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Japanese govt’s secrecy on nuclear disaster report

Japan kept silent on worst nuclear crisis, Herald Sun,   Tokyo From: AP January 26, 2012  THE Japanese government’s worst-case scenario at the height of the nuclear crisis last year warned that tens of millions of people, including Tokyo residents, might need to leave their homes, according to a report.

But fearing widespread panic, officials kept the report secret. The recent emergence of the 15-page internal document may add to complaints in Japan that the government withheld too much information about the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It also casts doubt about whether the government was sufficiently prepared to cope with what could have been an evacuation of unprecedented scale.

The report was submitted to then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his top advisers on March 25, two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, causing three reactors to melt down and generating hydrogen explosions that blew away protective structures…..
After Mr Kan received the report, he and other Japanese officials publicly insisted that there was no need to prepare for wider-scale evacuations.

The government continues to refuse to make the document public. The AP obtained it overnight through a government source, who insisted on anonymity because the document was still categorised as internal……. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/japan-kept-silent-on-worst-nuclear-crisis/story-e6frf7jx-1226253974563

January 26, 2012 Posted by | Japan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Canada’s government kept mum about Fukushima radiation fallout

 he’s asking questions about rain which fell on Calgary shortly after the nuclear disaster last March, containing radioactive iodine well above the Health Canada guidelines for drinking water.

“There are certain people who might be concerned — for instance, a pregnant woman,” 

Fukushima fallout hit home   Nuclear critic says Health Canada should have issued warning on radioactive raindrops  BY MICHAEL PLATT ,CALGARY SUN, 22 Jan 12,  There’s no need to panic — probably.

But not knowing whether to shrug or cower over radioactive iodine falling on Calgary as a result of a meltdown in Japan last year has Canada’s top nuclear critic wondering why.

“There’s no need to be concerned, but what you should be concerned about is why the authorities are so quick to dismiss it,” says Dr. Gordon Edwards. Continue reading →

January 24, 2012 Posted by | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Betrayal of Japanese people in government silence on radiation

With no information coming from Tokyo, mayor Tamotsu Baba decided to lead the people of his community further north away from the plant. He did not know it at the time, but that was the very direction the plumes of radiation were also blowing.

For the 20,000 people of Namie  – they have lost their homes and many fear for the health of their children.

A system that was designed to protect and warn them has clearly failed.

Japan ‘betrayed citizens’ over radiation danger, ABC News AM By North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy January 20, 2012 Japan has been accused of betraying its own people by giving the American military information about the spread of radiation from Fukushima more than a week before it told the Japanese public.

The mayor of a Japanese community abandoned because of its proximity to the Fukushima nuclear plant has told AM the government’s actions are akin to murder.

An official from Japan’s science ministry, which was in charge of mapping the spread of radiation, has acknowledged to AM that perhaps the public should have been told about the dangers at the same time the US military was informed.

In the hours after the meltdowns at Fukushima, unseen plumes of radiation began to roll over the Japanese landscape. Just a few kilometres from the oozing remains of the nuclear plant the people of Namie village gathered to evacuate. Continue reading →

January 20, 2012 Posted by | Japan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Canadian authorities keep mum about radiation in rainwater

Radioactive iodine in rainwater: Public was in the dark By ALEX ROSLIN, The Montreal Gazette January 14, 2012 After the Fukushima nuclear accident, Canadian health officials assured a nervous public that virtually no radioactive fallout had drifted to Canada. Continue reading →

January 19, 2012 Posted by | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Whistleblower on dangers at Hanford nuclear waste facility

During her testimony to the board she gave different answers than top-level officials with the Department of Energy and contractors Bechtel National and URS. Afterward, she says her managers asked her to change her answers. Busche said “No.”

She says she was … “Raised by a very good mother, that said, ‘Just don’t lie. ‘Cause once you tell your first one it’s real hard to … they just continue to grow.’”…

Audio http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=145326474&ft=3&f=145326474  Hanford Nuclear Safety Manager Questions Waste Treatment Plant NPR by ANNA KING  January 17, 2012 from N3 RICHLAND, Wash. – Waste in underground tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation may have much more plutonium than previously thought. That’s according to a report by a Hanford contractor that’s just been leaked to public radio. It’s also according to the latest high profile whistleblower to raise serious concerns about a waste treatment plant being built at the Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington. Continue reading →

January 18, 2012 Posted by | - plutonium, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

USA military were told of radiation data 9 days before Japanese public

Radiation-dispersal data was provided to U.S. before Japanese public,  Mainichi Daily News,  17 Jan 12, TOKYO (Kyodo) –– Japan’s science ministry provided data on the dispersal of radioactive materials to U.S. forces a few days after the nuclear crisis erupted at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, far earlier than the disclosure of the information to the Japanese public, a ministry official said Monday.

The revelation came amid criticism that the government’s delay in releasing data from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information may have resulted in the unnecessary radiation exposure of people who later evacuated from their homes around the plant.

The data was provided to U.S. forces via the Japanese Foreign Ministry on March 14, three days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear crisis, according to Itaru Watanabe, an official of the Science and Technology Policy Bureau of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

But it was not until March 23 that the public was officially informed. Watanabe, speaking at a meeting of the nuclear accident investigation panel set up by the Diet, said that the science ministry passed on the data to U.S. forces “to seek support from them” in dealing with the nuclear crisis…..http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120117p2g00m0dm037000c.html

January 18, 2012 Posted by | Japan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

USA and Australia should stop special nuclear favours to India

Australia in particular, along with the United States and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, must review recent decisions to positively discriminate in order to permit nuclear dealings with India.

The evidence is incontrovertible that India was a customer of the Khan network.

Gillard’s sexual education, Crikey, January 18, 2012 –, by NAJ Taylor   ”……..  if Playboy’s January issue (the one with Lindsay Lohan on the cover) is approached with open eyes, I believe it has the capacity the recast the Australia-India relationship. In sum, the article by Joshua Pollack concerns an already infamous Pakistani and a group of Indian nuclear scientists – the evidence assembled suggests only one thing: there was once a time when they were all in bed together. Continue reading →

January 18, 2012 Posted by | India, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan’s treacherous nuclear deals with India

The Secret Treachery of A.Q. Khan, PLAYBOY, January  12, JOSHUA POLLACK “…… By now Khan has made nearly every possible claim about who bears responsibility for selling Pakistan’s centrifuge technology. He did it at the behest of the military. He acted purely on his own. The military was solely responsible. It was all done by foreigners. Khan lost many things during his ordeal, including his freedom and his credibility. But throughout, he retained one crucial secret: the identity of a fourth country, after Iran, Libya and North Korea, to which he had provided the shortcut to a nuclear weapon. Continue reading →

January 18, 2012 Posted by | India, Pakistan, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Covert war – Israel, USA versus Iran

No one has claimed responsibility for the killing. But on Tuesday, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, Israel’s military chief of staff, told a special parliamentary committee Iran should expect more “unnatural” events in 2012

There has been obvious push-back from Iran in the form of repeated claims its secretive Al Quds Force has attacked U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan using Iranian-designed improvised explosive devices.

“Waging a covert, low-level war is not without risks, including the risk of undesirable escalation,”  “No matter how carefully we try to control the level of force, there’s always the danger that matters spiral out of control.”

Iranian nuclear scientists’ deaths no mystery, National Post, Peter Goodspeed  13 Jan 12, A covert war between Iran and the West burst to the surface Wednesday on the fashionable streets of northern Tehran when two men on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to the car of a 32-year-old nuclear scientist, killing him and his bodyguard…….

Mr. Roshan’s killing is the latest in a long line of suspicious setbacks to Iran’s nuclear program. These have included assassinations, kidnappings, sabotaged equipment, computer viruses that destroyed information networks and mysterious
explosions at nuclear sites, missile-testing grounds, refineries and pipelines.

“Iranian nuclear engineers have to worry about being killed on their way to work, about their colleagues leaking information to the West, about their computers not working, about their equipment malfunctioning, about lacking necessary materials, about unavailability of training and advice and about the possibility of strikes from UAVs [drones]. That list of problems is daunting,” said Patrick Clawson, director of research for the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy…..
No one has claimed responsibility for the killing. But on Tuesday, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, Israel’s military chief of staff, told a special parliamentary committee Iran should expect more “unnatural” events in 2012 Continue reading →

January 13, 2012 Posted by | Iraq, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants a more pro nuclear Chairman

 Agency Smackdown, Round 2: A Critique of ‘the Nuclear Party’ NYT, By MATTHEW L. WALD, December 28, 2011,  The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whose four fellow commissioners complained about him to the White House, saying that he had been withholding information from them and wielding too much power, drew a spirited defense on Wednesday from a predecessor at the agency.  Peter A. Bradford, who was a commission member from 1977 to 1982, was speaking with reporters in a conference call on another topic, whether the recent approval of a new reactor design by the commission represented a major step toward a “nuclear renaissance.” (It doesn’t, he said.)

…….In the course of the call, Mr. Bradford said that the four commissioners were trying to give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, “a push toward the door.”

Mr. Bradford said it was not unusual for the commissioners to disagree strongly. “What’s unusual here is the letter these four commissioners have written,’’ he said. He said the letter had been prepared “unquestionably with the intention it would become public,’’ and that that there was no possibility that it would contribute to more collegial decision-making at the commission. The letter accused Mr. Jaczko of intimidating staff members – an allegation that was also noted in a report by the agency’s inspector general this year.

But Mr. Bradford said he did not believe that “ the chairman is somehow raging around the agency and intimidating the staff.’’

“These are professionals, they’re grown-ups, they don’t get scared under their desk by one commissioner, even the chairman,’’ he said. “It doesn’t pass the straight-face test. Of the four other members, two are Republicans and two are Democrats, but Mr. Bradford said the letter was not in fact bipartisan. “In Washington, you’ve got a situation where the ‘nuclear party’ transcends the Republican and Democratic party,’’ he said. “You’ve got four members of the nuclear party writing a letter about the chairman, who’s never been a member of the nuclear party.’’

Those four members have backgrounds in nuclear engineering, the nuclear Navy and related fields; Dr. Jaczko has a Ph.D in particle physics and came to the commission after a career on Capitol Hill, including a stint as an aide to Harry Reid of Nevada, the leader of the Senate’s Democratic majority.

The appointment of Dr. Jaczko did not have the support of the main nuclear industry trade association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and that group has made an oblique plea for his departure.  http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/in-agency-smackdown-a-critique-of-the-nuclear-party/?scp=1&sq=Peter%20A.%20Bradford&st=cse

January 13, 2012 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Fifth assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist

Iranian nuclear chemist killed by motorbike assassins,  and ,  guardian.co.uk,   11 January 2012  Tensions escalate with US and Israel as Tehran accuses the Mossad in fifth murder of scientists

A chemist working at Iran‘s main uranium enrichment plant was killed on Wednesday when attackers on a motorbike stuck a magnetic bomb to his car. The assassination – the fifth against Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years – is likely to further escalate tensions between Iran and the west.

It took place at 8.30am, at the height of rush-hour in Tehran, according to witnesses quoted in the Iranian media. A motorcycle pulled up alongside a silver Peugeot 405 carrying the deputy director of the Natanz enrichment plant, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, 32.

The pillion passenger stuck a charge to the door next to the chemist, which detonated as the motorcyclist drove off. The car’s driver was also killed and a pedestrian was wounded, but the charge used appeared to have a sophisticated shape that focused the blast into the car. While the door ended up in nearby trees, much of the car remained intact.

Ahmadi-Roshan was the fifth nuclear scientist to be attacked in Tehran in 24 months. Only one target has survived the daytime attacks, apparently carried out by a well-trained hit team. Iran has said the US and Israel are behind the assassinations, and blamed the Mossad for Wednesday’s killings….. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/11/iran-nuclear-chemist-killed?newsfeed=true

January 12, 2012 Posted by | civil liberties, Iran, safety | Leave a comment

USA hypocrisy in nuclear sales to Middle East – arms race risk?

Nuclear trade agreements allow for U.S. companies to build reactors overseas or provide sensitive technologies, nuclear materials or know-how to recipient nations.

“I think the administration will pay lip service to the idea of [a nuclear trade partner] forgoing enrichment and reprocessing, but I would be very surprised if they made renunciation a hard condition of any agreement,” said nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis.

serious concerns about the possibility that the entire region could be on the verge of a race to develop nuclear weapons.

Obama Team Reveals Nuclear Trade, Nonproliferation Decision on Capitol Hill, National Journal,  By Elaine M. Grossman January 11, 2012  The Obama administration told key lawmakers by letter on Tuesday how it intends to pursue upcoming nuclear trade agreements with one or more partner states, and the decision was believed to shed light on whether such pacts would contain specific conditions aimed at discouraging the spread of nuclear weapons, Global Security Newswire has learned (see GSN, July 28, 2011).

 Two senior Obama administration officials wanted to brief key lawmakers in person or by phone this week, but logistics proved impossible and a written notification was sent instead, according to sources.

Details were shrouded in secrecy even after the letters were sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees, but the outlines of a policy determination appeared to be emerging, sources and experts said.  Continue reading →

January 12, 2012 Posted by | politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Attacks on NRC Chairman take attention away from nuclear safety issues

The grumbling over Jaczko is a convenient smokescreen to draw attention away from the fact that, for the first time in decades, the NRC actually has a Chairman who, in his own words, is “a very passionate person about safety” at the country’s 104 operating nuclear reactors. That shows up the other four, who, much of the time, adhere to an old culture of capitulation to the demands of the nuclear power industry, a practice which almost invariably diminishes safety…….

Congress could better spend its time looking deeper into lax safety oversight at NRC and tell its commissioners to stop favoring the nuclear industry’s financial priorities over public safety.

The Jaczko DebateNuclear Agency Squabbling Throws Smokescreen Over Safety Lapses, Counter Punch, 6 Jan 12, by LINDA PENTZ GUNTER Four of the five commissioners at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission have charged their boss, Chairman Gregory Jaczko, with “causing serious damage to this institution.” That is tough talk coming from an agency where mismanagement under previous chairmanships actually did serious damage, not only to the regulatory integrity of the institution, but to safety integrity at nuclear reactors. Continue reading →

January 7, 2012 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

“ WHAT ARE THE RESULTS OF TISSUE ANALYSIS TAKEN FROM DECEASED NUCLEAR TEST VETERANS ? “

“ The motives for the work appear to have been similar to those set out in relation to nuclear industry , namely scientific research and potential claims for damages .”

Why Nuclear Veterans are Being Silenced, Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog, 6 Jan 12,”..……Secret examination of tissue , organs and body parts of nuclear industry workers and nuclear test veterans …..

Michael Redfern QC published his report on tissue analysis at nuclear installations on the 16th November 2010 . This report took some three and half years to complete and covers 655 pages .It was originally set up to investigate claims by the families of deceased nuclear industry worker that their beloved ones body parts had been secretly removed
for examination , without family consent , for analysis and destruction .

One bereaved family found the body of a nuclear industry worker in his coffin had a broom stick put in place of a removed leg bone to give the appearance on burial that the body was whole and not desecrated.

The Redfern Report links Nuclear Test Veterans and Power Workers in on-going medical research programmes . Continue reading →

January 7, 2012 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | 1 Comment

UK government’s secret research on atomic test veterans

nuclear test veterans have been part of a continued experimental programme for the protection of nuclear industry.

Why Nuclear Veterans are Being Silenced, Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog, 6 Jan 12 ”…..the public are overdue an explanation of why successive UK governments, ministers and Prime Ministers remain silent on this issue…. Nuclear test veterans and widows believe the press and the general public deserve to know why compensation for damage to health of UK nuclear test participants is beings so fiercely contested .

Based on political and scientific information obtained by CVFI associates and by individual nuclear test veterans over several decades and passed to the legal team acting on behalf of the AVCG the following provides the explanation .

The fierce contesting of litigation by the MoD results from the 1950’s cold war Prime Ministerial policy edict of Sir Anthony Eden which decided that scientific warnings of the danger of genetic damage in nuclear test veterans from exposure to radiation could be ignored as “ a pity , but it cannot be helped.”

This policy edict has been passed down from officials within the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to all successive Prime Ministers and upheld for over fifty years .  Continue reading →

January 6, 2012 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

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