Radiation pills for USA States – good idea or not?
NRC officials say they do not favor expanded distribution because there’s a misconception about potassium iodide’s powers and a fear people might delay in heeding evacuation orders, if they have pills. “It doesn’t protect against damage to organs other than the thyroid,” said Patricia Milligan, a certified health physicist in the NRC’s division of preparedness and response. “It’s not an anti-radiation pill, as some people seem to think”
States Urged to Offer Radiation Pills, WSJ, By REBECCA SMITH —Yuka Hayashi contributed to this article. 24 Aug 11, It has been nearly a decade since Congress passed a law promoting distribution of pills to people living near nuclear plants that would minimize one potentially lethal effect of accidental radiation exposure. But the law still hasn’t been implemented. Continue reading
Following public outcry, Japan to lower the “allowable” radiation limit for schoolchildren
Govt to lower school radiation limit, The Yomiuri Shimbun, 245 Aug 11, The government likely will dramatically tighten its current safety limit–3.8 microsieverts per hour–on the amount of radiation to which children may be exposed during outdoor activities at school facilities, government sources said.
The move will be followed by efforts to decontaminate playgrounds and other school facilities with the aim of reducing the amount of radiation exposure affecting schoolchildren to 1 microsievert per hour.
The action is a response to criticism that the current safety limit is too high. The government has also taken note of the fact that local governments in and around Fukushima Prefecture are taking their own initiatives to decontaminate tracts of land affected by the ongoing nuclear crisis.
In effect, these steps amount to a reconsideration of the government’s current safety standards for radiation exposure, according to observers.
The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry plans to offer financial aid for decontamination projects, with the aim of limiting the annual accumulated radiation students are exposed to at school to 1 millisievert (1,000 microsieverts).http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904009304576528690610416826.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Death of anti nuclear activist,Nora Bredes
Nora Bredes, Long Island nuclear plant foe, dies – WSJ.com, AUGUST 22, 2011, Nora Bredes, Long Island nuclear plant foe, dies ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Nora Bredes, an advocate for women’s leadership, environmental protection and public health who led the fight to keep a nuclear plant from opening on Long Island 25 years ago, has died at age 60.
Bredes died Thursday after a lengthy battle with breast cancer, her family said…..
In the 1980s, Bredes led the push to derail Long Island’s Shoreham nuclear power station. The plant was completed in 1984 for $6 billion but never went into operation due to community opposition.
As a chief organizer of the Shoreham Opponents Coalition, Bredes enlisted New York state in a high-stakes regulatory battle revolving around potential safety concerns, such as how quickly the plant’s heavily populated surroundings could be evacuated in a crisis.
The Long Island Lighting Co., which had drawn backing for the plant from President George H.W. Bush, agreed in 1989 to shut down the plant, which was fully decommissioned in 1994…..Nora Bredes, Long Island nuclear plant foe, dies – WSJ.com
Radiation caused illnesses now seen in Japan
Doctors in Japan are already treating patients suffering health effects they attribute to radiation from the ongoing nuclear disaster.
“We have begun to see increased nosebleeds, stubborn cases of diarrhoea, and flu-like symptoms in children,” Dr Yuko Yanagisawa, a physician at Funabashi Futawa Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, told Al Jazeera.
Fukushima radiation alarms doctors , Aljazeera, .Dahr Jamail Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation.: 18 Aug 2011 , Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima’s heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.
“How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?” asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo’s Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan’s House of Representatives.
“The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet,” said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant. Continue reading
The mental health toll in Fukushima
Radiation fears bring psychological stress to Fukushima residents, Mainichi Daily News, 19 Aug 11, FUKUSHIMA — Residents of Fukushima Prefecture are increasingly visiting psychiatrists complaining of sleeplessness or the inability to concentrate as they worry about the effects of leaked radiation from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, the Mainichi has learned…… Continue reading
Continuing radiation dangers in food chain in Japan
Prolonged exposure to radiation in the air, ground and food can cause leukemia and other cancers, according to the London- based World Nuclear Association,
Mushrooms Join Growing List of Radioactive Threats to Japan’s Food Chain, Bloomberg, By Naoko Fujimura and Chris Cooper – Aug 14, 2011 Mushrooms joined the threats to Japan’s food chain from radiation spewed by Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, as the country expands efforts to limit the effects of the disaster.
Japan is under pressure to enhance food inspections as it has no centralized system for detecting radiation contamination. About two-thirds of Japan’s prefectures now plan to check rice crops, the Mainichi newspaper reported yesterday, citing its own survey. Half of Japan’s rice is grown within range of emissions from the crippled nuclear plant, and farmers are awaiting the results of tests before harvesting begins this month…… Continue reading
Death of feisty anti-nuclear fighter
Notable deaths around the nation, 14 Aug 11, “….Jackie Hudson, 76, of Bremerton, Wash., a nun and longtime nuclear weapons protester, died Aug. 3 of cancer. The Michigan native moved to Washington in 1993 but remained with the Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids. She was released in June from a Georgia jail after demonstrating at an Oak Ridge, Tenn., nuclear facility. She was among three convicted in 2003 of damaging a Weld County, Colo., missile silo….” http://blog.oregonlive.com/lifestories/2011/08/notable_deaths_around_nation_w_22.html
USA to cut funding for research on low level radiation and health?
many more people may have incurred fatal cancers from low doses, simply based on the statistical probably of those fatalities occurring across very large populations.
Budget Deal Could Crush Low-Dose Radiation Research, Forbes, by Jeff McMahon, 15 Aug 11, “…..The nation’s only Low-Dose Radiation Research program is likely to suffer a severe cut in funding not long after the United States was blanketed with low doses of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan…….Dr. David J. Brenner, a professor in the Columbia University medical school’s Center for Radiological Research, in a recent editorial in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Continue reading
Full body airport scanners that emit no radiation
In July, Thruvision’s terahertz-scanning technology was tested at airports in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, along with millimeter wave scanners from L3. Ron Frye, Thruvision’s Director of International Business Development, reports that the trials ended with positive results
Safer full-body scanners? SF Gate, 11 Aug 11, As controversy simmers surrounding the levels of radiation used in full body scanners, a small company based in the United Kingdom has developed a machine that emits no radiation at all. Continue reading
Fukushima’s children and radiation
Hiroshi Ueki, 40, a former kindergarten worker, moved his wife and two sons, aged one and four, to Matsumoto in the mountainous prefecture of Nagano, 280 kilometres away.
Remembering family life in their home town, he said, “everyday I used to tell my sons: ‘Don’t touch this. Don’t eat that. Don’t take your mask off’.”
“When we got to Nagano, my son was still asking me: ‘Dad, can I touch this flower? Can I touch that car? Can I play in the rain?’ When I heard him say that, I was almost crying.”
Complexities of radiation in medical nuclear technology
How Nuclear Recoil Damages DNA – Technology Review, 1 August 11, The recoil of a nucleus during radioactive decay can do more damage than the alpha particle it emits, according to a new study. Thorium-232 is a silvery, radioactive metal that is particularly good at absorbing X-rays. In the early days of X-ray imaging, doctors routinely injected patients with thorium dioxide because it produced high contrast images. Between the 1930s to the 1950s, some 10 million people received these doses…..
What doctors didn’t appreciate at the time were the long term effects on the body. Once injected, Thorotrast settles in various organs where it tends to stay. The biological half life of the stuff is 22 years. Continue reading
Cancer in nuclear workers even though radiation exposure was low
The current guidelines for workers’ compensation due to radiation exposure only certify leukemia among various types of cancer. In these cases compensation is granted only when an applicant is exposed to more than 5 millisieverts of radiation a year
Nuclear plant workers developed cancer despite lower radiation exposure than legal limit, Mainichi Daily News, Japan) July 27, 2011 Of 10 nuclear power plant workers who have developed cancer and received workers’ compensation in the past, nine had been exposed to less than 100 millisieverts of radiation, it has been learned. Continue reading
Get rid of coal, and benefit health, climate, and economy
it would be a mistake to view air pollution regulations only through an economic lens. The EPA says that the new cross-state border rule will provide $280 billion in public health savings at the cost of roughly $2.5 billion a year in plant upgrades — and many of those upgrades are already underway. Crunch the numbers that way and it seems like economic folly not to take action. Industry also has a habit of overestimating just how expensive clean air will really be
Coal Kills Every Day’: Michael Bloomberg Pledges $50 Million to Fight the Coal Industry, TIME, By BRYAN WALSH , July 21, 2011 “………now Bloomberg is taking on an even bigger and more pervasive American industry: coal. On July 21, the New York mayor announced that his charitable foundation would be donating $50 million over four years to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. The purpose of the gift is simple: to help the nation’s largest environmental group push back against one of the world’s biggest sources of air pollution, plant by plant. “Coal kills every day,” Bloomberg told TIME. “It’s a dirty fuel.” Continue reading
Radiation exposure to be estimated for 61,000 US personnel in Japan
Military to Calculate Radiation Exposure in Japan, Military.com July 20, 2011, by Seth Robson , YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — The U.S. military plans to calculate radiation doses received by each of the approximately 61,000 U.S. personnel living and working in Japan during this year’s nuclear disaster, according to the U.S. Pacific Command’s top surgeon. Continue reading
On health and safety grounds, Indian Point Nuclear Plant should be closed
First, to the cancer risk. Even the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission — an agency that services the industry it is supposed to regulate, if there ever was one — has bowed to growing evidence and backed away from its decades of insisting that nuclear power plants do not cause cancer. …
The Radiation and Public Health Project, a nonprofit anti-nuclear group, has found increasing levels of Strontium 90, a carcinogen that exists only as a byproduct of nuclear fission, in teeth from babies living close to nuclear plants, including Indian Point…the safety record, plus evidence that the facility already is slowly, steadily poisoning the region, makes clear that it’s time to close Indian Point.
It’s time to close Indian Point, ctpost.com, July 15, 2011 “……….But Hearst Newspapers‘ investigative reporter Bill Cummings in today’s paper presents a hard-to-dismiss examination of the plant closest to us. More than 17 million people live within a 50-mile radius of New York’s Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y., just south of Peekskill.
And incidence of cancer near the center, including in Fairfield County, is higher than the national average, and grow higher still as you get closer. Continue reading
1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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