nuclear-news

A deeply corrupt nuclear industry

The corrupt Government and nuclear industry alliance, Independent Australia, 20 March 12,   Nuclear power is inherently unsafe, and only continues because of an insidious alliance between Governments and a deeply corrupt nuclear industry. Joe Giambrone comments. “…..  Japan’s devastation is our wake-up call. This was a General Electric manufactured reactor, of which there are more than 20 similar units operating in the US, right now.

Local communities in America reject these ticking time bombs, reactors designed for several decades’ use, which are then re-licensed to operate for several more decades beyond their specifications. The motivation for this re-licensing is clearly monetary and not safety related. The plants are literally crumbling and critical cooling pipes are worn so thin as to be the width of a sheet of paper. Numerous plant failures are expected by many observers in the coming few years.

But as local entities and state governments vote to stop these hazards and shut them down, the federal government claims authority over “safety” (sic) and simply ignores the demands of the people living at the grounds zero. This is a fascistic system, a private/government partnership that ignores the valid concerns of citizens to force unwanted risk onto them. Citizens are no longer empowered to accept or reject the real risks to property, life and health that they must live under. This is fascism, as it has been from the start, since 1957 anyway.
More recently, the US Environmental Protection Agency tipped its hand last year by shutting down monitoring of radiation contamination post-Fukushima. The agency scaled back its testing of milk, air and water – and it never even bothered to test fish – so that it would only test every three months, and only at 30 sites nationwide. This clear abdication of responsibility happened as the radiation contamination to the United States was becoming more severe. Fukushima was still belching radioisotopes into the atmosphere in the Terrabecquerel range, and radiation had been detected at numerous monitoring sites. Still the EPA under Obama decided to cut back its front line protection of the American public by inexplicably stopping crucial monitoring of radiation in our environment, rather than increasing it as any responsible party would need to do.

Now, as of February 2012, there is still radioactivity in the milk. The University of California, Berkeley, Department of Nuclear Engineering, has been on the case — even though the EPA itself has shown itself to be another industry lapdog…..
A year later, we still have cesium-134 and cesium-137 in the milk. UC Berkeley measures it at 150 per cent of the legal level. At 4.5 picocuries per litre, the February 2012 milk samples have exceeded the EPA’s own legal threshold of 3 picocuries / litre, making the current milk radioactively contaminated by their own definition. Note also that milk is but one transmission path for radiation to enter the body, and radiation is passed along in the air, water and food as well.
Radiation trapped within cells can cause “cellular disruption” leading to the death of the cell, or worse, to unchecked cellular reproduction: cancer. “Nuclear radiation is the most carcinogenic thing that exists, and it cannot be kept under control, as the Fukushima tragedy proved,” said the head of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology, Carmelo Iacono.

The next move, in a fascistic system, is to simply raise the acceptable level and to pretend that the powerless (that’s us) don’t have a valid concern, and so will be ignored. The nuclear apologist crowd uses this argument consistently; you see there are no long-term detrimental health effects from radiation, and if you believe otherwise you must be an ignoramus who doesn’t understand. The Japanese simply raised the acceptable radiation dose to their children 20 fold in the wake of Fukushima. By the stroke of a pen, it was no longer 1mSv / year but 20 mSv/ year. Numbers are so malleable, who cares what they are, right?….  http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/health/the-corrupt-government-and-nuclear-industry-alliance/

March 26, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties