Rice planting to resume in Fukushima Prefecture
“Which governmental agency is doing the tests (..of the produce)?”
“It is not the government, it is unfortunate that the government is not wiling to test all the products in Japan. The testing started as a voluntry move by the farmers…”
So, if the farmer volunteers information that is incorrect the goverment will allow that product to be sold?
“yes, if it is declared under the government limits..”
Rice planting to resume in Fukushima Prefecture
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The town government of Hirono and the village government of Kawauchi in Fukushima Prefecture have decided to resume planting rice next year.
[…]
On Tuesday, the Hirono town government decided to resume rice planting in all areas, and the Kawauchi village government decided to plant rice in areas other than that formerly designated as a no-entry zone.
[….]
This month, the Hirono town government began decontaminating about 400 hectares of farmland by using such techniques as a process called sparging in conjunction with the mineral zeolite, which can absorb radioactive substances.
[…]
“If I can grow rice, the town will be revitalized even if only a little,” he said. “Some of the residents will return.”
[…]
This year, Ryohei Niitsuma, 53, planted rice despite the town government’s request to refrain from doing so.
But after he sent letters to about 100 individual customers, only five or six replied that they would buy the rice.
“It’s painful for me that the rice I produced through hard work doesn’t sell,” he said. “But unless I continue production, this town will decline.”
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now is Asked About Fukushima at Green Fest -Video
(EnviroNews California) – At a jammed packed Green Fest in San Francisco, California the likes of which we have never seen before, we were able to catch up with legendary news anchor and investigative reporter Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Ms. Goodman was rushing to catch a flight after a signing where she was promoting her latest book “The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope”.
Desipte the extreme time crunch, EnviroNews California was able to ask her about one of the most critical stories of our lifetimes: The enormously disasterous and ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power facility in Eastern Japan. Josh Cunnings Reporting.
Link to video here
Arafat’s remains to be exhumed for radiation checks
“A murder inquiry was launched by French prosecutors in August after an investigation by al Jazeera TV, working with scientists at the Institute of Radiation Physics at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, found “significant” traces of polonium-210 present in samples taken from Arafat’s personal effects, including his trademark keffiyeh headdress.”
SUNDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2012
Palestinian authorities to carry out tests this week after polonium found on former leader’s clothes By Dalia Nammari in Ramallah
THE remains of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is due to be exhumed on Tuesday, to enable foreign experts to take samples as part of a probe into his death.
Arafat died in November 2004, a month after falling ill, and Palestinian officials have insisted he was poisoned by Israel. Israel has vehemently denied killing him.
The detection of traces of a lethal radioactive substance in biological stains on Arafat’s clothing earlier this year sparked a new investigation.
Former Palestinian intelligence chief Tawfik Tirawi, who heads the committee investigating Arafat’s death, said yesterday that Swiss, French and Russian experts would take samples from Arafat’s remains on Tuesday. He said Arafat would be reburied the same day with military honours but the ceremony would be closed to the public.
Arafat, who led the Palestine Liberation Organisation for 35 years and became the first president of the Palestinian Authority in 1996, fell violently ill at his compound in October 2004.
Two weeks later he was flown to a French military hospital in Paris, where he died on 11 November 2004, aged 75.
His widow, Suha, objected to a post-mortem examination at the time, but later appealed to the Palestinian Authority to permit the exhumation “to reveal the truth”.
In 2005, the New York Times obtained a copy of Arafat’s medical records, which it said showed he died of a massive haemorrhagic stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unknown infection.
Independent experts who reviewed the records told the paper it was highly unlikely that he had died of Aids or had been poisoned.
76% Of Children In Nihonmatsu Radiation Monitoring Over 1mSv/year
November 25th, 2012
Some data has been released about the external radiation monitoring program going on in Fukushima. These programs involved issuing glass badges to school children then periodically handing them in for testing. This does not record the children’s internal radiation doses from what they breathe in, eat or drink. Those levels are in addition to what is recorded by the badges.
What the new round of testing found is that 76% of school children in Nihonmatsu are above the government goal of 1 mSv/year with just their external radiation exposure. The government goal is based on the ICRP guidelines but many consider the ICRP levels to be too high. Some actually saw their levels go up compared to their 2011 levels. One researcher assumed this is due to children being allowed outside more now than before.
As the disaster evolves people are still struggling to understand how and where the radiation contamination will show up to continue to try to mitigate people’s risk. Nihonmatsu City is about 45km from Fukushima Daiichi.
Sources:
Fukushima Diary
USA -30 Years of Breast Screening: 1.3 Million Wrongly Treated
Sayer Ji
NOVEMBER 25, 2012
The breast cancer industry’s holy grail (that mammography is the primary weapon in the war against breast cancer) has been disproved. In fact, mammography appears to have CREATED 1.3 million cases of breast cancer in the U.S. population that were not there.
A disturbing new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is bringing mainstream attention to the possibility that mammography has caused far more harm than good in the millions of women who have employed it over the past 30 years as their primary strategy in the fight against breast cancer.[i]
Titled “Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast-Cancer Incidence,” researchers estimated that among women younger than 40 years of age, breast cancer was overdiagnosed, i.e. “tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms,” in 1.3 million U.S. womenover the past 30 years. In 2008, alone, “breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed.”
As we revealed in a previous article,[ii] the primary form of mammography-detected breast cancer is ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), also known as ‘stage zero’ or ‘non-invasive breast cancer.’ Unlike truly invasive cancer, which expands outward like the crab after which it was named (Greek: Cancer = Crab), ductal carcinoma is in situ, i.e. situated, non-moving – an obvious contradiction in terms.
Also, DCIS presents without symptoms in the majority of women within which it is detected, and if left untreated will (usually) not progress to cause harm to women. Indeed, without x-ray diagnostic technologies, many if not most of the women diagnosed with it would never have known they had it in the first place. The journal Lancet Oncology, in fact, published a cohort study last year finding that even clinically verified “invasive” cancers appear to regress with time if left untreated:
[We] believe many invasive breast cancers detected by repeated mammography screening do not persist to be detected by screening at the end of 6 years, suggesting that the natural course of many of the screen-detected invasive breast cancers is to spontaneously regress.[iii]
Ayumi Kizenuka Discusses Her Contaminated Farm, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Plight of Her Fellow Farmers in Fukushima -VIDEO
“Which governmental agency is doing the tests (..of the produce)?”
“It is not the government, it is unfortunate that the government is not wiling to test all the products in Japan. The testing started as a voluntry move by the farmers…”
So, if the farmer volunteers information that is incorrect the goverment will allow that product to be sold?
“yes, if it is declared under the government limits..”
(EnviroNews USA) –
Video on link – Duration 23 mins
Amongst a lively group of keen Fukushima followers who attended a symposium at UC Berkely’s Institute of East Asian Studies, a brave organic Japanese tea farmer by the name of Ayumi Kizenuka spoke about the confusing post 3-11 agricultural climate currently affecting Japan’s widely contaminated farmlands.
According to Kizenuka, the situation is so uncertain that most farmers remain in the dark as to the levels of deadly radioactive pollution plaguing their crops and soil. Apparently, the local and national governments have been virtually invisible in their lackluster attempts to regulate and test farmlands for nuclear contamination since the disaster’s inception. Many of the region’s tea and rice growers, particularly those like Ayumi, who have dedicated themselves to sustainable horticultural practices, are doing their best to test their own crops for radiation. However, plenty of others desperately continue to harvest agricultural products from locations much CLOSER to the site of the nuclear catastrophe, without ANY sort of testing or regulatory oversight.
Ms. Kizenuka also spoke without reserve about how the situation has become so grim for farmers that there has been a noteworthy pandemic of suicides within the agricultural community. While Japan continues to export crops of questionable safety, such as the recent shipments of radioactive peaches that were busted in Thailand, the government fails to engage in any real measures of monitoring and enforcement, leaving Japanese farmers in a situation of “SELF-REGULATION”.
CESIUM 137 IN INFANT MILK IN SOUTH KOREA FROM NEW ZEALAND OCT 2012
http://www.acro.eu.org/OCC_fr.html
Radioactive Japan: Commercial-Use Skim Milk Powder Found with 23 Bq/kg of Radioactive Cesium
SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2012
The data, photos and the graph are from Security Tokyo, with express permission to reprint.
Item: skim milk power in 1kg bag, commercial use
Manufacturer: Zenrakuren (all-Japan federation of dairy industry)
Manufactured in: Kita Fukuoka Factory in Iwate Prefecture
Canadian province shuts down nuclear reactor similar to Wolseong in Korea
Posted on : Nov.20,2012
Greenpeace Campaigner says Korean reactors’ lifespans should only be extended after proper processes
By Lee Keun-young, science correspondent
“The Quebec Provincial government recently decided that the nuclear reactor Gentilly-2, the same type as Korea’s Wolseong #1, would be shutdown due to safety concerns and the huge cost of extending its term of service. South Korea needs to follow Quebec’s lead and adopt such a process of discussion in which the extension of operations is approved only after calculating the costs and making public the relevant information.”
Greenpeace Canada nuclear campaigner Shawn Patrick Stensil, 39, advised as much in a video press conference held on Nov. 19 by South Korean NGO Common Action for a Non-Nuclear Society and Greenpeace Korea. He mentioned the case of Point Lepreau, a single nuclear power plant whose original lifespan was extended. The original estimation of the plant’s facilities improvement costs was CDN$800 million in 2002, but the cost ballooned to CDN$1.1 billion won in 2005 and CDN$2.5 billion won in 2010.
UK -Grassroots action shows new nuclear won’t be a pushover
Posted by Richardg – 23 November 2012
This morning, as the Energy Bill was making headlines, ten people were setting up a non-violent blockade of Hinkley Point nuclear power station. It’s a sure sign that building new reactors will be an uphill struggle.
The first new nuclear power station in the UK for decades is supposed to be built in Hinkley Point, on the West Somerset coast. As often happens when you’re dealing with the nuclear industry, plans have gone somewhat awry.
Local people are furious, because they don’t believe the government or EDF, who want to build the reactor, are listening to them.
Some are worried about hundreds of lorries trundling past their front door. Others worry about the nuclear waste that would be stored on-site for decades. Many would just rather the money being spent propping up the nuclear industry were spent on affordable, sustainable renewable power.
The protest today finished when four people were arrested, but it’s unlikely to be the last protest of this nature. It’s hard enough building a nuclear reactor on time and on budget – and it’s much, much harder when local people are determined to stop you.
Toshiba nuclear robot can’t make it through demo!
(Credit: Toshiba)
Japan is again trying to field some more robots to work at the heavily damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but this walker from Toshiba froze during a press demo.
Tetrapod is a quadruped designed to withstand high levels of radiation, but it couldn’t seem to take the glare of cameras.
The wireless remote-controlled machine recalls Boston Dynamics’ BigDog robots, with legs than can tackle uneven terrain. It can carry up to 44 pounds of equipment and has an onboard camera and dosimeter.
It’s designed to survey the plant’s highly radioactive buildings and debris, and can apparently withstand a 100 millisievert environment for a year.
As seen in the vid below, it has a folding arm that can deploy a second, smaller robot with a camera to image tight spots and key equipment.
RELATED STORIES
http://www.isstek.com/toshiba-nuclear-robot-cant-make-it-through-demo/
Ghana to have nuclear energy in 15 years
“The Chinese are interested in a cooperation with Russia on uranium production in third countries. “It is possible, we have mentioned African countries, in particular”, Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko announced. (RIA Novosti Aug. 30, 2010)”
[…]
“The acting Director of Ghana Atomic Energy Commission
(GAEC), Dr B.J.B. Nyarko, has said that the country stands the chance of striking uranium deposits in commercial quantities since there is an association between gold and uranium. He explained that a study of gold tailings at the Nuclear Research Reactor at Kwabenya revealed traces of uranium in pits in gold-mining areas in the country. Dr Nyarko said the research, carried out by GAEC, was not on a large scale and that a major prospecting and exploration was needed to establish the link. (MJFM Apr. 22, 2008)”
[…]
11/24/2012
Ghana will start to generate electricity from nuclear energy in 15 years, or 10 years if things go smoothly, a Ghanaian nuclear power program coordinator has said.
Expertise preparation for the country’s nuclear power program, from installation to maintenance, is underway, said Robert Sogbadjie, the national coordinator of the Ghana Nuclear Power Program Organization (GNPPO).
Ghana has decided to go nuclear for electricity generation because after acceding to the Kyoto protocol on global warming, it can only develop a limited number of thermal plants, he said in an interview with Xinhua here on Friday.
Talks on Middle East nuclear free zone cancelled
Arshad Mohammed, Reuters
Saturday, 24 November 2012
The State Department announced that the mid-December conference on creating a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, would not occur and did not make clear when, or whether, it would take place.
