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Uranium’s hazardous effects on humans and recent developments in treatment

USA National Library of Medicine, Epub 2025 Mar 12. Yahya Faqir 1, Ziang Li 1, Talaal Gul 1, Zahoor 1, Ziwei Jiang 2, Libing Yu 2, Chengjia Tan 3, Xi Chen 4, Jiahua Ma 5, Jiafu Feng 6

Abstract

Uranium, a naturally occurring element, is predominantly recognized for its role as fuel in both civilian and military energy sectors. Concerns have been raised regarding the adverse environmental impacts and health risks associated with uranium mining due to the exposure it causes. Such exposure leads to systemic toxicity, affecting pulmonary, hepatic, renal, reproductive, neurological, and bone health. This review identifies significant research gaps regarding detoxification methods for uranium contamination and recommends further advancements, including genetic modification and exploration of plant compounds. A comprehensive review of published research materials from diverse sources of uranium, including various treatments and hazardous impacts on the human body, was conducted. Additionally, a PRISMA analysis was performed in this study. This review emphasizes the importance of collaboration and the formulation of research-informed regulations to effectively safeguard vulnerable communities from the consequences of contamination. Public discourse often emphasizes the significance of radiotoxicity; however, the non-radioactive chemotoxicity of uranium has been identified as a significant risk factor for environmental exposures, contingent upon species, enrichment, and exposure route. Given these serious health consequences, several methods are being investigated to ameliorate uranium toxicity. In response to these concerns, several techniques, such as phytomedicinal treatments, biochemical approaches, and chelation therapy, have been investigated to minimize the adverse effects of uranium exposure in the human body……………………………………………………..https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40080936/#:~:text=Concerns%20have%20been%20raised%20regarding,%2C%20neurological%2C%20and%20bone%20health

April 17, 2025 Posted by | health, Uranium | Leave a comment

No such thing as ‘clean’ nuclear energy

John Hoffmann , Carbondale, Apr 12, 2025, https://www.aspendailynews.com/opinion/no-such-thing-as-clean-nuclear-energy/article_8aeb44a7-c226-488e-82e0-4a32ebfcb434.html

Clean nuclear power is an oxymoron. Every part of the process is potentially deadly. Mining uranium involves stockpiling mounds of radioactive dirt.

In the National Library of Medicine, the article, “Health Effects of Particulate Uranium Exposure,” begins with, “Uranium contamination has become a non-negligible global health problem,” which “can cause severe body damage once inhaled.” The dust billows over reservations and populations near mines.

Yellowcake is produced through milling and roasting. After an intense four-step process, it is then shipped to concentrating sites, where the uranium is packed into steel drums and hauled to processing plants to turn it into fuel.

Uranium, like other heavy metals, is toxic and should not be inhaled or ingested, even if mildly radioactive. My trip to Naturita, Colorado, near where it is mined, showed me how potent radioactive dust works to rust the bridges, spall concrete, and ruin folks’ teeth. 

The milling and roasting into orange oxide at Oak Ridge becomes uranium tetrachloride or S-50 liquid thermal diffusion in the St. Louis plant, then into plutonium piles in Beverly, Massachusetts, Bloomfield, New Jersey, or Ames, Iowa, where the metal is recast into rods in induction-heated furnaces.

Now it can be shipped to one of the 94 reactors in the United States, where it creates electron-saturated cooling water and spent U-285 rods. The highly contaminated water and nuclear rods that pile up over the years need to be kept from contaminating the environment for thousands of years. So it is encased in concrete and stainless steel, which is stacked on-site until it is hauled somewhere for long-term storage, and therein lies the problem.

There is no place to store it safely. Not the salt caverns of Whipp or the deepest subducting zones of the oceans.

Wherever they are stacked, they become a target for an enemy to drop a conventional bomb that will do maximum damage to the downwind population. Yet Chernobyl demonstrated that every place on earth is downwind, because the atmosphere homogenizes pollutants within three days. Let’s rethink calling nuclear “clean” energy.

April 15, 2025 Posted by | health | Leave a comment

Radiation exposure victims fight for compensation as nuclear weapons funding soars

Bulletin, By Chloe Shrager | March 19, 2025

Nine months have passed since the law that compensates US victims of radiation exposure expired in June, and yet another opportunity to reinstate it fell to the wayside last week.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), enacted in 1990, provided pay-outs to people unwittingly exposed to radioactive substances from the Manhattan Project and Cold War efforts. For decades, people living downwind from the Nevada Test Site, nuclear weapons site workers and uranium miners relied on the money they received from RECA to pay their medical bills for rare cancers and diseases contracted from their radiation exposure.

But even so, activist groups across the US homeland and territories argue that the law was woefully inadequate. “When you talk about nuclear justice, we have not had it. We haven’t seen it,” Mary Dickson, a Utah downwinder and thyroid cancer survivor, said in a recent interview.

After the House shot down an attempt to push an expanded version of the compensation act through Congress last year, a bipartisan group of senators reintroduced a RECA reauthorization and expansion bill in January. The effort is led by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, who recently spoke on the proposed bill in an interview with the Bulletin.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Luján said. “This is for the American people, and especially those who live downwind of this testing and those uranium mine workers who are sacrificing their lives and their careers for national security purposes.”

The hope was to slip the amended act into the Trump Administration’s first stopgap budget bill, due no later than the end-of-day last Friday to avoid a government shutdown. But that hope evaporated when instead of proposing an omnibus bill overhauling previous budget priorities—as was expected of the new administration—the House introduced a continuing resolution that largely carried on Biden administration funding levels without mention of the new RECA bill. The continuing resolution does, however, increase defense budget spending by $6 billion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. The human cost of nuclear security. Congress passed a GOP budget bill on Friday to avoid a government shutdown and fund the government through September. While the bill does not fund RECA’s reauthorization, it does earmark at least $21.7 billion for “defense nuclear nonproliferation” and “weapons activities” under the National Nuclear Security Administration for the next six months. Funding under these categories can be used for anything from continued domestic uranium enrichment to warhead modernization and assembly. These defense budget proposals come during an estimated $1.7 trillion, 30-year overhaul of the United States’ nuclear arsenal that will rebuild each leg of the nuclear triad and its accompanying infrastructure.

These investments were approved. Legislation to continue to compensate those poisoned by nuclear weapons activities were not.

“They’re investing all this money to build up our arsenal and develop new weapons. So when they say there’s not enough money to take care of the people those weapons have harmed in the past… I just think part of that cost has got to be taking care of the people they harm,” Dickson said.  https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/radiation-exposure-victims-fight-for-compensation-as-nuclear-weapons-funding-soars/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Plans%20to%20colonize%20Mars%20threaten%20Earth&utm_campaign=20250320%20Thursday%20Newsletter

March 23, 2025 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

Radioactive Mussels May Pose Threat to Food Chain in Pennsylvania

By Tom Howarth, Science Reporter (Nature) Jan 07, 2025,  https://www.newsweek.com/radioactive-mussels-food-chain-bioaccumulation-pennsylvania-2011149?fbclid=IwY2xjawJG4pxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXBgrVgNhUUy1s_U9SLYXUIeD-gugNuUk75xBSTL9AG1vQ6REzIVWJiVGw_aem_0EvCj7mKrreGjCLuSViY1Q

Radioactive contamination in freshwater mussels is potentially affecting the food chain in Pennsylvania, including iconic animals such as bald eagles and possibly even humans.

A study published last year by scientists from Penn State University found elevated levels of radium in mussels downstream from a waste treatment facility in Franklin, Pennsylvania. Now, experts are raising the alarm over the secondary impacts on the ecosystem.

While the facility no longer discharges oil and gas wastewater into the Allegheny River, its legacy of pollution persists, with radioactive material bioaccumulating in the ecosystem.

Why This Matters

The findings highlighted that radioactive materials could be climbing the food chain, affecting not just aquatic life but also land animals, birds and people. Bald eagles, a species reintroduced to Pennsylvania in 1983, are among those at risk. Their diet includes muskrats, a primary predator of freshwater mussels, which are now confirmed to carry radium.

Although freshwater mussels are not consumed by humans, other species higher in the food chain may serve as a bridge for contaminants to eventually affect people. Local fishing activity in the Allegheny River also raises questions about indirect exposure to radioactive material.

Exposure to high levels of radium can result in adverse health conditions like anemia, cataracts, fractured teeth, cancer (especially bone cancer) and death, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

What To Know

Freshwater mussels act as ecological barometers because of their fixed locations and long life spans.

In this study, researchers found that mussels downstream of the waste treatment facility had absorbed radioactive particles into their soft tissue and hard shells. Mussels closest to the discharge site perished from salinity, while those farther away adapted but at a cost—they absorbed contaminants instead.

The study also compared the mussels’ radioactivity to Brazil nuts, which naturally absorb radiation from the soil. While a typical 28-gram serving of Brazil nuts contains 0.47 to 0.80 microsieverts, the maximum radioactivity found in a single mussel was 63.42 μSv.

While the International Atomic Energy Agency recommends an annual exposure limit of 1,000 μSv—far exceeding the amount found in even the most radioactive mussel—the findings are concerning because of the potential for radiation to accumulate within food chains over time.

What People Are Saying

Evan Clark, the waterkeeper at Three Rivers Waterkeeper, told Newsweek: “One concern that I immediately thought of after reading [the study] was bioaccumulation. Mussels live pretty close to the bottom of the food chain, eating a lot of algae and bacteria—they are unselective filter feeders.

“Muskrats are one of the larger consumers of freshwater mussels, eating hundreds and hundreds in a lifetime. Those muskrats are going to be eaten by bald eagles, and those bald eagles are only recently making a strong comeback into western Pennsylvania.”

Katharina Pankratz, a co-author of the study, said in a statement: “Depending on the contaminant and its chemistry, if it is small enough to pass through the gills of the mussel, it has the potential to accumulate in their tissue or precipitate within the hard-shell structure. This information may help shape future regulations for wastewater disposal to surface water, especially in regions where mussels are harvested for food.”

Nathaniel Warner, the study’s corresponding author, said in the statement: “Mussels that were closest to the water discharges died off. Further downstream, the mussels found a way to tolerate the salinity and radioactive materials and instead absorbed them into their shells and tissues.”

What Happens Next

The study’s findings could inform future policies on wastewater management, its authors said. While the waste treatment facility in Franklin is no longer discharging waste into the waterways, its impacts still linger and could do so for some time.

Key questions, such as how much radioactive material is accumulating up the food chain, remain.

March 21, 2025 Posted by | environment, radiation, USA | Leave a comment

They had a fairytale American childhood – but was radiation slowly killing them?

Decades later, federal investigators acknowledged an increased cancer risk for some people who played in the creek as children,

Sophie Williams, BBC News, Washington DC, 16 Mar 25

After Kim Visintine put her son to bed every night at a hospital in St Louis, Missouri, she spent her evening in the hospital’s library. She was determined to know how her boy had become seriously ill with a rare brain tumour at just a week old.

“Doctors were shocked,” she says. “We were told that his illness was one in a million. Other parents were learning to change diapers but I was learning how to change chemotherapy ports and IVs.”

Kim’s son Zack was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme. It is a brain tumour that is very rare in children and is usually seen in adults over 45.

Zack had chemotherapy treatments but doctors said there was no hope of him ever recovering. He died at just six years old.

Years later, social media and community chatter made Kim start to think that her son was not an isolated case. Perhaps he was part of a bigger picture growing in their community surrounding Coldwater Creek.

In this part of the US, cancer fears have prompted locals to accuse officials of not doing enough to support those who may have been exposed to radiation due to the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s.

A compensation programme that was designed to pay out to some Americans who contracted diseases after exposure to radiation expired last year – before it could be extended to the St Louis area.

This Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (Reca) provided one-time payouts to people who may have developed cancer or other diseases while living in areas where activities such as atomic weapons testing took place. It paid out $2.6bn (£2bn) to more than 41,000 claimants before coming to an end in 2024.

Benefits were paid to such neighbours, frequently called “downwinders”, in Arizona, Utah and Nevada, but not New Mexico, where the world’s first test of a nuclear weapon took place in 1945. Research published in 2020 by the National Cancer Institute suggested that hundreds of cancers in the area would not have occurred without radiation exposure.

St Louis, meanwhile, was where uranium was refined and used to help create the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. After World War Two ended, the chemical was dumped near the creek and left uncovered, allowing waste to seep into the area.

Decades later, federal investigators acknowledged an increased cancer risk for some people who played in the creek as children, but added in their report: “The predicted increases in the number of cancer cases from exposures are small, and no method exists to link a particular cancer with this exposure.”

The clean-up of the creek is still ongoing and is not expected to finish until 2038.

A new bill has been put forward in the House, and Josh Hawley, a US senator representing Missouri, says he has raised the issue with President Donald Trump.

When Kim flicks through her school yearbook, she can identify those who have become sick and those who have since passed away. The numbers are startling.

“My husband didn’t grow up in this area, and he said to me, ‘Kim, this is not normal. It seems like we’re always talking about one of your friends passing away or going to a funeral’,” she says.

Just streets away from the creek, Karen Nickel grew up spending her days near the water picking berries, or in the nearby park playing baseball. Her brother would often try and catch fish in Coldwater Creek.

“I always tell people that we had just the fairytale childhood that you would expect in what you consider suburban America,” says Karen. “Big backyards, big families, children playing out together until the street lights came on at night.”

But years later, her carefree childhood now looks very different.

“Fifteen people from the street I grew up on have died from rare cancers,” she says. “We have neighbourhoods here where every house has been affected by some cancer or some illness. We have streets where you can’t just find a house where a family has not been affected by this.”

When Karen’s sister was just 11 years old, doctors discovered that her ovaries were covered in cysts. The same had happened to their neighbour when she was just nine. Karen’s six-year-old granddaughter was born with a mass on her right ovary.

Karen helped found Just Moms STL, a group that is dedicated to protecting the community from future exposures that could be linked to cancers – and which advocates for a clean-up of the area.

“We get messages every day from people that are suffering from illnesses and are questioning whether this is from exposure,” she says. “These are very aggressive illnesses that the community is getting, from cancers all the way to autoimmune diseases.”

Teresa Rumfelt grew up just a street away from Karen and lived in her family home from 1979 until 2010. She remembers every one of her animals passing away from cancer and her neighbours getting ill from rare diseases.

Years later, her sister Via Von Banks was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neurone disease. Some medical studies have suggested there could be a link between radiation and ALS, but this is not definitive – and more research needs to be done to firm it up.

That does not reassure people like Teresa who are concerned that more needs to be done to understand how locals are being affected.

“ALS took my sister at 50,” Teresa says. “I think it was the worst disease ever of mankind. When she was diagnosed in 2019, she’d just got her career going and her children were growing. She stayed positive through all of it.”

Like Hawley, Just STL Moms and other community members want the government’s compensation act to be expanded to include people within the St Louis area, despite the programme being in limbo after expiring.

Expanding it to the Coldwater Creek community would mean that locals could be offered compensation if they could prove they were harmed as a result of the Manhattan Project, during which the atomic bomb was developed with the help of uranium-processing in St Louis. It would also allow screenings and further study into illnesses other than cancer.

In a statement to the BBC, the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it took concerns very seriously and had actively worked with federal, state and local partners – as well as community members – to understand their health concerns, and to ensure community members were not exposed to the Manhattan Project-era waste.

The BBC has also contacted the US Army Corps of Engineers, which is leading the clean-up – but has not received a response to a request for comment.

“My sister would have loved to be part of the fight. She’d be the first to picket,” says Teresa of her efforts to get greater support from the government.

The trend in people around Coldwater Creek getting unwell has not gone unnoticed among healthcare professionals.

Dr Gautum Agarwal, a cancer surgeon at Mercy Hospital in St Louis, says he has not noticed a “statistical thing”, but notes that he has seen husbands and wives and their neighbours presenting cancers.

Now, he ensures that his patients are asked where they live and how close they are to Coldwater Creek.

“I tell them that there’s a potential that there’s a link. And if your neighbours or family live near there, we should get them screened more often. And maybe you should get your kids screened earlier.”

He hopes that over time more knowledge will be gained about the issue, and for a study into multi-cancer early detection tests to be introduced that could help catch any potential cancers, and help reassure people in the area……….. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2e7011n03vo

March 18, 2025 Posted by | health, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

Families sickened by radiation exposure want Congress to revive this key compensation program.

7 Mar 2025

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act or RECA, first enacted in 1990, created a compensation program to process claims from people exposed to radiation leftover from nuclear testing done by the U.S. government.

After the latest expansion of the bill expired in June 2024, communities across the country, including Missouri and the Navajo Nation say they are waiting for the legislation to not only be taken up again, but also to include communities like theirs that were never originally included. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0icfLF6AVEQ

March 11, 2025 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear reactors killing Americans at accelerating rate

John LaForge Guest columnist, Feb 27, 2025 https://www.hometownsource.com/monticello_times/nuclear-reactors-killing-americans-at-accelerating-rate/article_7cb060d2-eef6-11ef-836b-8349ae8997a8.html

A new analysis of public health data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals alarming evidence that cancer deaths are rising in communities surrounding America’s oldest nuclear power plants.

Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, executive director for the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York, has conducted a study showing a disturbing correlation between prolonged exposure to nuclear radiation and increased cancer mortality in affected counties.

According to Mangano’s research, which examines county-by-county cancer mortality data over three distinct time periods, radiation routinely released from nuclear reactors is directly impacting public health.

His findings indicate that cancer deaths in counties hosting 15 of the nation’s 16 oldest nuclear facilities have significantly increased over time, reinforcing longstanding concerns about the safety of prolonged nuclear plant operations.

“There is no safe dose of radiation,” Mangano states, citing the National Academy of Sciences’ BEIR VII report, which confirms that every exposure to ionizing radiation has the potential to trigger cancer.

As nuclear reactors age and continue to release radioactive gases such as helium, xenon and krypton into the atmosphere, residents in nearby communities are at increasing risk of developing cancer due to prolonged exposure.

The data further illustrates the impact of these radiation releases varies based on geographical factors, including wind patterns and local topography.

For example, in Wisconsin, excess cancer deaths were significantly lower near the Point Beach nuclear facility than in counties downwind of the Palisades and DC Cook plants on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore.

These findings suggest that radiation exposure is not uniform and that some communities bear a greater burden than others.

The implications of Mangano’s research are particularly concerning for residents of Wright and Sherburne counties in Minnesota, home to the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant.

Since the plant began operating in 1971, the once-lower-than-average cancer mortality rate in these counties has risen sharply. Projections estimate that between 2031 and 2050, as many as 1,662 excess cancer deaths could occur if Monticello’s operating license is extended through 2051.

“These findings should serve as a wake-up call,” said Kelly Lundeen, a staff member at the Wisconsin-based environmental and nuclear watchdog Nukewatch. “We are urging local, state, and federal officials to take immediate action to phase out commercial nuclear power before more lives are lost.”

Despite growing concerns, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has already approved license extensions for several aging reactors, allowing some to operate for up to 80 years.

Given the demonstrated public health risks, advocates are calling for an immediate halt to these extensions and a transition toward safer, renewable energy sources.

The Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River was planning to rally outside of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearing earlier this month to maintain the current shutdown date of the Monticello reactor.

The Radiation and Public Health Project, the organization behind Mangano’s analysis, is pushing for greater transparency in radiation monitoring, stricter regulations on radioactive emissions, and a comprehensive plan to phase out aging nuclear plants.

John LaForge serves as the co-director of Nukewatch, a Wisconsin-based environmental and peace action watchdog group.

March 2, 2025 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

Doctors fear health fallout from nuclear energy plans

Canberra Times, By Marion Rae, February 12 2025

Doctors have warned of no “safe” level of radiation from a proposed network of nuclear reactors as battlelines are drawn for the federal election.

Similar to other nuclear-powered nations, Australians living within a certain radius of a reactor would need to be issued potassium iodide tablets for use in a radiation emergency, a nuclear briefing has learned.

“The only reason that everyone in that radius is given that is because they might need it,” Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy Josh Wilson told a nuclear briefing on Tuesday.

If anyone comes to buy your house, the proximity of a reactor will be noted on the land titles register, and insurers will not cover nuclear accidents, he said.

The warning came as doctors fronted parliament to warn of long-term health risks for workers and surrounding communities, particularly children.

Evidence included a meta-data analysis of occupational and environmental exposure that accumulated data on more than seven million people.

It found living within 30km of a reactor increased overall cancer risk by five per cent, with thyroid cancer increasing by 14 per cent and leukaemia by nine per cent.

A separate study of workers in the nuclear industry in France, the United Kingdom and the United States analysed results from more than 300,000 people who were monitored for over 30 years. 

Finding not only increased cancer rates but surprisingly increased rates of heart attacks and strokes, it found impacts at low doses were larger than previously thought.

“There is no ‘safe’ lower dose of radiation. The science is clear. All exposure adds to long-term health risks,” vice-president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War Dr Margaret Beavis said……………………………

Under the coalition’s nuclear energy blueprint, seven reactors would be built across five states to replace ageing coal-fired power plants with more gas-fired plants to provide baseload power in the interim.

“Zero-emissions nuclear plants” are a key part of the Nationals’ election pitch to regions where coal plants are already closing, while Labor is pressing ahead with the transition to renewable energy backed up by big batteries.

Public Health Association of Australia spokesman Dr Peter Tait said the idea that the nuclear industry was free of greenhouse gas emissions was a “furphy”, given the construction and uranium supply chain involved.

Emissions would rise threefold under the nuclear plan due to increased coal and gas use, he warned, with the first plant not due to come online until the late 2030s.

From a public health perspective, Australians can’t afford that delay, Dr Tait said.

Executive director of Doctors for the Environment Dr Kate Wylie said prolonging the dependency on fossil fuels would mean more Australians would be affected by their known health risks, including increased rates of asthma.

Nuclear energy would also put communities at risk during the next drought, when reactors would be first in line for scarce water, Dr Wylie said.

“The ethical thing to do is to choose the least water-intensive energy sources, which are wind and solar,” she said.  https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8890265/doctors-fear-health-fallout-from-nuclear-energy-plans/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIan3hleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHaAJ7wF9BUi9CgA1_tQDXS5gC2WCrX8HSFZUrOQPGgXABnNkhEvlgHKolQ_aem_OShH2FPpE3tO3RIv_gAgBg

February 15, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, health | Leave a comment

Two workers contaminated with radioactive material at Borssele nuclear plant

 NL Times 8th Feb 2025, https://nltimes.nl/2025/02/08/two-workers-contaminated-radioactive-material-borssele-nuclear-plant

Two workers at the Borssele nuclear power plant were reportedly contaminated with radioactive material during maintenance work, plant operator EPZ confirmed. Both employees were wearing respiratory protection, preventing internal contamination.

The incident occurred on November 26, 2024, but was only disclosed last week. A small amount of radioactive material was released during the work, triggering an alarm in the facility. The area was immediately evacuated.

The two affected workers had radioactive particles on their skin. After decontamination showers, they were cleared to go home. A third worker, who was also in the room but was not wearing respiratory protection, left as soon as the alarm sounded and later tested negative for contamination.

All three workers underwent additional testing for internal exposure, but no contamination was found. The affected area was cleaned, and work resumed after safety checks.

February 11, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, health | Leave a comment

40% of workers cite radiation concerns at Fukushima plant

By KEITARO FUKUCHI/ Asahi Shimbun, Staff Writer, February 2, 2025 

Forty percent of the workforce at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant worry about radiation issues on the job, a nearly three-fold spike over the previous year, a survey found.

More than half of those respondents cited fears of their body coming into contact with a radioactive substance.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator that conducted the annual survey, said recent incidents at the plant probably contributed to the heightened concerns.

For example, two workers were hospitalized in October 2023 after they were accidentally splashed with waste liquid containing highly radioactive substances while cleaning piping in a contaminated water treatment facility.

The survey was carried out between September and October to improve the working environment. TEPCO distributed a questionnaire to all workers at the plant and received responses from 5,498 individuals, or 94.5 percent……………………….

Asked to choose specific issues they were concerned about, 52.2 percent, the largest percentage, picked “physical contamination,” up about seven points from 2023.

In another incident, about 1.5 tons of contaminated water flowed out of a water purification facility at the plant through an air exhaust opening in February 2024…… more https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15609878

February 3, 2025 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, radiation | Leave a comment

Towns near Fukushima plant struggle to attract families with children

 Japan Times 27th Jan 2025

The Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, and the subsequent meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have left deep scars on Fukushima Prefecture, which has seen a significant decline in its estimated population.

Futaba County, home to the Fukushima plant that straddles the towns of Futaba and Okuma, has been hit particularly hard, with the prolonged evacuation of residents drastically reducing the number of children in the area. The region’s population decline due to the disaster is beyond the scope of natural or social population shifts.

Municipalities in the region are trying to come up with measures to bring back residents or attract new ones, but increasing the number of children remains a tall order.

Futaba County once enjoyed a high birth rate and strong ties among its residents thanks to stable job opportunities provided by the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 power plants and related industries.

Saki Yoshizaki, 36, a worker who lives in the city of Iwaki, gave birth to her eldest daughter, now 14, in her hometown of Okuma in 2010, a year before the nuclear disaster.

“With many relatives, friends and acquaintances around, the whole community helped raise children. I had almost no worries about becoming a parent,” Yoshizaki said, recalling her hometown fondly. “In a good way, it was a tight-knit community.”

However, such an environment changed suddenly following the nuclear incident as residents fled elsewhere. Today, young parents who are bearing and rearing children in the region are voicing their feelings of loneliness where community ties have been severed.

Minami Suzuki, 34, a co-representative of the volunteer group Cotohana in the Futaba town of Tomioka, worries about the future of the region. “If we don’t strengthen connections among parents, it might become increasingly difficult for the younger generations to choose to have children here,” she says……………………………………………………………………………………..
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/01/27/japan/society/fukushima-children-decline/

January 29, 2025 Posted by | Japan, social effects | Leave a comment

The Scientists Who Alerted us to the Dangers of Radiation

January 26, 2025 Posted by | radiation | 1 Comment

Nukes kill kids.

Dr Tony Webb, 17 Jan 25.

One moment from my work in the USA in the early 1980s stands out in my memory.  I’d driven from Chicago to Cleveland at the invitation of the Health and Safety Officer of the US Boilermakers Union to speak to the members meeting held on the night ahead of the recruitment of members for work on the annual ‘clean-up’ of the local Nuclear Power plant.  The hired workers would be ‘radiation sponges’ – short-term casuals recruited for the ‘dirty jobs’ that would result in significant radiation exposures sometimes up to the permitted annual exposure limit and ‘let go’ if they reached that limit.  The practice offered some protection to the company’s full -time employees whose skills would be needed on an ongoing basis and whose exposures needed to be kept below the limit.   The meeting was well attended , rowdy, with a lot of questions and discussion which spilled over into the carpark after the meeting closed.  I noticed one man hanging back from the circle and invited him to join and share his thoughts.  As I recall them the essences was:

“I will be going in to apply for work tomorrow.  I understand what you shared about the risks . . . no safe level of exposure and chance of getting cancer perhaps 20 years from now . . .  It will put a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table . . . BUT my wife and i have had all the family we want.  If we hadn’t, what you shared about the genetic risks, the damage to our children and future generations . . . no I wouldn’t be going . . . “

It is a sad fact that workers, both men and women will choose, often from necessity, to put their health at risk from the work environment.  What is however consistent in my experience of working on radiation and other occupational health and safety issues is that they are far more concerned, cautious and likely to prioritise safety when it comes to risks to their children.

We now have solid evidence that workers in nuclear power plants routinely exposed to radiation face significantly increased cancer risks, risks of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes, dementia and potentially other health effects.  There is also an increased risk of genetic damage that can be passed on to their children and future generations.   But perhaps most significant of all there is now solid evidence of increased rates of leukaemia in children living close to nuclear power plants.

To put it simply and in language that will resonate with workers and their families in the communities around the seven nuclear power plant sites the federal Liberal-National Coalition  proposes to build if elected to government;  nuclear kills kids.  It matters little whether or not these nuclear plants can be built on time, within budget, make a contribution to climate change, reduce electricity prices, or secure a long-term energy future;  these nuclear power plants will kill kids who live close by.    They cannot operate without routine releases of radioactive material into the environment and our young will be exposed and are particularly susceptible to any exposure that results. 

Now add to that if you care that women are more susceptible than men, that workers in these plants face greater exposure and health risks than adults in the community, that nuclear plants have and will continue to have both major accidents and less major ‘incidents’ resulting in radiation releases, community exposures and consequent health damage. Add also that quite apart from the workers and others exposed when these plants need to be decommissioned, the radioactive wastes resulting from perhaps 30-50 years life will need to be safely stored and kept isolated from human contact for many thousands of years longer than our recorded human history.    And, again if you care, also add in the concerns around proliferation of nuclear weapons which historically has occurred on the back of, enabled by and sometimes concealed by countries’ developing so called peaceful nuclear power.

All these arguments add weight to the absurdity of Australia starting and the world continuing down this nuclear power path.  But if we want a single issue that strikes at the heart of human concerns it is this – and forgive me saying it again, it needs to be repeated many times until the electorate in Australia hears it loud and clear – Nuclear Kills Kids

January 19, 2025 Posted by | children | Leave a comment

How Fukushima’s radioactive fallout in Tokyo was concealed from the public

Because of the controversy surrounding Satoshi’s paper and the lack of research on the health impacts of these particles, it remains unclear to what extent Tokyo residents have been exposed to dangerous radiation levels as a result of the Fukushima accident.

Because CsMPs are so small, typically two microns or less in diameter, if humans breathe them, they could potentially reach the bottom of the lung, and be lodged into sacs known as alveoli, where the lung generally cannot expel them.

By unit of mass, CsMPs are much more radioactive than even spent reactor fuel

Japanese radiochemist Satoshi Utsunomiya found that air samples from March 15, 2011, in Tokyo contained a very high concentration of insoluble cesium microparticles. He immediately realized the implications of the findings for public safety, but his study was kept from publication for years.

Bulletin, By François Diaz-Maurin, January 13, 2025 [excellent illustrations]

On March 14 and 15, 2011—three days after the Great East Japan Earthquake and its resulting tsunami hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant—explosions at two of the plant’s reactor buildings released a huge amount of invisible radioactivity. These radioactive plumes were blown away by the wind, descending over the surrounding area and into the ocean. Eventually, the radiation emitted from the Fukushima plants spread over the entire Northern Hemisphere. It also spread to Japan’s capital, Tokyo.

Following the explosions, Japanese researchers rushed to collect and study radioactive materials from the soil and the air to find out what had happened inside the reactors, believed now to have melted down because their cooling systems failed. On March 13, the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Technology Research Institute, the agency responsible for measuring the air quality of particulate matter in the Tokyo area, started to collect air samples more frequently. This effort was part of the Tokyo metropolitan government’s emergency monitoring program for environmental radiation, which aimed to detect gamma-emitting nuclides in airborne dust. The filters revealed that at around 10 a.m. on March 15, 2011, a large plume of radioactivity reached Tokyo, some 240 kilometers (149 miles) south of Fukushima. All samples taken on March 14 and March 15 showed spikes in radioactivity.

The institute’s researchers published their first results in the journal of the Japan Radioisotope Association in June 2011 (Nagakawa et al. 2011); they estimated the total exposure dose to humans from radioactive substances, including iodine 131 and cesium 137 found in airborne dust, foodstuffs, and drinking water from the Setagaya ward in the old Tokyo City. Extrapolating from their measurements from March 13 to May 31, they calculated the corresponding annual cumulative dose of radiation in that part of Tokyo as being 425.1 microsieverts, which is less than half the annual dose limit to the public recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. In a second conference publication in English (Nagakawa et al. 2012), the researchers extended their monitoring period to October and estimated that the total annual effective dose due to inhalation for adults in the Tokyo metropolitan area from the Fukushima radioactive plumes was far lower, at 25 microsieverts.

But two years after the accident, Japanese scientists discovered a new type of highly radioactive microparticle in the exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant. The microparticles, which had been ejected from the Fukushima reactors, contained extremely high concentrations of cesium 137—a radioactive element that can cause burns, acute radiation sickness, and even death. Satoshi Utsunomiya, an environmental radiochemist from Kyushu University in southwestern Japan, soon found that these particles were also present in air filter samples collected in Tokyo in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident.

The controversy surrounding his attempts to publish his findings nearly cost him his career and prevented his results from being widely known by the Japanese public ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.[1] Scientists still don’t know if these highly radioactive microparticles present significant danger to people, and Satoshi is one of the very few scientists who is focused on trying to find out. “We have the measurements now that tell that the particles did pass over population centers and were being deposited in places,” Gareth Law, a radiochemist from the University of Helsinki, told me. “We should answer the question.”

The discovery

In May 2012, Toshihiko Ohnuki, an accomplished environmental radiochemist then at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), visited Yoshiyasu Nagakawa at the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Technology Research Institute, also known as TIRI. Nagakawa was the first author of two TIRI studies on radiation exposure in Tokyo, and Ohnuki asked Nagakawa if he could obtain some air samples for further analysis. Ohnuki had already studied how radioactive cesium fallout from Fukushima reacted with components of contaminated soil. Now, he wanted to do the same with the airborne dust samples from Tokyo.

Nagakawa gave Ohnuki five small filters that had been collected from the Setagaya ward in old Tokyo City at different times on March 15, 2011—the day the radioactive plume reached Tokyo. Ohnuki received the samples without restriction on their use, and no written agreement was made.[2]

Back in his laboratory at JAEA, Ohnuki performed autoradiography of the five samples, revealing many radioactive spots on all of them. The bulk radioactivity on each sample was measured to be between 300 counts per minute for the filter that covered the midnight to 7 a.m. period and 10,500 counts per minute between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on March 15.[3] The radiation rate was so high that Ohnuki had to cut some of the filters into small pieces, less than one square centimeter, to keep from saturating the scanning electron microscope. Ohnuki stored the unexamined filters for future analysis.

Months later, in August 2013, four researchers from the Meteorological Research Institute in Japan reported for the first time about a new type of spherical radioactive cesium-bearing particle that had been ejected in the early days of the Fukushima accident (Adachi et al. 2013). The researchers had collected air samples on quartz fiber filters at their institute in Tsukuba, located 170 kilometers southwest of the Fukushima plant. Their findings, published in Scientific Reports, were about to revolutionize the way environmental radiochemists understood the radioactive fallout from Fukushima.

Back in the lab, the researchers placed the filters on an imaging plate and inserted them into a portable radiography scanner. The images revealed many black dots, which indicated the presence of radioactive materials on the filters, with a maximum radioactivity level measured on the sample at 9:10 a.m. on March 15, 2011, four days after the Fukushima accident began. The researchers placed this sample under a scanning electron microscope and then into an energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer to directly observe the shape and composition of the radioactive materials on the filters. What they saw stunned them………………………………………………………………

Shocking results

The newly discovered entities were initially called spherical cesium-bearing particles, but Satoshi and his co-workers coined the term cesium-rich microparticles, or CsMPs, in 2017, which is now what researchers call them generally (Furuki et al. 2017). CsMPs had not been noted in earlier major reactor accidents.

Scientists knew the microparticles came from the Fukushima reactors because their isotopic ratio between cesium 134 and cesium 137 matched the average ratio for the three damaged reactors calculated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.[5] Because these particles emanated from the Fukushima reactors, Satoshi and the other scientists studying them thought that they may contain evidence about reactions that occurred during the accident. But the environmental radiochemist’s curiosity was also triggered by the unique features of these microparticles: Their size is very small, typically two to three microns, even smaller than one micron in some cases.[6] And the cesium concentration in each of the particles is very high relative to their size.

After Satoshi obtained four small pieces of the Tokyo air filters, he designed what he calls “a very simple procedure” to find out whether the filters contained cesium-rich microparticles. In April 2015, he took autoradiograph images of the four pieces, confirming what Ohnuki had already seen with a digital microscope at JAEA. Then Satoshi moved to characterize the structural and chemical properties of the particles using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Although the procedure’s design was simple, executing these steps would prove to be extremely difficult.

In July 2015, as Satoshi was busy working on the Tokyo air filters in his lab at Kyushu University, Ohnuki received a note from Nagakawa, the TIRI researcher who had provided the samples, asking him to return them so they could be reanalyzed. In his e-mail, Nagakawa did not specify the motive for his request, which appeared innocuous: “Please return at least some of the materials we gave you for reanalysis … if the location is unknown, it can’t be helped.”

Ohnuki immediately sent Nagakawa two filters from March 15, including the filter from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. that had the highest level of radioactivity and contained the largest number of radioactive spots. Ohnuki added that he had discarded the other three filters after he analyzed them in 2013.

Nagakawa also asked Ohnuki whether he was planning to publish papers based on the samples. Ohnuki explained that he stopped analyzing them after his inconclusive attempts in 2013, but did not mention he had given Satoshi part of the filters for study.[9]

Satoshi was now ready to publish his results in a scientific journal. These were important findings that the scientific community needed to know. But Satoshi also understood that they could create a public relations crisis in Japan because his findings contradicted previous statements that played down the implications for public health of Fukushima fallout in Tokyo.

The Goldschmidt Conference—the foremost such international meeting on geochemistry—that year was held in the Japanese city of Yokohama. Satoshi was invited to give a plenary talk and present his research on environmental contamination from the Fukushima disaster (Utsunomiya 2016). During the talk, he presented his new findings on the Tokyo air filters. His talk received a lot of attention and was even reported by several Japanese and international newspapers. After his presentation, the scientific chair of the conference, Hisayoshi Yurimoto, said: “Very interesting results. And also very shocking results.”[1

In April and June 2016, Satoshi conducted dissolution experiments and quickly confirmed that the CsMPs were insoluble in water. The experiments also showed that most of the cesium activity on these filters came from CsMPs. In fact, up to 90 percent of the cesium radioactivity came from these microparticles, not from soluble forms of cesium—meaning that most of the cesium radioactivity detected during the March 15 plume in Tokyo was from CsMPs.

Between 2016 and 2019, a Kafkaesque sequence of events circled about Ohnuki, the former JAEA researcher who gave Satoshi the Tokyo air filter samples, and Satoshi. During that sequence of events, Satoshi’s research paper was accepted for publication by a prestigious scientific journal after peer review—but the journal delayed publication of the paper for years, eventually deciding not to publish it based on mysterious accusations of misconduct that, it turned out, were unwarranted. As a result, Satoshi’s findings were not made widely known, saving the Japanese authorities a possible public relations crisis as the summer Olympics in Tokyo neared. Because of the controversy surrounding Satoshi’s paper and the lack of research on the health impacts of these particles, it remains unclear to what extent Tokyo residents have been exposed to dangerous radiation levels as a result of the Fukushima accident.

I worked to reconstruct the sequence of events related to Satoshi’s research paper to find out whether the controversy over its publication was the result of some unethical practice on his part; competition between research laboratories; or attempted suppression of scientific results. The account that follows is based on the review of dozens of e-mails, letters, reports, and transcripts of phone conversations the Bulletin has obtained, as well as on multiple interviews with people directly involved in the events.

In August 2016, the leader of Nagakawa’s research group at TIRI, Noboru Sakurai, sent an e-mail to Ohnuki urging him to return filter samples he had earlier obtained from TIRI to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where Ohnuki was now employed. Ohnuki responded that the filters had already been sent, but Sakurai maintained they had not received them. Ohnuki had asked a staff member of the research group he used to work in at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency to send the samples he had left there, but the samples were not sent. Because the samples were studied in a controlled area, theymay have been disposed of together with other Fukushima-related samples that had been stored at JAEA.

In October, as Ohnuki dealt with insistent requests that he return the filter samples, Satoshi submitted two research manuscripts to the journal Scientific Reports, one on the first successful isotopic analysis of individual cesium-rich microparticles based on soil samples collected from the exclusion zone at Fukushima, and one on the first characterization of the CsMPs from the Tokyo air filter samples that he had presented during his talk in Yokohama. Both articles were accepted in early January 2017 after peer review.[11]

The Tokyo paper, titled “Caesium fallout in Tokyo on 15th March, 2011 is dominated by highly radioactive, caesium-rich microparticles,” was co-authored by three graduate students from Satoshi’s lab—Jumpei Imoto, Genki Furuki, and Asumi Ochiai, who conducted the experiments—and three Japanese collaborators: Shinya Yamasaki from the University of Tsukuba who contributed to the measurement of samples; Kenji Nanba of Fukushima University, who contributed to the collection of samples; and Toshihiko Ohnuki, who had obtained the samples. The paper included two international collaborators who were world experts in the study of radioactive materials, Bernd Grambow of the French National Center for Scientific Research at the University of Nantes in France and Rodney C. Ewing of Stanford University, who contributed to the research ideas and participated in the analysis of the data. Satoshi was the lead author of the study.

……………………………………………..On the day of the visit, Moriguchi sent an e-mail to Ohnuki, pressing him to inform TIRI about the planned publication. “This type of information makes government agencies very sensitive,” Moriguchi wrote. “If the results obtained from these valuable sample collections conducted at a research institute under the administration were to incur the displeasure of government agencies and it becomes difficult to obtain cooperation from research institutions, we are concerned that this could hinder future research using these types of samples.”

…………………………………………………..Almost immediately, Sakurai moved to block the publication, according to e-mails obtained by the Bulletin.

………………………………………………………………………………………In July 2017, TIRI increased the pressure by sending a formal complaint to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where Ohnuki was now employed. In a letter that the researchers were not able to see until a year after it was sent, TIRI accused Ohnuki of “suspected acts violating internal regulations, researcher’s ethics and code of conduct” in providing Satoshi with samples from TIRI without the institute’s consent.

As the issue became more political and involved more institutions, Satoshi continued his research on CsMPs and presented two other papers about Fukushima at the next Goldschmidt Conference in Paris in August 2017. Later that month, under pressure from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Industrial Technology, the Tokyo Institute of Technology opened a formal investigation of Ohnuki on suspicion of improper research activities with Satoshi. “It was like a court,” Satoshi said of being called before the compliance committee. Except that, unlike in a trial, he did not know the exact terms of what they were accused of. “The team at TIRI didn’t even allow Kyushu University to show me this letter,” Satoshi said. “So at that point, I didn’t understand what the problem was.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Cleared but still harassed

During the investigation, Satoshi almost gave up on publishing the paper based on examination of the filters in Tokyo. He told the committee members that he would probably withdraw the paper, then “in press,” from Scientific Reports. Both the committee members and TIRI were pleased. “But then I talked to Rod [Ewing], and we did something clever,” Satoshi explained. They would not withdraw the paper; instead, they would keep it “in press” until the investigation was over.

…………………………………………………………………………….Tokyo Tech initiated a pressure campaign against Ohnuki and Satoshi to get the samples back…………………………………..

Satoshi did not want to give the samples away. “These are the only evidence to prove our article,” he said.

………………………………………………………“I sent all the samples to Stanford,” Satoshi said. Satoshi sent the air filter samples through regular postal services “in a UPS package.”[15] On September 13, Kyushu University’s executive vice president, Koji Inoue, called Satoshi to his office and yelled at him, urging him to give back the samples. Satoshi told Inoue that it was too late; he had already sent the samples to Stanford “for further investigation.”

Now the samples were secured, but Satoshi still needed his paper to be published.

……………………………………………………………………….. Thompson’s article in Scientific American was published on March 11, 2019, mentioning the fact that the paper had been rejected (Thompson 2019).

In June 2019, Satoshi and his co-authors posted their paper on arXiv (Utsunomiya et al. 2019), thereby making the findings public—two-and-a-half years after its acceptance by Scientific Reports. Ohnuki’s name does not appear in the list of co-authors on the arXiv paper, and Satoshi did not acknowledge TIRI for providing the samples.

……………………………………………………………………………………. After the paper was made public, the researchers received some attention, but not the visibility commensurate with the implications that the study had for public health in Japan.[16] The three institutions—TIRI, Tokyo Tech, and Kyushu University—were all “very happy,” Satoshi said. “People may think that we lost, but for me, we actually protected science.“

New risks

In the early days after the Fukushima accident, radiochemists thought that the situation was very different from Chernobyl. The three reactor-core damage events at Fukushima were considered to be of low energy, meaning that no actual explosion of the reactors had occurred, as was the case for Chernobyl. This led radiochemists to assume that radioactive particles probably had not come out of the reactors or, at least, not in large volume. A lot of the early post-accident research, therefore, focused on the traditional environmental radiochemist approach of collecting soils and sediments, doing bulk analysis, and learning from that.

It was only after scientists discovered the existence of cesium-rich microparticles that researchers, including Satoshi, realized that particles had actually been ejected from the reactors.

…………………………………………………………………………Because they were unknown until recently, CsMPs pose new risks that are still underappreciated by the research community and public authorities.

Once formed, radioactive cesium 137 has a half-life of about 30 years, after which half of the nuclides will have decayed into stable barium 137, whereas the other half will remain radioactive. CsMPs tend to accumulate, forming hotspots that contain many of the particles.[17] Hotspots of the microparticles have been found inside and outside abandoned buildings in the Fukushima exclusion zone and in other places (Fueda et al. 2023; Ikenoue et al. 2021; Utsunomiya 2024a). “They’re actually there in great numbers in many places, and then that’s when the health questions start to come in,” Law said. Despite their great numbers and potential risks, hotspots of CsMPs have not been systematically mapped around Fukushima. “When we visited the exclusion zone, we could still see some hot spot occurrences on the roadside without any protection,” Satoshi said. “We shouldn’t be able to access freely that kind of hot spots.”

Because CsMPs are so small, typically two microns or less in diameter, if humans breathe them, they could potentially reach the bottom of the lung, and be lodged into sacs known as alveoli, where the lung generally cannot expel them.[18] Scientists don’t know what would happen then. For instance, a typical immune system response would consist of some kind of clearance mechanism that seeks out foreign bodies and tries to either envelop or dissolve them. But it is still unknown how exactly CsMPs would dissolve in lung fluids.

Most knowledge about breathing and radioactive particulates is based on the assumption that particles dissolve, and researchers have calculated the rates for their dissolution in the human body. But because CsMPs don’t dissolve easily, once inhaled, they will likely stay longer in the human body. Researchers believe that, because CsMPs are so slow to dissolve, they may stay much longer—certainly for several months, maybe longer—in the body, compared to hours or days for suspended cesium.[19]

By unit of mass, CsMPs are much more radioactive than even spent reactor fuel. Some researchers from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency have shown that cultured cells exposed to the radiation from suspended CsMPs display a stronger local impact compared to what is known from previous radiological simulation studies using soluble radionuclides (Matsuya et al. 2022). Scientists are only now seeing some emerging evidence that the point-source nature of the radioactivity from CsMPs could lead to damage to cell systems. This is qualitatively different from the conventional estimate of internal radiation dose at the organ level based on uniform exposure to soluble cesium.

Despite the new risks that CsMPs might pose, the study of their impacts has received little interest.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….Satoshi continues to study CsMPs actively and regularly presents his results to the Goldschmidt Conference and publishes his results in scientific journals. He and his collaborators work relentlessly to understand better the fate of CsMPs in the environment and their impacts on human health. In 2024, Satoshi received the Geochemical Society’s Clair C. Patterson Award in recognition of his innovative contributions to the understanding of CsMPs.[21]……………… more https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-01/how-fukushimas-radioactive-fallout-in-tokyo-was-concealed-from-the-public/?utm_source=SocialShare&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=Facebook&utm_term&fbclid=IwY2xjawHyUndleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHb1H3gK2UVzfBC5I7-s75EVtx4t5Q9uUi2MspvTqpluEOqbarYJJnhIwUA_aem_ok6x3HQOxccGg2I-7KnZjA

January 14, 2025 Posted by | Japan, radiation, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Radioactive nightmare: A community’s fight for survival amid soaring cancer rates

Jay Salley, News Editor by Jay Salley, News EditorJanuary 8, 2025, https://sciotovalleyguardian.com/2025/01/08/radioactive-nightmare-a-communitys-fight-for-survival-amid-soaring-cancer-rates/

PIKETON, Ohio — Pike County, Ohio, is facing a severe health crisis that’s attracted national attention. The region has some of the highest cancer and premature death rates in the U.S. This alarming trend is linked to decades of uranium enrichment and ongoing demolition at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

A study by Joseph J. Mangano, an epidemiologist with the Radiation and Public Health Project, sheds light on the impact of radioactive contamination on Pike County. Released last summer, the study shows significant increases in cancer, infant mortality, and premature deaths in areas downwind of the plant.

From 2021 to 2023, Pike County’s premature death rate for those under 74 years old was 107% higher than the national average, up from 85% between 2017 and 2020. Over 750 premature deaths occurred in this period in a county with a population of just over 27,000.

Cancer rates in Pike and six neighboring counties—Adams, Gallia, Jackson, Lawrence, Scioto, and Vinton—were 17.5% above the national average from 2015 to 2019. Infant mortality rates in the region were 31.9% higher than the U.S. average from 1999 to 2020, and middle-aged adults saw mortality rates more than double the national average.

In 2019, concerns about radioactive contamination peaked when Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon was permanently closed after radioactive isotopes, including enriched uranium and neptunium-237, were found inside. The school district later sold the building to a Christian ministry, which plans to reopen it as a STEM academy, raising safety concerns.

The Portsmouth plant, operational from 1954 to 2001, enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors, releasing radioactive particles into the environment. Despite ceasing uranium enrichment in 2001, the plant remains active with demolition and decommissioning projects, raising concerns about further contamination.

The Guardian spoke with local activist Gina Doyle. Gina heads the group, Don’t Dump On Us. When asked about the study, Doyle said that in both of Dr. Mangano’s reports, the rate of cancer deaths and other related illnesses has a direct link to the Portsmouth plant. “The contamination is growing, too. It is in everything and everywhere in the surrounding communities. Past instances at the Portsmouth plant show not only human error but deaths of workers. DDOU has a compiled list of cancer victims from the community that grows every single day. I add to that list names of cancer victims; the stories are heartbreaking and infuriating. 

The push for nuclear in our country is growing and that will most definitely cause more sickness and deaths. Transparency has been called for by activists and we still don’t know the whole truth because all of the information is kept hush-hush by the DOE. We do know that other agencies like the OEPA, DOH, and NRC who are supposed to be working to protect our communities have also turned their backs. Questions are never answered; we are kept in the dark by our government. Why? In my opinion, because of money and power. It is time to put people first and stop the lies and covering up the truth. The truth is they are killing innocent people and children. Remediation without any chance of bringing it back to background is not possible. We are forever contaminated. Forever the community will be affected.”

Families in Pike County and neighboring areas have experienced high rates of rare cancers and aggressive diseases, believed to be linked to exposure to radioactive materials from the plant. The closure of Zahn’s Corner Middle School and the deaths of students and staff have become a grim symbol of the crisis.

Emily Stone, another resident, told the Guardian “that when you have world-renowned, out-of-state epidemiologists and scientists who are all saying there is a major problem in Piketon, then that should be taken with the utmost priority and urgency. It is not normal for so many people in one area to be sick and die from some of the rarest cancers and illnesses to exist. For the cause of all of those sicknesses to have a direct link to radioactive materials is truly unreal. When will someone care that an entire community, and its surrounding counties, are all being harmed by this one place and do something to stop it? How many more kids and adults have to die before enough is enough?”

Despite the health risks, the Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed new projects at the Portsmouth site, causing further concern among residents. Advocates are calling for independent investigations and comprehensive public health monitoring for affected communities to prevent further harm.

The fight for accountability and action to address the region’s toxic legacy continues for Pike County residents.

January 11, 2025 Posted by | health, USA | 2 Comments

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