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 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Unpublished letter to local press… (covered by alternative media though..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
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.
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
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
I knew that quality science journalism in Australia was dwindling. It took the most recent pro-nuclear advertorial in the Fairfax media to really wake me up to this. John Watson, ‘Senior writer’ at Fairfax Media, wrote an article entitled, Want to kill fewer people? Go nuclear…..
Why have The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and others sunk to this level of sloppy journalism?
Apart from the obvious fact they don’t want to offend their corporate backers, this kind of writing is symptomatic of what happens when you get rid of your qualified dedicated science journalists. Amongst the plethora of Fairfax journalists encouraged to depart their jobs were science editor Deborah Smith, health editor Julie Robotham, health correspondent Mark Metherell and environment reporter Rossyln Beeby.
That’s Fairfax. But what about the Murdoch media? The Murdoch media never had much of a problem in its coverage of science. The Australian blithely publishes science articles written by journalists who are clearly far from expert in the field of science.
This has been documented by Tim Lambert with his article, The Australian’s War on Science. In it he goes about scrutinising, in depth, writers such as Maurice Newman and Graham Lloyd.
The Australian did have one qualified science writer, Leigh Dayton. When she was sacked, the reason given by her editors was they:
‘… could rely on the supply of press releases from the Australian Science Media Centre so that their general reporters could write the science news.’ [Ed: Leigh Dayton denies having said this and we are currently endeavouring to check with the author of the Columbia Journalism Review paper as to the veracity or otherwise of the above statement.]
This brings me back to the Australian Science Media Centre. …
The development of science media centres (SMCs) has been problematic as far as coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The use of SMCs around the world has assisted the nuclear industry. It has seemingly got Tepco and others out of paying huge compensation to those impacted by the disaster…..
An article at nuclear-news.net provides a number of references revealing how experts from SMCs have downplayed the seriousness of the nuclear disaster. I note that the “experts” writing about ionising radiation and health were nuclear engineers — not radiation biologists……
how do general journalists scrutinise and distinguish between what is an independent science story and what is a pro business story? How easy might it be for general journalists to be discouraged from covering certain topics?….If the subject is complex – the health effects of Fukushima radiation – it is all too easy to go to the science media centre and get a comforting article from a nuclear engineer.
Just as has happened in Japan and the UK. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/business/media-2/the-death-of-science-journalism-in-australia/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-death-of-science-journalism-in-australia
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
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.
Nuclear agency stifle private health growth in Nigeria
Published on Saturday,
20 July 2013 06:00
Written by Ruby Leo and Judd Leonard Okafor
Private health investors and practitioners have said that the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NNRA) is frustrating and hampering the import of equipment for medical imaging services in the country with its ‘exorbitant charges’.
Image source ; http://www.noi-polls.net/index.php?s_id=3&p_id=152&p_pt=1&parent=11#.UfG6v85x0xA
Senator Ikechukwu Abana, chairman of LifeBridge Diagnostics, which runs high-tech dialysis, laboratory and imaging equipment that use radiation, insisted that NNRA charges “target medical radiation equipment like CT scanners and X-ray machines.”
He said LifeBridge opened with equipment for mammography, electrocardio-gram and imaging—including a 64-slice CT scanner capable of getting full brain scan in five seconds and a full body scan in 10 seconds.
But Abana said NNRA charges exorbitant fees “at par with what they charge oil companies that make their profits in billions of naira.”
He also called for import duty concessions to medical service providers as well as a reduction in multiple taxation, insisting that they “pose serious challenges and barriers to entry for investors in the healthcare sector.”
Meanwhile President Goodluck Jonathan, who commissioned LifeBridge Diagnostics Centre in Abuja, insisted that medical equipment to be installed in health facilities in Nigeria would be duty free to support the growth of private health sector.
http://weeklytrust.com.ng/index.php/new-news/13355-nuclear-agency-stifle-private-health-growth
UK government failing to test adequetly for potential radioactivivity in food
The article provides an analytical review of the effectiveness of the monitoring of (marine discharged) radioactivity in foodstuffs and concludes that it is highly IN-effective!
The Ecologist have agreed that the article may be reprinted anywhere (provided that they are acknowledged as the source and original publisher!)
On the basis of this review it’s my conclusion that the current programme for monitoring doses of marine derived radioactivity in food lacks the appropriate scientific rigour. It is not fit for current purpose because, owing to the weaknesses described above, it cannot provide sufficiently detailed data to justify the FSA claim that there is a “low risk from radioactivity in food” and that “no food safety risks have been identified”.Tim Deere-Jones
UK government failing to protect population from potentially radioactive food
by Tim Deere-Jones
10 July 2013
2013 has seen a major surge in the potential for expansion of UK nuclear power. In February, the Environment Agency (EA) found no objection to the discharge and disposal of radioactive wastes from a proposed nuclear power station with two CPWRs (contained pressurised water reactors) at Hinkley Point on the Somerset coast. It stated that the discharge of gaseous and liquid wastes to the marine environment and atmosphere of the Bristol Channel could proceed.
One month later the UK Government granted permission for the construction of the Hinkley CPWR, paving the way for a three-fold increase in the amount of some radio nuclides discharged to sea and also for the rolling out of planning permissions for another eight stations holding two or three reactors each.
In the same period, the Food Standards Agency (FSA), responsible for monitoring radioactivity in food, stated that, since “an annual monitoring programme has been in place for more than 25 years and no food safety risks have been identified during this period”, it now proposed to “optimise” the monitoring of radioactivity in food by reducing the scope and volume of its annual environmental monitoring and analysis programmes.
The FSA risk estimate for marine radioactivity is based on the outcome of assessment modelling of dietary dose, received from a range of foodstuffs thought to be representative of dietary exposure pathways. Here follows my review of the data inputs quality, upon which such modelling relies for its accuracy and relevance.
The original hypothesis for the behaviour of radioactivity in the sea
In the early 1950s, the first pipelines for the discharge of liquid nuclear waste to the UK’s coastal waters were commissioned. In the absence of empirical data, it was hypothesised that soluble radio-nuclides, such as Caesium or Tritium, would disperse and dilute through the water column and present no threat to human populations.
Insoluble nuclides, such as Plutonium, Americium or Cobalt 60, would adsorb to the outer surface of particles suspended in the marine water column, sink to the sea bed close to the point of discharge and remain immobilised in sub-tidal sedimentary deposits, sequestered from human populations and their immediate environment.
With support from the International Atomic Energy Agency, this theory provided the basis for the subsequent scientific, ethical and legal justifications for sea disposal of liquid radioactive wastes from nuclear sites. Its purely hypothetical nature was confirmed in 1958, when the UK industry and regulators publicly admitted that the sea disposal of liquid radioactive wastes had actually been an enormous research project.
Since the UK Government has not publicly revised or refuted this basic hypothesis, it remains the “official” position on the fate and behaviour of liquid radioactive waste discharges into UK coastal waters. No evidence gathered as a result of subsequent empirical scientific research has changed the basic position.
The monitoring programme
Annual reports such as “Radioactivity in Food and the Environment” (RIFE) published by the FSA and the EA state that most monitoring investigates the “local effects of discharges from nuclear licensed sites”, while there is “some ongoing monitoring of Chernobyl impacts”.
Historically, a small programme monitoring food and the environment “remote from nuclear licensed sites” was also carried out to give “information on background concentrations of radio nuclides”. This is what the FSA has proposed to abandon in order to “optimise” monitoring.
Turkey Jails 64 Journalists For Coverage of People’s Protest
Sacked veteran journalist: ‘It’s not possible to conduct serious journalism in such a polluted system.’ – Lauren McCauley, staff writer
Journalists in Turkey who covered this spring’s Gezi Park protests are living in a “half-open penitentiary,” say critics, as media bosses—under pressure from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government—have sacked dozens of reporters while others face criminal prosecution.
Sixty-four journalists are currently under arrest and another 123 are facing charges of terrorism, said a report issued by the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Tuesday.
“Mr. Prime Minister has turned the country into a half-open penitentiary and made it impossible to live for journalists,” said CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu during a press briefing.
“We are experiencing a process in which […] the media bosses are under the rule of political authority and publish the news that the political authority accepts,” he added. “We have gone 105 years back in time.”
Fukushima Unit 3 Steaming Again! Aid worker whistleblows on bad Thyroid health check
This video and researched articles below are worth checking out. There is an interview in this video that refers to the plight of the children of Fukushima and their families.. And some admissions of how the Japanese authorities are managing to cover up the true statistical impacts on this unfortunate group of people.
So please listen to the interview and you will see a repetition of the situation after Chernobyl, where support/health workers understood the problems but would never be given a platform on the main stream news outlets.
I will also leave a link at the bottom where a belarus UK worker says she was told not to talk about the health effects she was seeing to anyone in the UK after the Chernobyl disaster (foe anyone who may have missed the article).[Arclight2011part2]
Published on 24 Jul 2013
Fukushima Unit 3 steaming again, third time in a week — Asahi: High radiation levels detected near where it was observed — Tepco does not know where it’s coming from (PHOTOS)
AFP, July 24, 2013: […] Today, TEPCO said workers had noticed steam around the fifth floor of the building housing Reactor Number 3, which was wrecked by the tsunami of March 2011. It was the second time in two days and the third time in a week that steam had been observed. The firm has said there has been no increase in the amount of radioactive material being released, although it does not know where the steam is coming from.
TEPCO, July 24, 2013: Steam Found Near the Central Part of the Fifth Floor (Equipment Storage Pool Side) of Unit 3 Reactor Building at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (Follow-up Information 12) […] This is a follow-up report on the statuses of steam found wafting through the air near the central part of the fifth floor (equipment storage pool side) of Unit 3 on July 18. At around 4:15 AM today (July 24), we found steam coming from near the central part of the fifth floor (equipment storage pool side) of Unit 3 by a camera. […]
Asahi, July 24, 2013: High levels of radiation were detected near an area where steam was spotted July 23 at the No. 3 reactor building of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, said. TEPCO gave a measurement of 562 millisieverts per hour. The Nuclear Regulation Authority, the government’s nuclear industry watchdog, instructed TEPCO to investigate further because the dose level is high. […]
Stories from a Fukushima aid volunteer 福島援助ワーカーからストーリー – Walking in Japan 日本でのウォーキング
http://youtu.be/-Um4qle9w6E
Fukushima steps up children’s thyroid recheck
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/englis…
http://tinyurl.com/mdlbutz
See infrared images of Reactor 3 from July 24 here
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushim…
http://tinyurl.com/m84bn2a
Radioactive material may have leaked from tunnel
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/englis…
http://tinyurl.com/n36f6bg
Radioactive materials found near Fukushima Daiichi
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/englis…
http://tinyurl.com/kq84xf7
Decontamination slow, effectiveness in doubt
BIKES NOT BOMBS! Nuclear Abolition Week 2013 – Melbourne, Australia
Published on 24 Jul 2013
During ICAN’s global Nuclear Abolition Week we hit the streets rolling in Melbourne. We collected signed Parliamentary Appeals from several politician’s offices, imagined the hypothetical effects of a modern-day nuclear weapon on the city of Melbourne and visited Serco and the Australian Government’s Future Fund.
This video features the very awkward interaction we had with a Future Fund employee in their office when we delivered a petition of 13,675 signatures calling on them to divest public money from nuclear weapons companies. They were keen to show us where the door was…
Bikes Not Bombs Tour- 12th July 2013
Footage: Nancy Atkin
Production: Gem Romuld
Music: The Formidable Vegetable Sound System
Happy fukushima film!
Published on 22 Jul 2013
Hello everyone! First and foremost, congratulations on being selected to come to one of the best places in Japan!
I know some of you might still be a little worried about your life in Fukushima yet we will try our best to make your transition smoother.
This video will give you a brief insight of the JET Programme in Fukushima Prefecture,the Prefectural Advisors’ system,and the Area Support Leaders’ system.
I know the video is a bit long but do spend some time to watch it before you arrive in Fukushima.
Once again,congratulations and welcome to Lucky（福） Island（島）!
This video was made by the CIRs at Fukushima Prefectural Government.
🙂
“Who Could Trust Such A Company?” – The Big Fat Lies About Radiation Exposure Of Workers At Fukushima
Friday, July 19, 2013 at 7:30PM
The nuclear fiasco playing out relentlessly in Japan since March 2011 has shaken the previously omniscient and omnipotent nuclear industry – and the government agencies that aided and abetted it. Yet they still obfuscate and minimize the consequences of the triple melt-down of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Latest revelation: the number of workers at the plant who had cancer-inducing radiation doses in thyroid glands from inhaling radioactive substances during the early stages of the crisis was elven times higher than disclosed last December.
Not 178 workers, as TEPCO, the bailed out and now partially state-controlled owner of the nuke had said, but 1,973 workers, as the Asahi Shimbun has “learned.”
Despite its erstwhile omniscience and omnipotence, TEPCO has been publically baffled by an endless series of mishaps, surprises, and occurrences that left it mostly helpless. For example, in mid-March, it disclosed that a month earlier (!), a greenling with 740,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram had been caught near the plant. That’s 7,400 times the government’s food safety limit, highest ever measured by TEPCO’s testing program. The prior record-breaking TEPCO fish had 510,000 becquerels. And they’re all part of the food chain.
Then, early last week, researchers determined that several Japanese sea bass caught off the coast of Hitachi, a city about 60 miles south of the plant – halfway toward Tokyo – had radioactive cesium levels of 1,037 becquerels per kilogram, over ten times the government’s food safety limit. It was the first time since April 2011 that such high levels of contamination had been found in that region. The researchers claimed they had no clue why this mega-dose was now showing up again, over two years after the accident.
Alas, cesium-134 and cesium-137 in groundwater at the plant suddenly started soaring in early July. When measured on July 8, levels were 90 times higher than those found on July 5 and reached 200 times the legal limit for groundwater. TEPCO was baffled. “It is unclear whether the radioactive water is leaking into the sea,” a company official said.
On June 19, TEPCO had already admitted that groundwater contamination of highly toxic, radioactive strontium-90, a by-product of the fission of uranium and plutonium, had increased by more than 100 times between December and May; and that the level of radioactive tritium, a somewhat less harmful substance, had increased by 17 times. And when the cesium levels were spiking in early July, it admitted in the same breath that tritium levels in seawater had soared to 2,300 becquerels per liter, the highest ever detected, and more than double the contamination measured two weeks earlier.
Russian prosecutor savages NGOs as Putin tries guide him to safer political ground
“The political field in which political parties exist has been purged,” said Nikitin. “Now they are purging the field in which NGOs operate, because these might inspire some kind of revolutionary threat.”
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2013/1373450691.27
In a heated attack on civil society movements during a televised meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, General Prosecutor Yury Chaika slammed 215 NGOS he says have run afoul of the law by receiving foreign funding and not registering as foreign agents.
Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika (right) meets with President Vladimir Putin to discuss the enforcement of Russia’s new NGO law.
Kremlin.ru
The Duma passed the controversial “foreign agent” amendments to Russia’s NGO law last July. They entered force in November, requiring all NGO groups that receive foreign funding and engage in vaguely defined “political activities” to register with the Russian Justic Ministry as foreign agents, a term pregnant with Cold War connotations of spying.
Critics also complained that political activity is so sloppily defined that it could be against any NGO. Indeed, even a Siberian bird sanctuary has been warned it is functioning as a foreign agent.
Unexpected invective
Chaika’s blustery verbiage was surprising as it followed by less that a week public remarks by Putin wherein – for the second time since late June – he sided with rights activists who want the law amended to make NGOs that do not engage into politics exempt from it.
Chaika went on further to say in his Tuesday meeting that some 2000 NGOs through Russia has received some 24 billion rubles ($1 billion) in funding from abroad, seemingly corroborating remarks made by Putin in March to a German Television station.
But Chaika, noted Alexander Nikitin, chairman of the Environment and Rights Center (ERC) Bellona, went on to clarify that this supposed bonanza of financing for NGOs was a combination of Russian and foreign funding sources – contradicting Putin’s precipitous assertion in Germany that all the money was coming from other countries.
This was something of an embarrassment for the president, who had in March insisted his $1 billion figure in foreign assistance was a matter of record with the Prosecutor General.
Dissention in the ranks
There are also strong undercurrents with the Kremlin that the foreign agent law is rife with imperfections that are now becoming all the more glaring, and which threaten to alienate many of Putin’s most indispensible allies, Nikitin said.
BRITISH NUCLEAR TEST VETERANS SILENCED?
Published nuclear-news.net
By Arclight2011part2
22 July 2013
In the course of my research i was contacted by another blogger who claimed that the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association had no contact with Professor Chris Busby. And he was using this to say that therefore Chris Busby had no grounds to do what he was doing.
On further investigation of this claim i visited the web site of the BNTV and discovered that the latest reports on the legal challenges at the court were not even reported on this website in a clear and concise manner.
http://bntvachair.blogspot.co.uk/
I found a reference to the UK veterans dated the 8th July 2013 that linked to the BBC
Here is a quote to the only mention of the veterans
“After his return he developed a cataract in his right eye and for much of his life he has been trying, and failing, to get compensation from the Ministry of Defence for what he alleges was harmful exposure to radiation during his military service”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23184816
They did have a link to a 140 page report on this;
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Ionising Radiation Pension Tribunal Results
And at Page 33 to 35 we see that Busby`s evidence is dismissed . The case was lost because much of Chris Busbies vital evidence was withheld and cherry picked to ensure the case would be lost(ref Kay Batterby video below).
http://bntvachair.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/ionising-radiation-pension-tribunal.html
On Page 130 part of the conclusion says that rare metal toxicity need large epidemiological studies..
And yet we know the 2013 WHO report on depleted uranium damage is being stopped from being published and RT has had its video hacked today when they tried reporting another damming report on depleted uranium.
So the report is designed to stop the case for the depleted weaponry damage to unborn children and adults alike. The Insurance companies and their legal friends must be quaking in their boots.. Think of the financial loses compensating an ever increasing amount of nuclear victims? The Insurance companies would go bust!
And behind all good Insurance underwriters.. the security services with their shiny new internet control toys..
So do MI5 and MI6 have undue power?
Ex-boss of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove ‘has his own Iraq dossier’
17:15 Sunday 21 July 2013
Written by CHRIS HAVERGAL
Sir Richard Dearlove, master of Pembroke CollegeA former head of MI6 who is now the master of a Cambridge University college has revealed he is writing an account of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who has been master of Pembroke College since he stepped down as ‘C’ in 2004, told the Mail on Sunday his memoir was intended to be a resource available to scholars after his death.
But Sir Richard, 68, suggested release of the account “may be sooner” depending on the findings of the Chilcot Inquiry into decisions which were taken ahead of the British government’s decision to go to war.
Depleted uranium used by US forces blamed for birth defects and cancer in Iraq
“We went to Fallujah and we found the levels of cancer. We looked at the parents of children with congenital malformation and we did analysis of their hair to see what was inside their hair that might be genotoxic, that might be the sort of thing that can cause congenital malformation. The only thing that we found was uranium. We found uranium in the mothers of the children with congenital malformations,”
July 22, 2013
RT
Cancer is more common than flu in the Iraqi city of Najaf,
If you watch the video with Kay Battersby`s witness statement at 19.36 approx….
Kay clearly says that Hogan Lovells threatened to withdraw their legal support to an elderly and sick man if she insisted that the well proven evidence of Chris Busby was used.
She trusted Hogan Lovells to make good and at that late stage had no other options.
Depleted uranium used by US forces blamed for birth defects and cancer in Iraq
“We went to Fallujah and we found the levels of cancer. We looked at the parents of children with congenital malformation and we did analysis of their hair to see what was inside their hair that might be genotoxic, that might be the sort of thing that can cause congenital malformation. The only thing that we found was uranium. We found uranium in the mothers of the children with congenital malformations,”
July 22, 2013
RT
Cancer is more common than flu in the Iraqi city of Najaf, a local medics told RT. While doctors say the government discourages them from talking openly to the press on the disease, local families are scared of having more kids with birth defects.
Rates of leukemia and birth defects “rose dramatically” due to use of depleted uranium by the US military since 2003 invasion.
“After the start of the Iraq war, rates of cancer, leukemia and birth defects rose dramatically in Najaf. The areas affected by American attacks saw the biggest increases. We believe it’s because of the’ illegal’ weapons like depleted uranium that were used by the Americans. When you visit the hospital here you see that cancer is more common than the flu,” Dr. Sundus Nsaif tells RT’s Lucy Kafanov while talking on the rooftop of her house in Najaf, instead of her laboratory. Why the secrecy? As she reveals, there’s an active push by the government perhaps not to embarrass the coalition forces, not to really talk about this issue.
RT crew went to the city of Najaf about 160 km south of Baghdad that saw one of the most severe military actions during the US’s invasion. Now every residential street in several neighborhoods that RT visited has multiple cases of families whose children were ill, families who had lost children who had to bury children, families who had many relatives who were suffering from cancer.
M.O.D. COVER UP! – Situation update and Plea on behalf of the UK nuclear test veterans
I will be unable to post regularly while i adapt to my new living conditions
please share this article below..
UK Atomic Test Veterans Appeals Betrayal Update from Chris Busby
This is an update to the progress of the Pensions Appeals Tribunals hearing in London in January/ February 2013. Dr Busby predicted in an earlier presentation from Riga that since his expert evidence had been excluded at the last minute by the Lawyers who were representing the veteran appellants, the cases would be lost……….
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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