Is Australia “The Ugly Australian” in Africa – aid money going to mining companies?
AID MONEY USED TO SUPPORT MINING CSR PROJECTS http://acan.org.au/2012/10/aid-money-used-to-support-mining-csr-projects/ A group of Australian and international civil society groups, lead primarily by AID/WATCH, have written an open letter to Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, expressing concern that Australian aid money is supporting the CSR initiatives of Australian mining firms, particularly in Africa. Continue reading
How objective is the International Atomic Energy Agency? Regulatory capture?
The Anti-Lynas movement: Are we being unreasonable? – Jeyakumar Devaraj, The Malaysian Insider , 13 Dec 12 Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj is a PSM central committee member and MP for Sungai Siput.”……..The IAEA is fully behind the drive to build nuclear reactors. They say that these are safe. That we have the technology to ensure that nothing goes wrong. But we have had accidents inSellafield (UK), the Three Miles Reactor (USA), Chernobyl (USSR), and this was the worst until Fukushima (Japan) occurred! How safe are they really? But the IAEA is still all for Malaysia embarking on building 2 nuclear reactors – at a cost of more than RM 20 billion! How objective is the IAEA? Continue reading
Conflict of interest in Japanese scientists on International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP)
The doctor on the parliamentary panel, Hisako Sakiyama, is outraged about utility funding for Japan’s ICRP members. She fears that radiation standards are being set leniently to limit costly evacuations.
“The assertion of the utilities became the rule. That’s ethically unacceptable. People’s health is at stake,” she says. “The view was twisted so it came out as though there is no clear evidence of the risks, or that we simply don’t know.”
Japanese Radiation Regulators Admit Conflict of Interest, Laboratory Equipment, 12 Dec 12 Yuri Kageyama Influential scientists who help set Japan’s radiation exposure limits have for years had trips paid for by the country’s nuclear plant operators to attend overseas meetings of the world’s top academic group on radiation safety.
The potential conflict of interest is revealed in one sentence buried in a 600-page parliamentary investigation into last year’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant disaster and pointed out to The Associated Press by a medical doctor on the 10-person investigation
panel.
Some of these same scientists have consistently given optimistic assessments about the health risks of radiation, interviews with the scientists and government documents show. Their pivotal role in setting policy after the March 2011 tsunami and ensuing nuclear meltdowns meant the difference between schoolchildren playing outside or indoors and families staying or evacuating their homes.
One leading scientist, Ohtsura Niwa, acknowledged that the electricity industry pays for flights and hotels to go to meetings of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, and for overseas members visiting Japan……… Continue reading
Israel meddling with bogus reports on Iran’s nuclear weapons plans?
Israel behind bogus Iran nuclear data leak – reports Rt.com 11 December Israel may be behind a series of leaks implicating Iran in nuclear weapons experiments, Western diplomats say, stressing that in doing so Tel Aviv could have compromised the ongoing UN investigation intoTehran’s nuclear activities and ambitions.
In its efforts to raise international pressure on Tehran, Israel supposedly carried out leaks of several documents from an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation, The Guardian reported on Monday citing Western diplomats. Continue reading
Role of scientists paid to minimise risks of nuclear radiation
Outrage as AP exposes Japan scientists taking money from nuke industry — But we usually only fly coach so it’s OK — Radiation standards ‘twisted’ after 3/11 to limit evacuations http://enenews.com/just-in-outrage-as-ap-exposes-japan-scientists-taking-money-from-nuclear-industry-doctor-radiation-standards-were-twisted-to-limit-evacuations-after-311-the-excuse-we-usually-only-fly-coDecember 6th, 2012
Title: AP Exclusive: Japan scientists took utility money – The Denver Post
Source: AP
Author: YURI KAGEYAMA
Date: Dec 6, 2012
Influential Japanese scientists who help set national radiation exposure limits have for years had trips paid for by the country’s nuclear plant operators […]
The potential conflict of interest is revealed in one sentence buried in a 600-page parliamentary investigation into last year’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant disaster and pointed out to The Associated Press by a medical doctor on the 10-person investigation panel. […]
Some of these same scientists have consistently given optimistic assessments about the health risks of radiation, interviews with the scientists and government documents show. Continue reading
Reluctant whistleblowers charge NRC with secrecy about safety
Nuclear Power Whistleblowers Charge Federal Regulators With Favoring Secrecy Over Safety HUFFINGTON POST, 12/04/2012 Richard H. Perkins and Larry Criscione are precise and formal men with more than 20 years of combined government and military service. Perkins held posts at the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration before joining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Division of Risk Analysis in 2008. Criscione landed at the agency a year later, after five years aboard the USS Georgia as a submarine warfare officer.
