 80,000 people in Japan still officially displaced by the nuclear crisis. Questions remain about radiation levels, the clean-up process and when residents can return home. Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of media studies at Tokyo's Sophia University, says many Japanese are frustrated by what they see as a lack of information.

Japanese journalists did what Tajima calls "announcement journalism" in reporting on the crisis. He says they were reporting the press releases of big companies and the people in power. And he's not the only one who thinks so.

“I am a newscaster, but I couldn't tell the true story on my news program," says Jun Hori, a former anchor for NHK, the Japanese state broadcaster.

Hori says the network restricted what he and other journalists could say about Fukushima and moved more slowly than foreign media to report on the disaster and how far radiation was spreading. The attitude in the newsroom was not to question official information

“I was on the ground in Fukushima, and a lot of people kept asking me, why didn't you tell us earlier about what is happening?” Hori says.

Out of frustration, Hori started tweeting uncensored coverage. “I got a huge response,” he says, “but then my superiors said the NHK was getting complaints from politicians about what I was saying. They told me I had to stop.”

Hori eventually quit the NHK and started his own website for citizen journalism — 8-Bit news. He says Fukushima showed people in Japan that they had to be proactive about getting information. Anyone can submit videos and news content to his site.

“Until now, the Japanese thought someone was doing it: companies, the government, someone," Hori says. "But once you peeled back the cover, you saw that nobody was doing it.”

That's backed up by outside observers as well: Japan has dropped 31 places since 2011 in a World Press Freedom ranking compiled by the group Reporters Without Borders. The group cites “a lack of transparency and almost zero respect for access to information on subjects directly or indirectly related to Fukushima.”

In a statement, NHK said it covered the event accurately and promptly reported a meltdown. It did not address claims that it faced outside pressure from politicians to restrict Hori's Twitter account.

Hori's 8-Bit is part of wave of new media launched since Fukushima, spanning everything from blogs and social media to documentaries. Yasumi Iwakami started one of the first efforts. He took live streaming video of press conferences and other coverage and loaded them up to a site called the Independent Web Journal.

“We just kept the cameras running all the time,” Iwakami says. “Even during the breaks at press conferences. We interviewed everyone we could.”

If you want to say something clearly and directly in Japan, Iwakami says, it takes a lot of effort. You have to do something drastic — like start a streaming news site run on donations. “That's very crazy!” he says.

It is a big change from Japan’s traditional media, says Benjamin Ismail, head of the Asia-Pacific desk for Reporters Without Borders. He says that in covering Fukushima, self-censorship was a big issue.

“Some of the journalists really believed they had a duty not to create a global panic,” Ismail says, “and therefore they had to withhold some of the information they obtained.”

Ismail hopes Japan's alternative media can gain steam, especially because there's not much time to act. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is moving ahead on restarting the nuclear industry, and the first reactors are projected to be back online by next year.


Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
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