nuclear-news

Radioactive Raspberries and Radishes – Dystopia unleashed?

The plan includes “the controlled release of radioactivity to groundwaters” (EU Directorate D Nuclear Energy Radiation Protection – Lillyhall).

Op-Ed

By mariannewildart on July 25, 2013

http://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/radioactive-raspberries-and-radishes/

Unpublished letter to local press… (covered by alternative media though.. 😉 )

– Radioactive Raspberries and Radishes –

Dear Editor,

Eating locally produced food is a joy and also cuts down on food miles.
If you grow your own or harvest wild crops such as blackberries for free, even better.

Kendal author Mike Berners-Lee has been touring the UK talking about his new book “The Burning Question. ” The book concludes quite rightly that fossil fuel should be left in the ground, “food production is a key driver of global warming” ie local is best.

The book goes on to promote nuclear even going so far as to say “campaigning
against nuclear seems like an odd use of time and effort.”

Interestingly, Cumbrian antinuclear campaigners include pronuclear councillors who are nevertheless opposed to radioactive dumping in landfill.

Large swathes of Cumbria’s land and sea are already contaminated by the nuclear industry and scientists such as Dr Ian Fairlie already warn that consuming food
grown in the vicinity of nuclear installations is a health risk.

Another local author Sarah Hall was invited to speak to Low Carbon Lakeland a few years ago about her excellent novel “Carhullan Army.” This book describes a dystopian future in Cumbria, complete with climate impacts and an authoritarian regime. The ‘radicalised’ heroines of the novel live as outlaws growing their own healthy food from the land, collecting wild food and livestock farming.

Sarah Hall’s dystopia may be rose tinted. If the current trajectory of the government’s nuclear ambitions, fantastically aided by nuclear apologists such as Mike
Berners-Lee continues, Cumbria’s land will not be fit for any purpose other than nuclear sacrifice zone.

Councils and political leaders in Cumbria have vehemently opposed proposals to dump nuclear waste in landfill at Lillyhall and at Keekle Head. Radioactive waste, rubble and soil from smashed up nuclear plants undergoing “decommissioning” i.e. dispersal, are being trucked hundreds of miles daily to Cumbria and this is set to escalate.

If this “exempt” waste is so safe why is it being trucked hundreds of miles from Scotland and the South?

The plan includes “the controlled release of radioactivity to groundwaters” (EU Directorate D Nuclear Energy Radiation Protection – Lillyhall).

Dumping large volumes of radioactive waste in landfill should be banned as
it was prior to 2007. Deregulation of the banks led to a toxic crash. The deregulation of the nuclear industry if not stopped and reversed will lead to a far more serious toxic crash. Please write to Tim Farron MP and ask him as a key member of government and Cumbrian MP to ensure that the 2007 “exempt” law allowing companies to dump nuclear waste in landfill is revoked.

It is of some irony that the nuclear industry uses more fossil fuel and fresh water than any other single user. Campaigning against nuclear may seem “odd” to Mike Berners-Lee but to Radiation Free Lakeland and even to pro nuclear councillors it is the only sane option upon which everything else including the safety of local food relies.

Yours sincerely,
Marianne Birkby
Radiation Free Lakeland

Flying Dodo Award to Mike Berners-Lee

http://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/flying-dodo-award-to-mike-berners-lee/

Lillyhall Radioactive Waste Dump – according to EU Directive

http://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/lillyhall-radioactive-waste-dump-thats-what-europe-says/

Keekle Head Nuclear Dump?

http://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/presentation-to-keekle-head-inquiry/

The Burning Question
campaigning against nuclear “an odd use of time and effort” The
Burning Question – a much hyped book promoting nuclear power as the
solution to climate change – and sneerily dismissing anti-nuclear
campaigners – this is smart propaganda.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=K0S0o8mmw5QC&pg=PT146&lpg=PT146&dq=The+burning+question+nuclear&source=bl&ots=Yq9b86hbJz&sig=ZAFn7Xe8gKjHk833ZWo8G6OLibY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=APfiUdevJ9Sv7AbzpoGIDw&ved=0CF4Q6AEwBQ

Carhullan Army
It is a primitive life that they lead, hunting and gathering for food,
using herbs to heal and disinfect, growing crops. They often traded their
produce at the local markets
“They were a strange group, slightly exotic, slightly disliked … Their
dress was different, unconventional; often they wore matching yellow
tunics that tied at the back and came to the knee … They,
were always friendly towards other women, joking with them over the
wicker trays of radishes and cucumbers, giving out discounts and free
butter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/aug/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview18

July 26, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Sloppy science writing in Australia’s media

The death of science journalism in Australia 

Independent Australia by MatthewDonovan  24 July, 2013  As the mainstream media struggles – particularly newspapers – the loss of journalists is a worrying trend; Noel Wauchope explains why she is most concerned about the loss of qualified science journalists.   INVESTIGATIVE journalists would do well to investigate what is happening to science news writing in Australia…..

Image source ; http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/06/does-us-need-science-media-center

July 26, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Linkage— Multiple Sclerosis and Ionizing Radiation 2004

….If our work over these years in studying potential linkages between ionizing radiation and multiple sclerosis has in any way assisted the process of finding credible answers to this debilitating disease, we will be well rewarded….

….Furthering the accuracy of the Geological Survey study results, the small country of Norway with 5 million population, maintains an MS medical registry; whereas in the United States the best available data are those from National Multiple Sclerosis Society state chapters’ county-by-state membership rolls. In most cases, however, these data are estimated to be only  perhaps 65-80 percent of the actual total. In this regard, the Eidbo-Prater survey results must be taken as extremely conservative….

…In learning that ionizing radiation is considered the probable cause of Down’s syndrome,…

Linkage— Multiple Sclerosis and Ionizing Radiation
Walter B. Eidbo, M.D.
Des Moines, Iowa, U.S.A.
Merle P. Prater, Ph.D.
Ames, Iowa, U.S.A.
INTRODUCTION

For many years the medical and health science communities have been frustrated over our inability to identify the nature of what it is in the etiological environment that triggers the adverse immune reaction of multiple sclerosis. We know that the immune system plays havoc with the myelin nerve sheath but still have only intuitive evidence as to what it is that provokes the immune system to deal so sordidly with myelin. The main thrust has been in finding a virus as the culprit.
Difficulty in locating the potentials of a susceptibility gene (or genes) on the DNA is
the other factor under continuing research. But neither factor has been ‘solidly character
ized for all of the several hundred millions of research dollars that have been expended.
This paper will present some epidemiological background and touch on several studies
in regard to a different approach for finding the long sought environmental “trigger” for
MS whose prevalence in the U. S. is estimated at 400,000 cases.
1
PRIOR MS INVESTIGATIONS
Charcot, in France in 1868, has been credited as the first medical practitioner to describe MS as a distinct disease with a variety of symptoms that included a triad of nystagmus,
slurred speech and impaired coordination.

2 But as clinical experience with the MS afflicted has grown, other neurological symp
toms have been added including blindness, paresis, clonus, spasticity, fatigue, numbness and dementia.
3,4
Over many years a disparate group of environmental conditions have been investigated as possible etiological triggers for MS to include among other factors: latitude, hours of daylight, carbon monoxide, ultraviolet light, temperature, a virus, ionizing radiation, pets and toxic chemicals.
5,6
But the preponderance of ongoing research has been in virology in attempts to find an offending virus and how it operates to thwart the immune system.