Now both men are also reluctant whistleblowers, stepping out publicly to accuse the NRC of being both disconcertingly sluggish and inappropriately secretive about severe — and in one case, potentially catastrophic — flood risks at nuclear plants that sit downstream from large dams. Continue reading
“Green Run” – deliberate radiation experiments on USA citizens
COMMENTARY: 1949 nuclear experiment is an ugly legacy of Hanford
http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/29097307-57/green-hanford-run-nuclear-iodine.html.csp
BY SUSAN CUNDIFF AND PATRICIA HOOVER The Register-Guard December 2, 2012
Many of us in the timber-rich Northwest are familiar with such terms
as “pulling the green chain” and fresh-cut “green” wood. But how many
know the term “Green Run?” Never heard of it? That’s because it was a
secret.
On Dec. 2, 1949, officials at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in
southeastern Washington deliberately experimented on residents in the
area by releasing raw, irradiated uranium fuel. It was the largest
known single incident of intentional radioactive contamination ever.
It’s come to be known as the Green Run; in this case “green” meant
“uncured.”
Normally, radiated fuel would be cooled for 83 to 101 days to allow
some of the short-lived radioactive materials to decay before
releasing those materials into the environment. For this test,
officials waited a mere 16 days and did not filter the exhaust.
Over a seven-hour period, 7,780 curies of iodine-131 and 20,000 curies
of xenon-133 were released. To put these numbers in perspective, the
Three Mile Island accident released between 15 and 24 curies of
radioactive iodine. Women and children were evacuated, and milk was
impounded.
During the Green Run, Air Force planes measured the deposits of
iodine-131 on ground vegetation within a 200- by 40-mile plume that
stretched from The Dalles to Spokane. Vegetation samples taken in
Kennewick, Wash., revealed nearly 1,000 times the acceptable daily
limit of iodine-131.
Citizens in the area routinely accepted unusual practices devised by
Hanford officials as natural and patriotic: urine samples were left on
porches for pick-up, schoolchildren went through whole-body counter
scans, and men in white coats palpated students’ throats around the
thyroid gland.
As thyroid disease and cancer rates rose among the populations of
Richland, Wash., The Dalles, Hermiston and the surrounding
countryside, the public began to question the safety of Hanford’s
practices. They were assured that “not one atom” had ever escaped from
Hanford and that it was as “safe as mother’s milk.” Of course, if
mother is contaminated, her breast milk is, too — as is the milk from
dairy cattle in the area, the salmon in the river, and vegetables and
fruit from the farms and ranches nearby.
With all their collected data, officials had to know the health
consequences. And still the deception continued. Press releases
recommended iodized salt and trucked-in pasteurized milk, but only as
mere suggestions. In fact, all public health records from Hanford were
sent only to Walla Walla, Wash., and never recorded at the state
Capitol, thus ensuring that health research would not contain damning
statistics.
The Green Run was only part of a much larger pattern of contamination.
From 1944 to 1957 a total of 724,779 curies of iodine-131 were
released into the atmosphere.
Why conduct an experiment such as the Green Run? Were the military and
the Atomic Energy Commission trying to develop a method for
determining production rates in the Soviet Union? Were Hanford
officials attempting to speed up their own production? Or was
something more sinister going on?
We may never know, because specific reasons for the experimentation
remain classified. It took 37 years for the public to learn anything
at all about the Green Run, and only then because grass-roots groups
forced the release of documents through the Freedom of Information
Act.
According to Michele Gerber, author of “On the Home Front,” “…the
question of whether the Green Run was a radiological warfare
experiment, designed to test harm to foodstuffs and living creatures,
is still open.”
Hanford continues to pose risks. Radioactive contaminants leak into
the water table and the river. Cleanup efforts stall.
Vitrification, the process of turning waste into glass, was supposed
to be the answer to the problem. In 2010, a whistle-blower warned that
the $12.2 billion plant under construction might be seriously flawed.
He was pushed aside for his ethical stand. Recent announceinclude the hiring of a new manager to take over the “problem-plagued
construction at the Hanford vitrification plant” (Register Guard, Nov.
25).
As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Oregon’s Ron Wyden
spoke of nuclear weapons production as “the largest, most
ultra-hazardous industry of its kind in the world.” Wyden’s concerns
about Hanford continue now that he is in the Senate, and he has
traveled to Japan to learn more about the disastrous nuclear plant
site at Fukushima.
Today, Dec. 2, is a time to remember the atrocities of the Green Run
and renew our call for transparency in the secretive nuclear industry.
As we search for viable solutions to our energy needs, we must insist
on openness, truth and safety, striving together for real green
solutions.
Radioactive material disposed of in Louisiana sinkhole – cover up?
Louisiana sinkhole radiation abuse and cover up continue The Examiner, NOVEMBER 30, 2012 BY: DEBORAH DUPRE As human rights to health abuses continue in the giant Louisiana sinkhole area, with its dangerous radiation levels released for over four months, state officials say they are investigating how Texas Brine Co. LLC managed the naturally occurring radioactive material there and whether it illegally disposed of the “non-dangerous” radioactive material under Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities that are above the Napoleonville Dome in the mid-1990s. Radiation, a grave human right to health violation at Louisiana sinkhole
After four months of dangerous levels of radiation being released at Louisiana’s giant sinkhole, impacting lives of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people, finger-pointing has begun regarding whose fault it is that the naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) is there.
NORM is a common petrochemical industrial complex waste problem potentially negatively impacting the human right to health.
NORM is a frequent byproduct of oil and gas drilling processes. It creates wastes that industry has often dumped improperly – in water, on land, by burning and in “accidents” – to prevent storing it illegally.
Oil and gas drilling processes can concentrate naturally occurring radioactive isotopes underground at various levels, sometimes posing health threats, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Brine production, such as in Texas Brine’s operations, are included in those that can concentrate NORM. Some oil and gas service companies are contracted to store NORM for oil and gas companies. Texas Brine is an oil and gas service company.
Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) confirmed last week that a 1979 state statute prohibited disposing NORM in large underground salt deposits like Napoleonville Dome until 1999 legislative changes made such disposal legal.
“What we’re going to do is investigate this thing the best we can with the information from 1995 and move forward as appropriate,” said DEQ spokesman Rodney Mallett.
In August 1995, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Office of Conservation did not object when Texas Brine considered putting up to 20 cubic feet of NORM in an underground company cavern in the Napoleonville Dome and in another salt dome in Lafourche Parish, according to DEQ and state Office of Conservation records.
It is unclear if Texas Brine followed through on those plans, according to the Advocate.
Texas Brine officials said in a statement last week that they did not put NORM into its caverns but that it remains onsite under a standing license that DEQ gave to it……..
As early as August, a non-government group, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, began urging Bayou Corne sinkhole area residents to use a new record log. At that time, a veteran radiation expert said Louisiana environmental officials were “in denial” over hazards posed by elevated radium levels that were actually fifteen times higher than the state limit, a “worst nightmare coming true” in the sinkhole vicinity, according to environmental attorney Stuart Smith.
Stanley Waligora, a New Mexico-based radiation protection consultant and leading authority on health risks of NORM confirmed that radium levels at Bayou Corne’s sinkhole are not within safe limits, but instead, roughly 15 times higher than the state’s acceptable level, Smith had said. The information about radium had been buried in a state news release, had been poorly written, and had gone “out of its way to downplay the results,” Smith had said.
In 1979, the state Legislature prohibited disposing “radioactive waste or other radioactive material of any nature” in salt domes. That la took effect Jan. 1, 1980 during controversy over U.S. Department of Energy plans to store high-level radioactive waste, such as from nuclear power plants, in salt domes.
The salt dome ban for radioactive waste remains. In 1999, however, the Louisiana Legislature exempted oil and gas exploration and production wastes, including NORM, from the statutory definition of “radioactive waste,” DEQ officials said.
Before that, NORM was under the definition of “radioactive waste” and, therefore, prohibited from salt dome disposal in 1995, DEQ officials said in an email to the Advocate…….
Sonny Cranch, spokesman for Texas Brine, said last week that officials “misspoke” then in their attempt to respond to questions about NORM and that it was never put in the cavern.
“This is a very confusing saga — when you get to the end of the (Advocate) piece, it’s unclear just what exactly Texas Brine did or didn’t bury at the sinkhole,” Smith stated in his blog post Tuesday. “But that is the broader point — neither the company nor state regulators have been clear about has or hasn’t been taking place at this site for years.”Smith added, “And they haven’t been either honest or forthcoming with the people of Louisiana now, in this hour of crisis for displaced families and for the worried residents still in the area.”
What is also confusing to some is just how dangerous NORM is, a confusion caused by what Smith refers to as corporate and government dose dancing.
Dose dancing, a radiation psychological operation citizens need to know: Even small radiation doses that are harmful
Low-level, even natural radiation is potentially damaging, according to scientific studies, including a newly released study report.
Smith refers to corporate and government hiding the truth about radiation as “dose dancing.”
“‘Dose dancing’ is a load of baloney,” Smith stated Tuesday. “My experience as a lawyer has shown me that even exposure to levels of radiation that are considered low can in fact be harmful. And increasingly there is scientific research backing this up. http://www.examiner.com/article/louisiana-sinkhole-radiation-abuse-and-cover-up-continue
USA- Pentagon expanding its global spy network
Pentagon reportedly planning to double size of its worldwide spy network
More than 1,600 new Defense Department agents will collect intelligence and report findings to CIA, said to be overstretched Dominic Rushe in New Yorkguardian.co.uk, 2 December 2012 The US military plans to send hundreds more spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan that will more than double the size of its espionage network, it was reported Sunday.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon’s military intelligence unit, is aiming to recruit 1,600 intelligence “collectors” – up from the several hundred overseas agents it has employed in recent years, sources told The Washington Post.
Combined with the enormous growth in the CIA since 9/11 attacks, the recruitment drive will create an unprecedented spy network. “The stars have been aligning on this for a while,” an anonymous former senior US military official involved in planning the DIA transformation told the Post.
The news is likely to heighten concerns about the accountability of the US military’s clandestine programmes amid mounting concerns about the CIA-controlled drone programme.
The United Nations said last month that it intends to investigate civilian deaths from drone strikes. The US has refused to even acknowledge the existence of a drone programme in Pakistan. The US military is not subject to the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA, creating yet more potential controversies….. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/02/pentagon-double-spy-network-cia?CMP=twt_gu
The truth about low level radiation is covered up by governments and corporations
Louisiana sinkhole radiation abuse and cover up continue The Examiner, NOVEMBER 30, 2012 BY: DEBORAH DUPRE Low-level, even natural radiation is potentially damaging, according to scientific studies, including a newly released study report.
Smith refers to corporate and government hiding the truth about radiation as “dose dancing.”
“‘Dose dancing’ is a load of baloney,” Smith stated Tuesday. “My experience as a lawyer has shown me that even exposure to levels of radiation that are considered low can in fact be harmful. And increasingly there is scientific research backing this up.
The latest study on this subject is what Smith calls “a bombshell.” He quotes about the new study:
“Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Paris-Sud found that variation in low-level, natural background radiation was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA as well as several measures of health.
The review is a meta-analysis of studies of locations around the globe that have very high natural background radiation as a result of the minerals in the ground there, including Ramsar, Iran, Mombasa, Kenya, Lodeve, France, and Yangjiang, China. These, and a few other geographic locations with natural background radiation that greatly exceeds normal amounts, have long drawn scientists intent on understanding the effects of radiation on life. Individual studies by themselves, however, have often only shown small effects on small populations from which conclusive statistical conclusions were difficult to draw.
Smith says that what these researchers learned “is alarming indeed”:
The scientists reported significant negative effects in a range of categories, including immunology, physiology, mutation and disease occurrence. The frequency of negative effects was beyond that of random chance.
‘There’s been a sentiment in the community that because we don’t see obvious effects in some of these places, or that what we see tends to be small and localized, that maybe there aren’t any negative effects from low levels of radiation,’ said Mousseau. ‘But when you do the meta-analysis, you do see significant negative effects.’
‘It also provides evidence that there is no threshold below which there are no effects of radiation,’ he added. ‘A theory that has been batted around a lot over the last couple of decades is the idea that is there a threshold of exposure below which there are no negative consequences. These data provide fairly strong evidence that there is no threshold — radiation effects are measurable as far down as you can go, given the statistical power you have at hand.’”
“I cannot understate the importance of this: “Long-term exposure to radiation is not safe, even at so-called low levels,” Smith asserted. “”This simple fact needs to inform our quest for environmental safety and justice on many levels — whether the issue is as high-profile as the lingering aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, or as down-to-earth as radioactive pipe from the oil patch that’s been used to build a school playground, as we discovered during that Chevron case.
“All citizens need to learn about the risks, the remedies, and the potential recourse,” Smith states……….http://www.examiner.com/article/louisiana-sinkhole-radiation-abuse-and-cover-up-continue
An American Fukushima is possible – whistleblower
the NRC concealed the information from the public.
The mainstream media showed little or no interest in a story about yet another example of the NRC lying to the public about the safety of nuclear power plants.
Whistleblower: Nuclear Regulators Suppress Facts, Break Law , Nation of Change, William Boardman, 27 November 2012 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has known at least since 1996 that flooding danger from upstream dam failure was a more serious threat than the agency would publicly admit. The NRC failed from 1996 until 2011 to assess the threat even internally. In July 2011, the NRC staff completed a report finding “that external flooding due to upstream dam failure poses a larger than expected risk to plants and public safety” but the NRC did not make the 41-page report public. Continue reading
Nearly 1000 more fake nuclear quality certificates found in South Korea
South Korea finds more nuclear parts with fake documents CNBC, 27
Nov 2012 | SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean nuclear regulators have discovered nearly a thousand more parts supplied for nuclear power plants with fake quality certificates, Continue reading
Nuclear money makes nuclear addicts of Japan’s towns
Another example of a local community dependent on money related to nuclear facilities is in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, formerly a poverty-stricken village where most of its 11,000 residents relied on agriculture and fisheries for their livelihood. The village is now called one of Japan’s wealthiest municipalities.
If the government’s plan to phase out nuclear power in Japan is to be implemented, the whole concept of a nuclear fuel cycle in this country would collapse, which in turn would deal a serious blow to Rokkasho’s fiscal foundation.
the system in which money flows from the nuclear community into host municipalities remains intact, and unless
the link is cut off, those municipalities will continue to rely on the nuclear industry.
Municipal nuclear addiction, Japan Times, 26 Nov 12 Municipalities hosting nuclear power plants throughout Japan have received large amounts of central government subsidies, donations from utilities and lucrative business contracts Now, 1½ years after the Fukushima nuclear disaste rs, those municipalities realize how much their finances depend on the nuclear power-induced money.
“They’re like drug addicts cut off from supplies,” said a member of the assembly of Niigata Prefecture, which hosts Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant on the Sea of Japan coast. All the
reactors at the plant remain shut down after its No. 5 and 6 reactors went offline earlier this year……
Host prefectures and municipalities receive central government grants based on laws designed to promote development of power generation facilities. …. Continue reading
American justice in question, as USA cracks down on hacker Jeremy Hammond
The bigger story is what they’ve done in this country to Jeremy Hammond, Bradley Manning, and what they have proposed to do to Julian Assange, and that’s really say that they’re going to come down as heavily as they can on people who expose government secrets, whistleblowers,”
Anonymous hacker behind Stratfor attack faces life in prison, Rt : 23 November, 2012, A pretrial hearing in the case against accused LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond this week ended with the 27-year-old Chicago man being told he could be sentenced to life in prison for compromising the computers of Stratfor.
Judge Loretta Preska told Hammond in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday that he could be sentenced to serve anywhere from 360 months-to-life if convicted on all charges relating to last year’s hack of Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, a global intelligence company whose servers were infiltrated by an offshoot of the hacktivist collective Anonymous.
Hammond is not likely to take the stand until next year, but so far has been imprisoned for eight months without trial. Continue reading
Exploiting Japan’s university students as Fukushima cleanup workers
[Exploiting the youth] Fukushima university to give students credit
for decontamination work http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/11/exploiting-the-youth-fukushima-university-to-give-students-credit-for-decontamination-work/ by Mochizuki November 24th, 2012
On 11/19/2012, Fukushima Diary wrote, “It’s likely that they make it a credit necessary to graduate from schools to go to Fukushima (plant).” in the column [Japan may seek solution of Fukushima in drifting to the right]. Fukushima university is going to do exactly what was written in the column.
Fukushima university is going to give students credit for decontamination work, which is supposed to be volunteer. 45 hours of decontamination is one credit, 90 hours of decontamination is two credits.
-
Archives
- April 2026 (300)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS




