Dr. Alex Rosen, a German pediatrician and Vice President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in Germany, cites his organization’s recently published Critical Analysis of the UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee On The Effects Of Atomic Radiation) report on Fukushima that seriously – if not criminally — minimizes the health dangers of that nuclear disaster. Rosen decodes the UNSCEAR report’s methodology, shows where it cherry-picked its data and, in effect, demolishes its credibility.
Fukushima city government launches a new public information program to educate its kids about radiation. It includes such contraindicated gems as:
It is important to walk or play outside.
Open the window to keep good ventilation (nothing about the need for air filtration).
Dry clothes in sunshine (no word about radionuclides in the air or dust)
Air your futon outside when it’s sunny!
Fukushima city government campaign, “Let’s Build Radiation Resistance Body”
For a more realistic look at what it means to attempt life in Fukushima Daiichi’s radiation-saturated environment, here’s a picture of Fukushima nuclear refugee Setsuko Kida (from Nuclear Hotseat #134 – http://ow.ly/sP00P) facing the need to do her dishes with bottled water:
Setsuko was surprised to see clean dishes stacked on her kitchen sink. “The dishes were still dirty in the sink, but my husband must have brought along some water and washed them,” she said, choking back tears.
台所の食器が綺麗に洗ってあると驚く木田さん。
「汚れっぱなしだったんだけど、お父さんがわざわざ水を持ってきて洗ってくれたのね、、。」
と木田さんが少し声を詰まらせながら言った。
Photos courtesy of Yuji Kaneko for use on Nuclear Hotseat website. Reproduction requires permission.
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION DUCK AND COVER REPORT:
Oconee Nuclear Station in Florida forced to shut down from undetected crack that leaked; NRC forces regulator Duke Energy to attend a conference;
Proposed shutdown of Indian Point reactors near Manhattan so heated water discharge doesn’t kill billions of fish, fish eggs and larvae; Entergy asks NRC to extend licenses another 20 years each, though Unit 2′s license expired in 2013 – and it’s still operating!
And…
When people get concerned about safety limits, change the limit to change the perception = no problem!
Florida Power and Light’s Turkey Point nuclear power reactors in Miami-Dade County are trying to cool the reactor with canal water that’s 99 degrees – only one degree short of the NRC’s safety limit for cooling water. FPL’s solution? Asking the NRC to raise the 100-degree operating limit to 104 degrees so the reactors can stay on line. OY!
Its simple really ,if your watching or reading main stream media and they use key words while talking nuclear that includes anything containing Potassium 40 like potato chips drinking water or everyday objects its time to switch the program off before it programs you . Of course almost everything on earth has potassium 40 in it but why is it in a conversation about man made ionized radiated elements ,is it a accident ? How difficult is it to tell the difference between a banana and ionized radiated 12 ft nuclear fuel rod is anyones guess . Radon is another red herring as it also is normal radiation found at insignificant levels throughout earth and is used to cover up nuclear fallout repeatedly in media . Radon is also used to scare homeowners and inundate the innocent with radiation is everywhere mentality . How many home owners have ever died of Radon gas again, oh that’s right none but according to experts its a epidemic and it is one of the leading cause of lung cancer right .
Wait a second everything on earth is here because it is genetically superior and because it is acclimated to natural radiation ,bananas will not mutate fruit flys k . But now WHO says its a major contributor to cancer and we are suppose to believe that life on earth didn,t adapt to Radon or natural radiation umm m’kay . Those assertions are too ridiculous to take serious but a great way to shake down the home building industry and acclimating the trendy’s to radiation is everywhere syndrome and have a radiation boogeyman to convoluted man made radiation with .
When a nuclear apologist critter spots easy prey or is provided a platform they get strait to work . Their job as a nuclear lapdog is to throw insignificant terms into the nuclear equation to confuse and distort normal true background radiation with killer man made radiation by constantly repeating the same keywords .
The viewers and readers have all heard for 70 years how man made radiation is like Banana’s from main stream media verbatim . Did you know if you eat a Banana you basically in lay mans terms off gas that potassium 40 like is in banana’s because it is homeostasis . Your body can not hold more potassium 40 nothing on earth can . Other popular misdirections by creepy nuclear critters is ” did you know potatoes have natural radiation in them ” once again this is homeostasis its natural and your body is adapted too easily handle that .
Go watch any video of the nuclear apologist they usually only do interviews at night after the sun goes down because sunlight can easily destroy their credibility . Once darkness descends you will hear them say ” your drinking water has 7500 Bq of natural potassium 40 in it so having 1200 Bq/Kg of man made ionized Cs 137 in your food is ok ‘ .
But Potassium 40 is irrelevant its homeostasis you off gas the same amount , Cs 137 accumulates its accumulative and its a man made iodized radioactive particle . These atoms and particle do not exist on the moon and the sun doesn,t make them , the sun creates elements we destroy elements they are completely different in every possible way .
If you ingest man made radiation it causes your body to instantly attack it , it sequesters into your organs and bones . Your body will try to entomb it you call that cancer tumors and as long as its putting out energy your body has a auto immune response to it . That is using up your body’s reserves until that tumor is found and removed or well you know .
You will always hear the good old nuclear apologist say you will get more radiation from a Dental or Chest Ex-rays or we all live in a natural radiated environment . Or the radiation from japan is less then you would be getting by flying on a plane from Solar Radiation . If you have ever hear a nuclear expert say any of the above then you know your listening too or reading a pro nuclear PR spin doctors . The ocean is too big , it can never make its way over here , or it will take 10 years for the ocean to bring anything across when the jet streams deposited radiation over the entire Northern Hemisphere in less than 7 days and it continued unabated for 7 months . If the ocean currents only travel at 1 mile per hour 24 hours a day its here in 229 days , but it coming out of fukushima every day pretending its not pouring into the ocean is not a solution .
Remember the ocean is not that big when you take into context everyday 300 tons of radioactive water is hemorrhaging into the pacific . Well if it was just one day maybe i could look the other way but its daily for over 1200 days 24 hours a day 1440 minutes a day every day forever . Lets put that into perspective on St Pattys Day some community s pour 25 to 40 pounds of dye into rivers to temporary change the color of the river right . Well what would happen if you poured a 1000 pounds of dye that didn,t lose its color for 100s or 1000s of years in a 5000 mile river every minute of those 1440 minutes in each day for over 1200 days and then got into a plane and flew down that 5000 mile river to see where the dye went . How far down that 5000 mile river would you have to go before you do not find that the river all the estuaries and lakes and ponds etc etc are not effected by doing that every minute for 1200 days . My guess is everything right to the ocean would be a brightly different color .
What you need to do is get some distance between the nuclear creature and yourself . Do not I repeat do not crouch down to the same height of nuclear creatures , make yourself look taller as they can attack without provocation and slowly back away as nuclear critters are notorious known to attack from behind . Under no circumstances should you make direct eye contact with nuclear critters , look just above their hairlines because they can control your mind with their eyes and make you say stupid unsubstantiated gibberish like you will get more radiation from a banana than from radioactive fall out anywhere on earth even if you stood in the middle of the Fukshima military industrial complexes DEW production facility aka nuclear power plants .
It has been said that if you sprinkle holy water on a nuclear scientist they have to tell you the truth for the next 3 minutes , even though it is not recommended you get that close because of nuclear verbal diarrhea . According to nuclear critters 7400 Bq/m3 of Cs-137 is EPA standard in drinking water and after all you get 7500 Bq of potassium 40 in a glass of drinking water so its safe according to nuclear apologist . Anyone who says anything different is a alarmist and is just fear mongering . Besides all that ionized man made Uranium 238 will decay is 4.5 billion years so have a bananas because after all nuclear scientist are probably right a banana and a 12 ft nuclear fuel rod are impossible to tell apart .
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html
A group of residents from a village near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is planning to file for state arbitration so all villagers can be entitled to equal damages regardless of radiation levels of their areas.
The entire village of Iitate is designated for evacuation, but it is categorized into three different zones, each with a different radiation level and differing amounts of compensation.
The residents from the two zones with relatively low contamination say that the difference in compensation is dividing residents.
They plan to ask the Center for Settlement of Fukushima Nuclear Damage Claims to urge the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company to pay them equal damages.
The residents also plan to seek the payment of consolation money worth about 30-thousand dollars per person. They say they were exposed to more radiation because the evacuation order wasn’t issued until more than one month after the meltdown.
About 2,500 people, or 40 percent of all Iitate residents, are expected to join the group. The group hopes to invite more people to take part and file for arbitration in autumn.
The leader of the group, Kenichi Hasegawa, says he hopes residents will unite to express their anger.
To revitalize its economy and politics, Japan needs an efficiency-and-renewables leapfrog that enables the new energy economy, not protects the old one. Japanese frogs jump too, says Bash?’s famous haiku “The old pond / frog jumps in / plop.” But we’re still waiting for the plop.
n short, German policy gave renewables fair access to the grid, promoted competition, weakened monopolies, and helped citizens and communities own half of renewable capacity. In 2013, Germany’s nuclear generation reached a 30-year low while renewable generation, 56 percent greater, set a new record, reaching an average of 27 percent of domestic use in the first quarter of 2014 and a brief peak of 74 percent on 11 May.
Japan thinks of itself as famously poor in energy, but this national identity rests on a semantic confusion. Japan is indeed poor in fossil fuels — but among all major industrial countries, it’s the richest in renewable energy like sun, wind, and geothermal. For example, Japan has nine times Germany’s renewable energy resources. Yet Japan makes about nine times less of its electricity from renewables (excluding hydropower) than Germany does.
That’s not because Japan has inferior engineers or weaker industries, but only because Japan’s government allows its powerful allies — regional utility monopolies — to protect their profits by blocking competitors. Since there’s no mandatory wholesale power market, only about 1 percent of power is traded, and utilities own almost all the wires and power plants and hence can decide whom they will allow to compete against their own assets, the vibrant independent power sector has only a 2.3 percent market share; under real competition it would take most of the rest. These conditions have caused an extraordinary divergence between Japan’s and Germany’s electricity outcomes.
Before the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, both Germany and Japan were nearly 30 percent nuclear-powered. In the next four months, Germany restored, and sped up by a year, the nuclear phaseout schedule originally agreed with industry in 2001–02. With the concurrence of all political parties, 41 percent of Germany’s nuclear power capacity — eight units of 17, including five similar to those at Fukushima and seven from the 1970s — got promptly shut down, with the rest to follow during 2015–22.
In 2010, those eight units produced 22.8 percent of Germany’s electricity. Yet a comprehensive package of seven other laws passed at the same time coordinated efficiency, renewable, and other initiatives to ensure reliable and low-carbon energy supplies throughout and long after the phaseout. The German nuclear shutdown, though executed decisively, built on a longstanding deliberative policy evolution consistent with the nuclear construction halts or operating phaseouts adopted in seven other nearby countries both before and after Fukushima.
Moreover, the Energiewende term and concept began before 1980, and Germany’s formal shift to renewables — now well over 70 billion watts installed — began in 1991, 20 years before Fukushima, then was reinforced in 2000 by feed-in tariffs. Those aren’t a subsidy but a way for customers to buy, and hence developers to finance and build, the renewables society chose, with a reasonable chance for sellers to earn a fair return on their investments. FITs’ values have plummeted in step with renewable costs, so developers now commonly opt to earn higher market prices instead.
This integrated policy framework and the solid analysis behind it meant that the output lost when those eight reactors closed in 2011 was entirely replaced in the same year — 59 percent by the 2011 growth of renewables, 6 percent by more-efficient use, and 36 percent by temporarily reduced electricity exports. Through 2012, Germany’s loss of 2010 nuclear output was 94 percent offset by renewable growth; through 2013, 108 percent. At this rate, renewable growth would replace Germany’s entire pre-Fukushima nuclear output by 2016.
Contrary to widespread misreportage, closing those eight reactors did not cause more fossil fuel to be burned. Whenever renewable sources run in Germany, both law and economics require them to displace costlier sources, so renewables always make fossil-fueled plants run less, though often in more complex patterns. The data confirm this: from 2010 through 2013, German nuclear output fell by 43.3 TWh, renewable output rose by 46.9 TWh, and the power sector burned almost exactly as much more coal and lignite as it burned less of the costlier gas and oil. German utilities bet against the energy transition and lost. Now they gripe that the renewables in which most of them long underinvested have made their thermal plants too costly to run.
Global Physicians Issue Scathing Critique of UN Report on Fukushima
There is broad disagreement over the amounts and effects of radiation exposure due to the triple reactor meltdowns after the 2011 Great East-Japan Earthquake and tsunami. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) joined the controversy June 4, with a 27-page “Critical Analysis of the UNSCEAR Report ‘Levels and effects of radiation exposures due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East-Japan Earthquake and tsunami.’”
IPPNW is the Nobel Peace Prize winning global federation of doctors working for “a healthier, safer and more peaceful world.” The group has adopted a highly critical view of nuclear power because as it says, “A world without nuclear weapons will only be possible if we also phase out nuclear energy.”
UNSCEAR, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, published its deeply flawed report April 2. Its accompanying press release summed up its findings this way: “No discernible changes in future cancer rates and hereditary diseases are expected due to exposure to radiation as a result of the Fukushima nuclear accident.” The word “discernable” is a crucial disclaimer here.
Cancer, and the inexorable increase in cancer cases in Japan and around the world, is mostly caused by toxic pollution, including radiation exposure according to the National Cancer Institute.[1] But distinguishing a particular cancer case as having been caused by Fukushima rather than by other toxins, or combination of them, may be impossible – leading to UNSCEAR’s deceptive summation. As the IPPNW report says, “A cancer does not carry a label of origin…”
UNSCEAR’s use of the phrase “are expected” is also heavily nuanced. The increase in childhood leukemia cases near Germany’s operating nuclear reactors, compared to elsewhere, was not “expected,” but was proved in 1997. The findings, along with Chernobyl’s lingering consequences, led to the country’s federally mandated reactor phase-out. The plummeting of official childhood mortality rates around five US nuclear reactors after they were shut down was also “unexpected,” but shown by Joe Mangano and the Project on Radiation and Human Health.
The International Physicians’ analysis is severely critical of UNSCEAR’s current report which echoes its 2013 Fukushima review and press release that said, “It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers.”
“No justification for optimistic presumptions”
The IPPNW’s report says flatly, “Publications and current research give no justification for such apparently optimistic presumptions.” UNSCEAR, the physicians complain, “draws mainly on data from the nuclear industry’s publications rather than from independent sources and omits or misinterprets crucial aspects of radiation exposure”, and “does not reveal the true extent of the consequences” of the disaster. As a result, the doctors say the UN report is “over-optimistic and misleading.” The UN’s “systematic underestimations and questionable interpretations,” the physicians warn, “will be used by the nuclear industry to downplay the expected health effects of the catastrophe” and will likely but mistakenly be considered by public authorities as reliable and scientifically sound. Dozens of independent experts report that radiation attributable health effects are highly likely.
Points of agreement: Fukushima is worse than reported and worsening still
Before detailing the multiple inaccuracies in the UNSCEAR report, the doctors list four major points of agreement. First, UNSCEAR improved on the World Health Organization’s health assessment of the disaster’s on-going radioactive contamination. UNSCEAR also professionally “rejects the use of a threshold for radiation effects of 100 mSv [millisieverts], used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in the past.” Like most health physicists, both groups agree that there is no radiation dose so small that it can’t cause negative health effects. There are exposures allowed by governments, but none of them are safe.
Second, the UN and the physicians agree that areas of Japan that were not evacuated were seriously contaminated with iodine-132, iodine-131 and tellurium-132, the worst reported instance being Iwaki City which had 52 times the annual absorbed dose to infants’ thyroid than from natural background radiation. UNSCEAR also admitted that “people all over Japan” were affected by radioactive fallout (not just in Fukushima Prefecture) through contact with airborne or ingested radioactive materials. And while the UNSCEAR acknowledged that “contaminated rice, beef, seafood, milk, milk powder, green tea, vegetables, fruits and tap water were found all over mainland Japan”, it neglected “estimating doses for Tokyo … which also received a significant fallout both on March 15 and 21, 2011.”
Third, UNSCEAR agrees that the nuclear industry’s and the government’s estimates of the total radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean are “far too low.” Still, the IPPNW reports shows, UNSCEAR’s use of totally unreliable assumptions results in a grossly understated final estimate. For example, the UN report ignores all radioactive discharges to the ocean after April 30, 2011, even though roughly 300 tons of highly contaminated water has been pouring into the Pacific every day for 3-and-1/2 years, about 346,500 tons in the first 38 months.
Fourth, the Fukushima catastrophe is understood by both groups as an ongoing disaster, not the singular event portrayed by industry and commercial media. UNSCEAR even warns that ongoing radioactive pollution of the Pacific “may warrant further follow-up of exposures in the coming years,” and “further releases could not be excluded in the future,” from forests and fields during rainy and typhoon seasons –when winds spread long-lived radioactive particles – a and from waste management plans that now include incineration.
As the global doctors say, in their unhappy agreement with UNSCEAR, “In the long run, this may lead to an increase in internal exposure in the general population through radioactive isotopes from ground water supplies and the food chain.”
Physicians find ten grave failures in UN report
The majority of the IPPNW’s report details 10 major errors, flaws or discrepancies in the UNSCEAR paper and explains study’s omissions, underestimates, inept comparisons, misinterpretations and unwarranted conclusions.
On July 14, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) presented a new plan to prepare four new storage areas at its Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (NPS), and to increase the total storage tank capacity for contaminated water by some 100,000 cubic meters beyond the existing plan to increase storage capacity.
TEPCO had already formulated a plan to increase tank capacity by about 800,000 cubic meters by the end of FY14 (March 2015), and by a further 30,000 cubic meters in a new area where tanks would be built.
The new plan is in addition to that, and aims to deal with uncertainties arising from delays in carrying out measures to prevent groundwater inflow, as well as to establish a reliable purification plan with sufficiently ample capacity. –
Among the key findings published in 2013-2014 include the discovery of tumors, cataracts and damage in birds from highly irradiated areas Chernobyl sperm, and impacts on biodiversity in Fukushima. One of the most interesting results is the discovery that some bird species may have developed a form of resistance to radiation effects by changing the allocation of antioxidants, although many birds are sterile in highly contaminated areas.We also recently discovered effects on neurodevelopment of some small mammals as well as Chernobyl Fukushima.
The seat of the research program Chernobyl + Fukushima (CFRI) is at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Research has officially started in Ukraine in 2000 and Fukushima in July 2011. To date, the group has conducted more than 30 research expeditions to Chernobyl and Fukushima.
At Fukushima as Chernobyl, nuclear accidents have released huge amounts of radioactive elements were dispersed by the weather conditions prevailing at the landscape scale.Some 200 000 km 2 (Chernobyl) and 15 000 km 2 (Fukushima) were heavily contaminated.Radioactive materials were not uniformly dispersed and have created a mosaic of micro-habitats “hot” and “cold” scattered throughout the region.
This radioactive patchwork has given us a unique opportunity to observe the genetic effects and environmental effects associated with changes in great detail and repetition and so much scientific rigor, which is not possible in a laboratory or research traditional field, often subject to the constraints of a limited range and rather unnatural environmental heterogeneity. This is an important aspect because it can be assumed that the interactions between natural environmental factors and radioactive contaminants may play a key role in the biological consequences of disasters in question. It is therefore essential that studies on the effects of radiation are carried out in the nature, scale regions.
Studies on human populations only have many constraints that limit their usefulness when it comes to trying to understand the long-term consequences of radiation.
The CFRI, University of South Carolina was the first, and remains to this day the only research group to use a multidisciplinary approach to understand the impact on the health and environmental effects of radiation on wild populations. This allowed us to study the acute exposure (short-term) as well as chronic (long-term and multi-generation).
The research program Chernobyl + Fukushima also now has the only team to work both Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Our main sources of funding are the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, the CNRS (France), the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. Additional funding we have been granted by NATO, the Foundation for Civil Research and Development (CRDF), the National Institute of Health (NIH), Qiagen GmbH, the Fulbright Foundation, the Office of Research and Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina, the Academy of Finland and we also received donations from individuals.
Today the program already has to his credit more than 60 scientific publications, most of which date from the last seven years (these papers are available on our websitehttp://cricket.biol.sc.edu ). Our research has raised eyebrows in many newspapers and television programs, including the New York Times , The Economist , Harpers , BBC, CNN, and News Hour PBS (see website for details).
The team was one of the first to use ecological, genetic and dosimetric technologies to clarify the issue of health and environmental consequences of chronic exposure to low doses after the disaster of Chernobyl and Fukushima. These technologies include ecological surveys repeated natural populations of birds, mammals and insects to observe the effects on longevity and reproduction repeatedly; DNA sequencing and genotoxicity tests to assess genetic damage in the short and long term for individuals living in the wild;
The use of miniature dosimeters attached to wild animals and field measurements of whole body irradiation in birds and mammals to obtain an accurate assessment of external and internal doses of radiation received by the animals living freely in nature .Recently, the group has expanded its research to epidemiological and genetic studies of human populations (especially children) living in regions of Ukraine affected by Chernobyl.
Among the key findings published in 2013-2014 include the discovery of tumors, cataracts and damage in birds from highly irradiated areas Chernobyl sperm, and impacts on biodiversity in Fukushima. One of the most interesting results is the discovery that some bird species may have developed a form of resistance to radiation effects by changing the allocation of antioxidants, although many birds are sterile in highly contaminated areas.We also recently discovered effects on neurodevelopment of some small mammals as well as Chernobyl Fukushima.
Both disasters differ in the time since they occurred and the amount and variety of radionuclides released, although the predominant source of radiation is cesium-137 in both cases.
Yellow-throated Sparrow near Chernobyl
The main points revealed by research
The highlights of the research published by the research program of Chernobyl + Fukushima:
• The population size and the number of species (that is to say, biodiversity) of birds, mammals, insects and spiders are significantly lower in highly contaminated areas of Chernobyl.
• In many birds and small mammals, life and fertility are reduced in areas of high contamination.
• At Fukushima, only birds, butterflies and grasshoppers have declined significantly during the first summer after the accident. The other groups did not suffer any adverse effects. Efforts continue to identify changes that may affect these populations over time.
• large variability is observed among different species in their sensitivity to radionuclides. Some species are not affected, and some even seem to increase in number in heavily contaminated areas in Fukushima like Chernobyl. This is due, presumably, to the disappearance of competition (ie more food and habitat), reducing the number of predators and perhaps an adaptation to the effects of radiation.
• Many species show signs of genetic damage following acute exposure; the differences between Chernobyl and Fukushima suggest that some species may show the effects of an accumulation of mutations over several generations.
• Some individuals and species show no evidence of genetic damage from exposure to radiation and some even show of evolutionary adaptation to the effects of radiation by increasing the antioxidant activity may offer protection against radiation signs ionizing.
• Bird species most likely to experience a reduction in their number due to radiation are those that have historically seen an increase in mutation rate for other reasons, perhaps related to the ability to repair their DNA or decline their defenses against oxidative stress.
• The deleterious effects of radiation exposure observed in natural populations of Chernobyl include increased rates of cataracts, tumors, abnormal growth, deformation of sperm, infertility and cases of albinism.
• Neural development is also affected as evidenced by a reduction of brain size in birds and rodents; impact on cognitive abilities and survival rates have also been demonstrated in birds.
• At Fukushima, the first signs of developmental abnormalities were observed in birds in 2013, but has not yet demonstrated significant genetic damage in birds and rodents.
• Tree growth and microbial decomposition in the soil are also slowed in highly radiation-contaminated areas.
In summary, these results clearly demonstrate that these nuclear disasters have affected the scale of the environment on individuals, populations and ecosystems; there are many examples of developmental abnormalities and deformities that probably contribute to the reduction in the abundance and biodiversity observed in regions radioactive Chernobyl and Fukushima. These results contrast sharply with the optimism of assertions without evidence put forward by the Chernobyl Forum (UN) and the members of the Scientific Committee of the United Nations on the effects of radiation (UNSCEAR). Studies should be continued to determine not only the time of adaptation of populations and communities in this disturbance, but also whether these regions will one day again habitable and if so, from where.
Objectives for 2014-15
We are currently looking for funding to support research activities, ongoing and planned, Chernobyl + Fukushima program:
1) Constant monitoring of bird populations, small mammals and insects in Fukushima to test the changes in population size (abundance) and the number of species (biodiversity) over time. This study should help establish long-term predictions about the time required to restore the situation.
2) Constant monitoring of populations of barn swallows and rodents (mice and voles) for cancers, survival, reproduction and genetic damage at Fukushima and Chernobyl (in collaboration with the French Institute and CNRS Rikkyo University in Tokyo, the Society of wild birds of Japan, the Japan National Institute of Forests and Finnish University of Jyvaskyla).
3) Start up a new project to study the effects of radiation on tree growth and soil microbial activity in Fukushima (in partnership with Chubu University, Nagoya, Japan).
4) Start up of a new project to determine the effects of radiation on growth, fertility and genetic damage in cows living in highly radioactive areas in Fukushima (in collaboration with the Association of Cattle Breeders Fukushima)
5) Getting started a new project to examine the mutation rate in humans using the complete sequencing of genomic DNA. This project will initially focus on families living in contaminated areas of Ukraine. This project is a collaboration with the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University, the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University and the Institute of Radiation Medicine in Kiev, Ukraine.
6) Continued development of new methods for measuring doses and genetic damage in wild animal populations.
7) Coordination of an international association of independent scientists capable of providing non-biased evidence based on health and environmental risks of nuclear accidents information. This group will be responsible for compiling, evaluating and interpreting current medical and scientific literature and develop a literature suitable for public dissemination by the press and Internet media, and used in public presentations in Japan and the rest of the world.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Timothy A. Mousseau
Professor of Biological Sciences
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208 USA
(803) 920-7704 Mousseau@sc.edu
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has reported another leak of radioactive water, this time from a steel storage tank above ground.
Tokyo Electric Power Company officials say a worker found the leak shortly after noon on Wednesday.
The tank is one of those built at the plant since May to store contaminated water transferred from storage pools underground.
The utility built the tanks after finding a series of leaks in April in the underground pools.
TEPCO officials say the contaminated water was seeping from a joint in the tank, at a rate of one drop every 3 to 4 seconds.
They report that bolts at the joint were tightened. They stopped water transfer and are investigating the cause.
The officials say no changes were detected in radioactivity levels at monitoring points near the plant.
The tank is about 400 meters from the sea. TEPCO officials say there is no risk of contaminated water reaching the sea. Jun. 5, 2013 – Updated 07:36 UTC ~~~~~
NUCLEAR EVACUATION GUIDELINES UPDATED
Japan’s nuclear regulator has decided further details of its guidelines for local residents in case of a nuclear plant accident.
In February the Nuclear Regulation Authority decided on a revised version of the guidelines. The review came after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident in March, 2011.
The new guidelines expanded the necessary evacuation area, or the area where residents must stay indoors, to a 30-kilometer radius around a nuclear plant.
It also says iodine tablets should be distributed to households within 5 kilometers of a plant in advance of a possible accident.
Iodine helps prevent the thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive substances. Continue reading →
Radiation Causing Unusual Changes: What’s Happening to Children?
(This video as well as others have been continually taken down on request of persons unknown.. you have to wonder why?) [Arclight2011]
By tokyobrowntabby This video is from a webcast program called “ContAct,” webcasted on July 14, 2011 by OurPlanet-TV ( http://www.ourplanet-tv.org/?q=node/287 ) an independent net-based media.
Translation by EX-SKF( http//:ex-skf.blospot.jp ) & tokyobrowntabby and captioning by tokyobrowntabby.
….Akio Matsumura is a renowned diplomat who has dedicated his life to building bridges between government, business, and spiritual leaders in the cause of world peace. He is the founder and Secretary General of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival with conferences held in Oxford, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto, and Konya….
On today’s podcast, host Nathaniel White-Joyal and Fairewinds Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen talk with renowned diplomat Akio Matsumura and Fairewinds board member Chiho Kaneko about nuclear power and the effects of the Fukushima disaster on the Japanese people today.
The comments on the EXSKF link are interesting..[Arclight2011]
32 microsieverts per year or 0.032 millisievert per year, for the Japanese people in Japan, 0.9 microsievert per year or 0.0009 millisievert per year for people in the US.
Exposure from radioactive polonium in fish is much greater than radioactive cesium of Fukushima origin, says Professor Nicholas Fisher at Stony Brook University in New York. (See Table 1 at the bottom of the post.)
He also says the the amount of radioactive cesium in bluefin tuna caught off the coast of San Diego in 2012 dropped in half, compared to the bluefin tuna caught in 2011.
Unlike most of the Japanese media these days, the US media, including CNN below, still talks about radiation in terms of dental X-ray or transcontinental flight. Just give us the number, please.
Levels of radioactivity found in Pacific bluefin tuna that spawned off Japan around the time of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident are far below anything that would pose a health risk and have dropped in fish caught the following year, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
The latest findings follow up on a 2012 study that found radioactive cesium, a nuclear reactor byproduct, in tuna caught off California in the months after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi. The attention that study received led scientists to take another look at the data, said Nicholas Fisher, a marine science professor at New York’s Stony Brook University.
“People did not know how to translate that into a dose, or into what risk do I have from eating that tuna,” Fisher said. “The paper that’s coming out today addresses that.”
They found that anyone who eats the bluefin — highly prized for sushi and sashimi — would get about 5% of the radiation they’d get from eating one typical banana, a fruit high in naturally radioactive potassium. The results were released Monday by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Even subsistence fishermen, who eat far more fish than the typical American, would receive a dose of radiation from the cesium isotopes released in the meltdown equivalent to a single dental X-ray, Fisher and his colleagues reported. That translates to a “worst-case scenario” of two additional cancer deaths for every 10 million people in that category, he said.
The doses were calculated from fish caught off San Diego in August 2011. A follow-up study with fish caught in 2012 found the amount of cesium-134 and -137 dropped by about half in those tuna, Fisher said.
(Full article at the link)
Japan’s Kyodo News says exposure from radioactive polonium in fish is much greater than radioactive cesium of Fukushima origin.
It also says the radiation exposure would be 0.032 millisievert in one year.
Pacific bluefin tuna transport Fukushima-derived radionuclides from Japan to California
Daniel J. Madigan, Zofia Baumann, and Nicholas S. Fisher
Abstract
The Fukushima Dai-ichi release of radionuclides into ocean waters caused significant local and global concern regarding the spread of radioactive material. We report unequivocal evidence that Pacific bluefin tuna, Thunnus orientalis, transported Fukushima-derived radionuclides across the entire North Pacific Ocean. We measured γ-emitting radionuclides in California-caught tunas and found 134Cs (4.0 ± 1.4 Bq kg−1) and elevated 137Cs (6.3 ± 1.5 Bq kg−1) in 15 Pacific bluefin tuna sampled in August 2011. We found no 134Cs and background concentrations (∼1 Bq kg−1) of 137Cs in pre-Fukushima bluefin and post-Fukushima yellowfin tunas, ruling out elevated radiocesium uptake before 2011 or in California waters post-Fukushima. These findings indicate that Pacific bluefin tuna can rapidly transport radionuclides from a point source in Japan to distant ecoregions and demonstrate the importance of migratory animals as transport vectors of radionuclides. Other large, highly migratory marine animals make extensive use of waters around Japan, and these animals may also be transport vectors of Fukushima-derived radionuclides to distant regions of the North and South Pacific Oceans. These results reveal tools to trace migration origin (using the presence of 134Cs) and potentially migration timing (using 134Cs:137Cs ratios) in highly migratory marine species in the Pacific Ocean.
Part about radiation exposure for Japan and for the US:
Table 1 showing the radiation dose:
Does Corporate Funding Corrupt Science?
Published on Apr 19, 2013
“Cycle of bias” described at 10 minutes suppressed by sponsor and issues on manipulation of the Peer review process as in the above “report” and check out the comment at 1hr 04 mins [Arclight2011]
a Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, P.O. Box 14, FIN-00881 Helsinki, Finland
b Water Protection Association of The River Kokemäenjoki, P.O. Box 265, FIN-33101 Tampere, Finland
Kaisa-Leena Hutri, Jukka Mattila, Tarja Tuulikki Ikäheimonen, Vesa-Pekka Vartti. Artificial radionuclides 90Sr and 241Am in the sediments of the Baltic Sea: Total and spatial inventories and some temporal trends. Marine Pollution Bulletin 70 (2013) 210-218. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2013.03.007
Abstract
The Baltic Sea was contaminated by radioactivity following global nuclear fallout and later by the Chernobyl accident. Despite the decrease of radioactivity caused by radioactive decay, radionuclides have a prolonged residence time in the water of the Baltic Sea due to slow water exchange and relatively rapid sedimentation. Very little is known about the amounts or spatial differences of 90Sr and 241Am in the Baltic Sea sediments.
In this study, 20 sediment cores taken around the Baltic Sea were investigated to estimate inventories of these radionuclides.
The rough results show that the Chernobyl fallout added the amount of 90Sr in the same areas where the increase of 137Cs can be detected, whereas this is not the case for 241Am which is more evenly distributed in the sea bottom. In addition, local differences occur in the concentrations. These results are an important amendment to the radioactivity baseline of the Baltic Sea…. subscription only
TEPCO detects radioactive cesium in groundwater
TEPCO officials have detected radioactive cesium in groundwater at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But they said levels were much lower than legal limits.
Monju’s data transmitting system fails
A technical glitch prevented data from the Monju fast-breeder nuclear reactor in Fukui, central Japan, from being sent to the government’s monitoring system for more than 4 hours on Monday.
Rallies held to oppose restart of nuclear plants
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Tokyo to oppose moves to bring the country’s nuclear power stations back online.
Residents win radiation uncertainty compensation
A group of nuclear accident evacuees in Fukushima has won a compensation settlement decision from a state-backed legal arbitration body for radiation exposure and future health uncertainties.
Tohoku summer festivals opens in Fukushima City
Thousands of people are in Fukushima City in northeastern Japan for a 2-day event combining 6 local summer festivals.
The event was first held 2 years ago to promote tourism in areas hard hit by the March 2011 disaster.
[Spare contaminated water] 20,000m3 of highly contaminated water still retained in seawater trenches,”4.2 tera Bq/m3″ http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/06/sp…
published Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 TVA eyes building 2 smaller reactors on the Clinch River in Oak Ridge
The next new nuclear reactor for TVA may be built in a factory and shipped to the Tennessee Valley in a truck or railcar. http://timesfreepress.com/news/2013/j…
Nuclear site scrap metal could be headed to recyclers
June 2, 2013 12:16 am
By Len Boselovic / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A U.S. Department of Energy proposal to recycle scrap metal from its nuclear facilities has set off the radiation detectors of environmental groups, some in the metals industry and one member of Congress. http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/b…
New Mexico plant may lack space for remote-handled Hanford waste
A national repository may run out of space for the hottest radioactive waste it was designed to store if changes are not made, according to an audit by the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General. http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2013/06…
Skullduggery alleged over mayors’ ‘secret’ nuclear-waste storage meetings
By Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press June 2, 2013
TORONTO – Municipal leaders in the Ontario region that is home to one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants are facing allegations they discussed proposed storage facilities for radioactive waste in secret because they feared damaging their electoral fortunes. http://www.leaderpost.com/technology/…
German documentary film produced by Mr. Frieder Wagner. The film is about war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo and Iraq. The use of depleted uranium is made genocide of those countries that is not remembered in the history of mankind, even the Nazi crimes remained low compared to the genocide, which is still ongoing and will last almost forever, unfortunately. In contaminated areas people are still at risk of a lot of people do not know and this is the worst because it is invisible genocide.
Propaganda: Power and Persuasion is the first exhibition to explore international state propaganda from the 20th and 21st centuries. From the eye-opening to the mind-boggling, from the beautiful to the surprising, posters, films, cartoons, sounds and texts reveal the myriad ways that states try to influence and persuade their citizens.
29 April – 2 May Ottawa Events – NOT THE NUCLEAR LOBBY returns to Parliament Hill
Monday, April 29, 6:30 PM (pay what you can) Film Screening Radioactive – The Women of Three Mile Island Tuesday, April 30, 7 PM (free) Workshop reading of the play The Children Wednesday, May 1, 7 PM (free) Community Forum: Canada’s Nuclear Future – Renaissance or Relic?
nuclear-news 