Earlier this month, diplomats told Reuters that the talks were likely to be postponed, rather than canceled outright.
“As a co-sponsor of the proposed conference … the United States regrets to announce that the conference cannot be convened because of present conditions in the Middle East and the fact that states in the region have not reached agreement on acceptable conditions for a conference,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement.
Nuland said that “a deep conceptual gap persists in the region” on how to handle regional security and arms control, adding that “outside states cannot impose a process on the region any more than they can dictate an outcome.”
The plan for a meeting to lay the groundwork for the possible creation of a WMD-free Middle East was agreed to at a May 2010 conference of 189 parties to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT.
The United States, feared the conference, which was to be held in Finland, could be used as a forum to bash Israel, a concern likely to have increased after eight days of fierce Israeli-Palestinian fighting that ended with a ceasefire on Wednesday.
Swiss nuclear reactor shuts down due to defect -oldest operating nuclear plant in the world
“..The longer without a disaster, he said, the more worries subside…”
GENEVA, Nov 21, 2012 (AFP) – A reactor at a Swiss nuclear plant shut down automatically Wednesday due to a defect, the operator said, stressing that the procedure had been completely safe.
“Block 2 of the Beznau nuclear power plant shut down automatically,” operator Axpo said in a statement.
“This was triggered by a defect in the non-nuclear part of the power plant. All systems functioned perfectly during the rapid shut-down,” it added.
Axpo spokeswoman Daniela Biedermann told AFP that the reactor had not yet returned to the grid and that it could only be recommissioned once the defect had been located and fixed.
“When the power plant was shut down, steam escaped from the non-nuclear part of the plant,” the statement said, adding however that “the safety of the power plant was guaranteed at all times”.
Switzerland reacted swiftly to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima last year, with parliament deciding to phase out nuclear energy.
http://www.mysinchew.com/node/80065?tid=37
Greenpeace blasts Swiss nuclear power over Russian fuel
(AFP) – Oct 5, 2010
GENEVA — Environmental group Greenpeace sharply criticised Swiss power stations Tuesday for using nuclear fuel from a Russian reprocessing centre at Mayak, claiming it was one of the world’s most polluted.
Greenpeace Switzerland said in an open letter to energy firm Axpo that executives had acknowledged “for the first time” that reprocessed nuclear fuel from Mayak was used in two nuclear power stations in central Switzerland.
Mayak in central Russia reprocesses spent nuclear fuel rods from Russian submarines and ice breakers and is regarded as “one of the most radioactive places on the planet,” according to the campaign group.
“The Swiss nuclear industry is complicit in grave harm not only to the environment but also human rights,” Swiss Greenpeace spokesman Nicolas de Roten told AFP.
Tube wear at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station fatal!
” In other words, the Unit 2 RSG’s in the “As Designed and Degraded Configuration” cannot be OPERATED at any “Power Levels” due to the substantial risk of nuclear meltdown described…”
Greenhouse gas volumes reached new high in 2011 – survey
“Is there a connection between these mass releases of isotopes into the atmosphere and the interesting temperature peaks? and how do we get the highest CO releases, lowest temperature globally and highest recorded ever temperatures in some parts of the world including the Arctic?”
GENEVA | Tue Nov 20, 2012 10:41am GMT
(Reuters) – Atmospheric volumes of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change hit a new record in 2011, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin on Tuesday.
The volume of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activities, grew at a similar rate to the previous decade and reached 390.9 parts per million (ppm), 40 percent above the pre-industrial level, the survey said.
It has increased by an average of 2 ppm for the past 10 years.
Fossil fuels
are the primary source of about 375 billion tonnes of carbon that has been released into the atmosphere since the industrial era began in 1750, the WMO said.
WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said the billions of tonnes of extra carbon dioxide would stay in the atmosphere for centuries, causing the planet to warm further.
“We have already seen that the oceans are becoming more acidic as a result of the carbon dioxide uptake, with potential repercussions for the underwater food chain and coral reefs,” he said in a statement.
Levels of methane, another long-lived greenhouse gas, have risen steadily for the past three years after levelling off for about seven years. The reasons for that evening out are unclear.
Growth in volumes of a third gas, nitrous oxide, quickened in 2011. It has a long-term climate impact that is 298 times greater than carbon dioxide.
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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