5(pp.29-33),7 The other area of upcoming etiological research prominence is in Ionizing radiation as a potential environmental trigger; the investigational emphasis of the authors.
8
In the past few years, European health scientists, especially in Sweden and
Norway, have been actively investigating i0nizing radiation as a potential environmental trigger for MS,
9,10
but there is a growing emphasis in the U.S.
11-13
that Ionizing radiation is also being more highly implicated in other diseases.
14
In another twist, Swedish health scientists in referring to Latarjet’s studies in the U. S., consider that there may be reasons for a two-step pathogenic development in the etiology of MS: “since both ultraviolet and ionizing radiation can induce viral synthesis in lysogenic bacteria, one could speculate that radiation might cause primary damage…
(i.e., if there is a viral or immunologicetiology as well).”
15
All life is subject to ionizing radiation exposure from many sources; natural from radon, cosmic radiation, rocks and soils; and man-created radiation from medical and dental X-ray diagnosis and therapy, radiological medical procedures, nuclear medicine, radionuclide fall-out and consumer products. But of these, radon is the greatest single source of average background radiation as it forms some 55 percent of the average exposure to man.
16,17
(See Figure 1.) As an exception, geographically spotty but extremely heavy radionuclide fallout from nuclear bomb tests can cause a far greater exposure.
18
Genetically, research continues unabated as to which gene or genes may be the culprit(s) associated with MS.
19
Since there is a bias for younger people to contract the disease, especially women in the ages of 16-34, some health scientists believe that there may be causality factors from birth whether these be from genes or a latent virus or hormonal changes or other factors.
20
Geography also appears to play an important part in the causality of MS as the disease is more predominate in the higher latitudes of both the northern and southern hemispheres, especially in northern Europe, the United States and southern Australia; the latter two areas most likely from European emigrants of Caucasian descent.
5(pp.11-13)
As a general rule, the geographical gradient of MS prevalence is found to increase as distance from the equator increases, the exception being inhabitants native to subarctic regions. For example, in 1994 average MS prevalence in cases/100,000 population (cases/100k) in the U. S. ranged from 57 in southern states to 150 in northern states.
21
(See Figure 2.) MS is little known among African, Asiatic, Hispanic and Eskimo populations. 5(pp.16-18) Also, some health physicists believe that the northern and southern magnetic geographical poles are a factor in the etiology of MS due to increased intensity of cosmic radiation in higher latitudes.
22
STUDY GENESIS
In learning that ionizing radiation is considered the probable cause of Down’s syndrome,

23.24
and when in 1983 there was a considered epidemic of MS in Spokane County, Washington, Prater speculated that there might also be a connection between high MS prevalence and the contamination of eastern Washington from a very heavy 40 year downwind radiological fall-out from nearby U.S. Hanford Nuclear Reservation nuclear weapon production.

In addition this area was in the path of radionuclide fall-out from Russian and U.S. nuclear bomb tests. Prater outlined these thoughts at a seminar conducted by several Spokane medical doctors who were concerned about the number of MS cases in Spokane County. Prater’s contributions were taken into consideration but with little apparent further action.

RADON— A POWERFUL SOURCE OF IONIZING RADIATION

Continue reading →

July 26, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Fukushima steps up children’s thyroid recheck -Too little too late?

Prefectural officials took the step because only one-third of the children requiring re-examination have been able to undergo the procedure.

Image source ; http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_02_18/Almost-half-of-Fukushima-kids-have-thyroid-abnormalities/

Fukushima Prefecture has taken steps to facilitate the re-examination of children found with lumps in their thyroid glands following the 2011 nuclear crisis.

Only one hospital had been conducting the re-examination in the prefecture in northeastern Japan.

The prefectural government has added 2 more hospitals to carry out the examinations. One started work on Wednesday and examined 5 children. The other is to follow on Friday.

Prefectural officials took the step because only one-third of the children requiring re-examination have been able to undergo the procedure.

Fukushima is conducting regular checks of the thyroid glands of 360,000 people who were 18 or younger when the nuclear crisis began.

That’s out of concern that radioactive materials emitted by the damaged reactors could accumulate in children’s thyroids, possibly causing cancer.

Children found with a lump 5.1 millimeters or larger are supposed to undergo a thorough recheck. That includes an ultrasound examination and blood and urine tests.

The re-examination is taking time. As of the end of March, only one-third of about 1,100 children had been re-examined.

A doctor involved in the examinations expressed hope that the expanded program will help residents feel more at ease over their health.

Jul. 24, 2013 – Updated 10:23 UTC

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20130724_28.html

Fukushima – 27 children have developed thyroid cancer so far!

２０１３ 年６月時点での福島県での１８歳未満での甲状腺検査結果 を記します。2005年には日本で１０万人に１人であった未成年の甲状腺がんが、まだ正確な数値はデータを取っている途中なので、確定しませんが、少なく とも数十倍規模で事故１，２年後から増えていることが読み取れます。

First of all, let me give you the latest data of thyroid cancer test in Fukushima as of June 2013.  Though we do not know the exact number since the examination is still underway and especially the 2nd tests had not been completed with many of the suspected subjects, we can tell that the incidence rate has already jumped dozens of times compared to the 2005 statistics of 1 thyroid cancer out of 100,000 among Japanese minors.

 

July 26, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment