June 22 Energy News

Opinion:

¶ “Energy majors warn of falling fossil fuel demand” • BP’s annual statistical review makes the prospects for the fossil fuels industries look bleak. Oil prices are depressed, gas growth is weak, and coal is failing. “In contrast, renewable energy globally, led by wind and solar power, grew strongly, helped by continued technological advances.” [eco-business.com]

Coal strip mine (Stephen Codrington, Wikimedia Commons)

Science and Technology:

¶ The wine industry’s new normal is heavy rains, hailstones, floods, drought, and sometimes even frost. Wine makers who once took great pleasure in competing against each other to offer the best wine are now locked in a duel with Mother Nature to simply save the vines they manage to grow, as a changing climate devastates vineyards. [News18]

World:

¶ The Scottish Government has approved plans for a 30 turbine tidal park off the south-west coast of Islay. West…

View original post 728 more words

June 22, 2017 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Is Cummins VP Pence’s Motive for Ignoring Cummings’ Warning Re Flynn? Cummins Literally Moves Russia, Including Military; Partners With KAMAZ Owned By Russian Gov Owned-Sanctioned Entities Rostec & Sberbank

Mining Awareness +

Is Cummins VP Pence’s Motive for Ignoring US Congressman Cummings’ Warning Re Flynn? Cummins Literally Moves Russia, Including Military; Partners With KAMAZ Owned By Russian Gov Owned-Sanctioned Entities Rostec & Sberbank

Pence gives Putin brophile a new meaning and takes Russiaphilia to a whole new level. It gives VP Pence MOTIVE for ignoring US Congressman Cummings’ warning, last November, re Flynn. Cummins is deeply involved in Russia through sales and joint ventures.

Up until at least last year, Cummins engines have been used in the GAZ Tiger vehicles, used by Russian, Syrian and other military.

GAZ 2975 Tigr 5 May 2008, By Digr, via Wikimedia CC-BY-SA 3.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ_Tiger
Cummins has apparently been hit by sanctions against Russia. Russia’s Sputnik news reported on June 2, 2016, in “This Tigr’s Got a New Heart: Infantry Vehicle Gets Russian-Made Engine“, that because of sanctions and the partially related decline of the…

View original post 1,385 more words

June 22, 2017 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Fukushima’s Radiation Will Poison Food “for Decades,” Study Finds

Screen-Shot-2017-06-22-at-7.31.40-AM.png

Three of the six reactors at Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi complex were wrecked in March 2011 by an earthquake and tsunami. The destruction of emergency electric generators caused a “station blackout” which halted cooling water intake and circulation. Super-heated, out-of-control uranium fuel in reactors 1, 2, and 3 then boiled off cooling water, and some 300 tons of fuel “melted” and burned through the reactors’ core vessels, gouging so deep into underground sections of the structure that to this day operators aren’t sure where it is. Several explosions in reactor buildings and uncovered fuel rods caused the spewing of huge quantities of radioactive materials to the atmosphere, and the worst radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean ever recorded. Fukushima amounts to Whole-Earth poisoning.

Now, researchers say, radioactive isotopes that were spread across Japan (and beyond) by the meltdowns will continue to contaminate the food supply for a very long time.

According to a new study that focused on “radiocaesium” — as the British call cesium-134 and cesium-137 — “food in japan will be contaminated by low-level radioactivity for decades.” The official university announcement of this study neglected to specify that Fukushima’s cesium will persist in the food chain for thirty decades. It takes 10 radioactive half-lives for cesium-137 to decay to barium, and its half-life is about 30 years, so C-137 stays in the environment for roughly 300 years.

The study’s authors, Professor Jim Smith, of the University of Portsmouth, southwest of London, and Dr. Keiko Tagami, from the Japanese National Institute of Radiological Sciences, report that cesium-caused “radiation doses in the average diet in the Fukushima region are very low and do not present a significant health risk now or in the future.”

This phraseology deliberately conveys a sense of security — but a false one. Asserting that low doses of radiation pose no “significant” health risk sounds reassuring, but an equally factual framing of precisely the same finding is that small amounts of cesium in food pose a slightly increased risk of causing cancer.

This fact was acknowledged by Prof. Smith in the June 14 University of Portsmouth media advisory that announced his food contamination study, which was published in Science of the Total Environment. Because of above-ground atom bomb testing, Prof. Smith said, “Radioactive elements such as caesium-137, strontium-90 and carbon-14 contaminated the global environment, potentially causing hundreds of thousands of unseen cancer deaths.”

No less an authority than the late John Gofman, MD, Ph.D., a co-discoverer of plutonium and Professor Emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, spent 50 years warning about the threat posed by low doses of radiation. In May 1999, Gofman wrote, “By any reasonable standard of biomedical proof, there is no safe dose, which means that just one decaying radioactive atom can produce permanent mutation in a cell’s genetic molecules. My own work showed this in 1990 for X rays, gamma rays, and beta particles.”

The Fukushima-borne cesium in Japan’s food supply, and in the food-web of the entire Pacific Ocean, emits both beta and gamma radiation. Unfortunately, it will bio-accumulate and bio-concentrate for 300 years, potentially causing, as Dr. Gofman if not Dr. Smith might say, hundreds of thousands of unseen cancer deaths.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/22/fukushimas-radiation-will-poison-food-for-decades-study-finds/

June 22, 2017 Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2017 | Bioaccumulation, Contamination, Fukushima Daiichi, Nuclear Disaster, radiation | Leave a comment

Plutonium in Workers’ Urine

The Asahi Shimbun is reporting that, contrary to the reassurances made a few days ago by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (see here), workers at JAEA’s Oarai Research and Development Center, WERE internally contaminated by Plutonium:

Plutonium found in urine of 5 workers in Ibaraki accident. THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, June 20, 2017 http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201706200039.html

Minute amounts of plutonium have been detected in the urine samples of all five workers who were accidentally exposed to radioactive plutonium at Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA)’s Oarai Research and Development Center in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture, on June 6…. While maintaining the level of exposure the five workers experienced “would not have immediate effect on their health for a few months,” Akashi said their internal exposure levels are “relatively high for cases occurring in Japan as far as I know.”…

…In urine testing, NIRS said it can detect smaller amounts of plutonium as the measurement time is much longer, while the smallest radiation doses the dosimeter for lungs can detect is between 5,000 and 10,000 bequerels.

I shouldn’t be too critical of these oscillating reports given the US won’t even admit when its workers are contaminated with Plutonium, as the recent tunnel collapse at Hanford reminds us:

Tia Ghose. May 10, 2017. Hanford Disaster: What Happens to Someone Who’s Exposed to Plutonium? Live Science, https://www.livescience.com/59042-how-does-plutonium-damage-the-body.html

Workers at a nuclear-waste site in Washington state were recently told to hunker down in place after a tunnel in the nuclear finishing plant collapsed, news sources reported yesterday (May 9)…

The tunnel was part of the plutonium and uranium extraction facility (PUREX) said to be holding a lot of radioactive waste, including railway cars used to carry spent nuclear fuel rods, news agency AFP reported. At least some of the radioactive waste at the Hanford facility contains radioactive plutonium and uranium, according to the DOE, although at least some of it is also radioactive “sludge” composed of a mixture of radioactive substances. Right now, authorities have not revealed whether radioactive substances have been released or whether people have been exposed any of these contaminants

Governments don’t want to talk too much to the public about plutonium. Every dimension of knowledge about this element seems to be weaponized. Despite the desire for secrecy, plutonium always seems to be out of bounds, contaminating some people or environment, or perhaps all people, especially men’s testes (see here).

Plutonium’s astonishing level of chemical toxicity and atomic instability are fetishized by the atomic priesthood, but the priesthood cannot control their Frankensteinan creation, as these stories and ongoing atmospheric emissions at Fukushima Daiichi demonstrate:

http://majiasblog.blogspot.fr/2017/06/plutonium-in-workers-urine.html

June 22, 2017 Posted by dunrenard | Japan | Oarai Research & Development, plutonium | Leave a comment

Plutonium in workers’ urine at Oarai Research and Development Center

plutonium oarai 20 juin 2017.jpg

Traces of plutonium in workers’ urine

Doctors say extremely small quantities of radioactive substances have been detected in the urine of 5 workers who were accidentally exposed to the materials early this month at a research facility north of Tokyo.

The incident took place on June 6th at a facility of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency in Oarai Town, Ibaraki Prefecture. The workers were inspecting a nuclear fuel container when a bag inside suddenly burst, expelling radioactive powder.

The agency initially said as much as 22,000 becquerels of plutonium-239 were detected in the lungs of one of the workers. But they were discharged from hospital by Tuesday of last week after repeated examinations at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences detected no plutonium in their lungs.

On Monday, the institute said checks of the 5 workers’ urine later revealed extremely small amounts of plutonium and other radioactive materials.

It says the workers have so far suffered no damage to their health, but that they have reentered hospital to take medicines that will purge the plutonium from their bodies. They will take the drug for 5 days, after which doctors will decide if further medication is necessary.

An official related to the institute says the radioactive materials in the workers’ bodies are at levels that will not immediately affect their health.

Meanwhile, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, which employs the 5 workers, on Monday submitted to the country’s nuclear regulator an interim report on how the accident unfolded.

The agency’s president, Toshio Kodama, told reporters that he apologizes to the public for the incident. Kodama added that his organization may have problems sensing and foreseeing risks.

Kodama said the agency has to work on organizational issues, including worker awareness.

The agency says it plans to conduct a detailed investigation into the cause of the accident. It says it will consider measures to prevent recurrences and report to the regulator.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20170619_27/

Tokyo, June 19 (Jiji Press)–Trace amounts of plutonium have been detected in the urine of all five workers exposed to radioactive materials at a nuclear research facility in eastern Japan earlier this month, a radiological research center treating them said Monday.
The radioactive substances detected in the urine were plutonium-239, plutonium-238 and americium-241, the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, or NIRS, said.
The results showed that the workers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s Oarai Research and Development Center in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, suffered internal radiation exposure, the NIRS said.
The NIRS plans to continue examining the five workers for about a month to estimate levels of exposure.
The exposure is unlikely to reach levels that cause symptoms, said Makoto Akashi, a senior official at the National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, which oversees the NIRS.

http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2017061901238

Plutonium found in urine of 5 workers in Ibaraki accident

The test results were announced June 19 at a news conference by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) within National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST).

The revelation marks the latest twist in the changing assessment of severity of the health risks in the accident. Initially JAEA announced on June 7 that one of the five workers had suffered an internal exposure of 22,000 bequerels during an inspection at the nuclear energy research center. On June 9, JAEA said no plutonium was detected in any of the five workers’ lungs in further testing by NIRS.

Makoto Akashi, an executive of QST, said at the news conference the latest finding confirmed that the workers did “suffer an internal exposure.”

While maintaining the level of exposure the five workers experienced “would not have immediate effect on their health for a few months,” Akashi said their internal exposure levels are “relatively high for cases occurring in Japan as far as I know.”

He also added that long-term observation may be necessary depending on the level of internal exposure.

JAEA’s initial “internal exposure of 22,000 bequerels” assessment was hastily done on the night of the accident on June 6. The five workers were examined using a dosimeter that can detect small traces of X-rays emitted by plutonium particles inhaled into the lungs.

However, the next day, NIRS staff discovered that four of the workers did not have all the plutonium on their bodies completely removed. After thorough decontamination efforts, they were retested for plutonium in the lungs, which was “not detected.”

It is believed the initial assessment came back with a high reading, as the dosimeter also picked up the radiation from the plutonium residue on their bodies.

In urine testing, NIRS said it can detect smaller amounts of plutonium as the measurement time is much longer, while the smallest radiation doses the dosimeter for lungs can detect is between 5,000 and 10,000 bequerels.

The latest test result suggests the possibility that some plutonium particles inhaled into the workers’ lungs have been absorbed into the bloodstream, then discharged into the urine.

The five workers had been discharged and are in stable condition, but were readmitted to the institution for further treatment on June 18. They started receiving medication via intravenous drip injections to speed the excretion of radioactive substances in their bodies from June 19, according to NIRS.

It is the second time they have received this medication. NIRS confirmed the treatment’s effectiveness as the amount of plutonium in their urine increased after the first round of injections compared to the amount found prior to receiving the drug.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201706200039.html

June 22, 2017 Posted by dunrenard | Japan | Oarai Research & Development, plutonium | Leave a comment