Secret plan for dumping nuclear waste in Mongolia
Japan, U.S. negotiating construction of nuclear waste facility in Mongolia, Mainichi Daily News 10 May 11 ULAN BATOR, Mongolia — Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the U.S. Department of Energy have secretly been advancing plans to construct the world’s first international storage and disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel in Mongolia, it has been learned. Continue reading
Don’t trust nuclear power people’s story on Fukushima disaster
“It’s very important to have scientists who are not already paid by the nuclear power industry,” …”If they are the same people from Euratom and national authorities they use today, why would they say anything different to what they say all the time?”
Deadly Silence on Fukushima, (VIDEO) Huffington Post , Vivian Morris, : 05/ 9/ I received the following email a few days ago from a Russian nuclear physicist friend who is an expert on the kinds of gases being released at Fukushima. Here is what he wrote:
About Japan: the problem is that the reactor uses “dirty” fuel. It is a combination of plutonium and uranium (MOX). I suspect that the old fuel rods have bean spread out due to the explosion and the surrounding area is contaminated with plutonium which means you can never return to this place again. It is like a new Tchernobyl. Personally, I am not surprised that the authority has not informed people about this. Continue reading
Nuclear Regulatory Commission under the thumb of Nuclear Industry
Deference to Industry The N.R.C.’s slowness in addressing serious problems is another 
concern……The agency has little choice but to tolerate violations, ……… “Otherwise, nearly all the U.S. reactors would have to shut down,”
Nuclear Agency Is Criticized as Too Close to Its Industry. NYTimes.com, By TOM ZELLER Jr., May 7, 2011 “……..Exelon’s risky decisions occurred under the noses of on-site inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No documented inspection of the pipes was made by anyone from the N.R.C. for at least the eight years preceding the leak, and the agency also failed to notice that Exelon kept lowering the acceptable standard, according to a subsequent investigation by the commission’s inspector general.
Exelon’s penalty? A reprimand for two low-level violations — a tepid response all too common at the N.R.C., said George A. Mulley Jr., a former investigator with the inspector general’s office who led the Byron inquiry. “They always say, ‘Oh, but nothing happened,’ ” Mr. Mulley said. “Well, sooner or later, our luck — you know, we’re going to end up rolling craps.” Continue reading
Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant the world’s most dangerous complex
Making Hamaoka a special concern to its opponents is the presence of plutonium. Chubu is the only utility in Japan to have signed a contract to process mixed oxide fuel containing plutonium and uranium with the Sellafield plant in the UK.
The industry’s clout, its collusion with government watchdogs and a largely compliant media have helped smother concerns about this potentially explosive collision of state-of-the-art atomic power with primordial seismic instability
‘We all said disaster would strike here, not Fukushima’, The Independent, 3 May 11, After a 40-year campaign, warnings about the vast nuclear power station on Japan’s earthquake faultline are finally being heard. By David McNeill in Omaezeki and Nanako Otani, Norihiko Watanabe is pointing to his home, 600m from what he calls the most dangerous nuclear power complex on the planet. “There’s nothing like it anywhere in the world,” he says, eyes widening. “If it blows up, we’re all finished.” Continue reading
IAEA confirms that Syria did have a secret nuclear facility
“The facility that was … destroyed by Israel was a nuclear reactor under construction,”
Bombed Syrian plant ‘was nuclear facility site’ says energy agency, News Scotsman, 29 April 2011, By George Jahn and Khaled Yacoub Oweis, THE head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has said for the first time that a target destroyed by Israeli warplanes in the Syrian desert in 2007 was the covert site of a future nuclear reactor, countering assertions by Syria that it had no atomic secrets. Continue reading
Corruption of nuclear power regulators
Japan Nuclear Update, Clean Energy.org, April 28th, 2011 “….Much is being made of the corruption of nuclear regulators in Japan, with the New York Times reporting the existence of a culture of complicity that sounds similar to recent charges that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) suffers from regulatory capture. As we reported last week, Wikileaksobtained cables that prove there is a conflict of interest in the NRC’s role to regulate, which is being compromised by their apparent double role as diplomats extolling the benefits of American nuclear technology. This is completely unacceptable considering the NRC’s stated mission, “to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety, to promote the common defense and security, and to protect the environment.” How can regulators objectively regulate when a large portion of their budget comes from the industry? The problem is further compounded by the regulatory “revolving door” which clearly affects decision-making. We don’t need to look far here in the Southeast to see instances of “regulatory capture.” Former NRC Chair Dale Klein joined Southern Company’s board of directors just months after leaving the NRC and just as the utility giant and its partners accepted the first conditional nuclear loan guarantee of $8.3 billion for the two new proposed reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia….. http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2011/04/28/april-28-japan-nuclear-update/
USA Nuclear Regulatory Commission accused of lying on safety
“Key elements of what the NRC chief told Congress were ‘a baldfaced lie.'”…The NRC, America’s nuclear watchdog, is essentially captive to the profit-driven industry it’s charged to regulate.
America’s Nuclear Nightmare: ‘A Dozen Fukushima’s Waiting to Happen’, Rolling Stone, By JULIAN BROOKES, 27 April 11, Shortly after an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, in March, triggering the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, America’s leading nuclear regulator trekked up to Capitol Hill to assure jumpy lawmkers that, no way, it couldn’t happen here. Continue reading
How the nuclear establishment distorts radiation surveys
One problem is that the survey only calculates mortality ratios, ignoring people who might have cancer but are still alive at the time of the survey. Such obvious methodological bias is frequent in this sort of surveys. In France and other countries, another bias is the tendency to ignore contract workers, though they receive the highest cumulative radioactive doses. Therefore, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the very goal of these epidemiological surveys is to minimize the risks of nuclear radiation and encourage the nuclear industry’s business as usual.
Dying for TEPCO?Fukushima’s Nuclear Contract Workers, TheAsiaPacific Journal , Paul Jobin 28 April 11, “…..What is the objective of epidemiological surveys?An epidemiological survey published in March, just before the catastrophe, was based on a huge cohort of 212,000 persons recorded between 1990 and 1999, out of the total of 277,000 who had worked in nuclear plants. The survey found a significant mortality ratio for only one type of leukemia and judged that other forms of cancer among this population could not be attributed to their exposure to radiation at nuclear plants. Continue reading
Government and nuclear industry intertwined in Japan
nuclear industry officials, bureaucrats, politicians and scientists — have prospered by rewarding one another with construction projects, lucrative positions, and political, financial and regulatory support. ……Japan would make the sale of nuclear reactors and technology the central component of a long-term export strategy to energy-hungry developing nations. A new company, the International Nuclear Energy Development of Japan, was created to do just that. Its shareholders were made up of the country’s nine main nuclear plant operators, three manufacturers of nuclear reactors and the government itself.
Safety Left Out in Japan’s ‘Nuclear 
Power Village, Culture of Complicity Tied to Stricken Nuclear Plant, New York Times, By NORIMITSU ONISHI and KEN BELSON, April 26, 2011 “……..Revolving Door In Japan, the web of connections between the nuclear industry and government officials is now popularly referred to as the “nuclear power village.” The expression connotes the nontransparent, collusive interests that underlie the establishment’s push to increase nuclear power despite the discovery of active fault lines under plants, new projections about the size of tsunamis and a long history of cover-ups of safety problems. Continue reading
How a Fukushima safety whistleblower was blackballed
Despite a new law shielding whistle-blowers, the regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, divulged Mr. Sugaoka’s identity to Tokyo Electric, effectively blackballing him from the industry
Safety Left Out in Japan’s ‘Nuclear Power Village, Culture of Complicity Tied to Stricken Nuclear Plant, New York Times, By NORIMITSU ONISHI and KEN BELSON, April 26, 2011, TOKYO — Given the fierce insularity of Japan’s nuclear industry, it was perhaps fitting that an outsider exposed the most serious safety cover-up in the history of Japanese nuclear power. It took place at Fukushima Daiichi, the plant that Japan has been struggling to get under control since last month’s earthquake and tsunami. Continue reading
World Health Organisation under the thumb of International Atomic Energy Agency
Nuclear apologists play shoot the messenger on radiation, The Age, Helen Caldicott, April 26, 2011 ”…..In the early days of nuclear power, WHO issued forthright statements on radiation risks, such as its 1956 warning: ”Genetic heritage is the most precious property for human beings. It determines the lives of our progeny, health and harmonious development of future generations. As experts, we affirm that the health of future generations is threatened by increasing development of the atomic industry and sources of radiation.”
After 1959, the organisation made no more statements on health and radioactivity.
What happened?
On May 28, 1959, at the 12th World Health Assembly, WHO drew up an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. A clause of this agreement says the WHO effectively grants the right of prior approval over any research it might undertake or report on to the IAEA – a group that many people, including journalists, think is a neutral watchdog, but which is, in fact, an advocate for the nuclear power industry. Its founding papers state: ”The agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity through the world.”
The WHO’s subjugation to the IAEA is widely known within the scientific radiation community,.. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/nuclear-apologists-play-shoot-the-messenger-on-radiation-20110425-1du2w.html#ixzz1KfXmalLq
“Star” computer virus joins “Stuxnet” attack on Iran’s nuclear program
Iran: Country under attack by second computer virus, The Washington Post, By Thomas Erdbrink and Joby Warrick, , April 25, TEHRAN —An Iranian military official revealed on Monday that the country had been attacked by a new computer virus apparently aimed at nuclear facilities, an acknowledgment that seemed to suggest a broader campaign by foreign saboteurs to undermine Iran’s atomic energy program.
The new computer worm has been dubbed “Stars” by the Iranians and described as an “espionage virus,” although few details were made public. In the same announcement, the military also confirmed continuing problems with an earlier virus, “Stuxnet,” which began wreaking havoc on Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility in 2009…………..http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-country-under-attack-by-second-computer-virus/2011/04/25/AFudkBjE_story.html
Japanese govt raises “acceptable”radiation standard for children
3.8 μSv/h is roughly 6 times the standard for “Radiation Controlled Areas” (0.6 μSv/h or more). The Labour Standards Act prohibits those under the age of 18 from working under these conditions. Forcing children to be exposed to such radiation doses is an exceedingly inhumane decision….”The cancer risk will visibly rise in the future. By setting these standards, the government will steer clear of any liability legally, however not morally.”
Urgent Petition Against Imposing 20 milli-sievert Radiation Exposure Standard onto Children in Fukushimahttp://blog.canpan.info/foejapan/daily/201104/24
On April 19th, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) notified the Board of Education and related institutions in Fukushima Prefecture the level of 20 milli-sievert per year (mSv/y) as a Radiation Safety Standard for schools in Fukushima Prefecture. This is the standard to be used for school grounds and buildings. The Government has indicated that 20 mSv/y is equivalent to 3.8 micro-sievert per hour (μSv/h) measured outdoors. Continue reading
“Nuclear Science Mafia” condemned by judges
“We are always being told that nuclear power is clean and pure.
It’s a complete lie. Who are the people telling it? It’s the scientists who need jobs, postings on nuclear energy boards and state honours,”….Justice Kolse Patil said the government was repeating a lie over and over again so that it would sound true.
Activists of anti-nuclear plant yatra detained THE HINDU, 24 April 11,”………“Why is the government stopping us from going to Jaitapur? Because it does not want the other side of
nuclear energy to reach the people,” Justice Sawant told the meeting. Continue reading
Did Indian police target anti nuclear protestor to kill him?
Retired judges want probe into death, Snehal Rebello, Hindustan Times Tarapur, April 24, 2011 Tabrez Sayekar, 30, a victim of the violence in Jaitapur earlier this week, was fired upon at close range, said campaigners spearheading the movement against the nuclear power plant at Jaitapur. Justice (retired) PB Sawant of the Supreme Court and justice (retired) BG Kolse Patil of the Bombay high court, who are part of the campaign, said a judicial inquiry led by a sitting high court judge should be conducted into the death. The state government had ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident three days ago.
“There is suspicion that Tabrez’s death was a targeted killing, and that policemen were injured is not true,” said Sawant. “We don’t trust the magistrate appointed by the state government. We will not accept any conclusions of the report.”
Even when HT, on April 19 contacted Dr Angad Chate, the civil surgeon who monitored the post-mortem report at Ratnagiri Civil Hospital, he said Sayekar succumbed to bullet injuries to his heart, kidney, liver and lungs. But a day later Chate said that just one bullet in the lower abdomen killed Tabrez. When contacted for a clarification on April 21, Chate said, “I have got instructions from the highest authorities not to disclose the report.”…… http://www.hindustantimes.com/Retired-judges-want-probe-into-death/Article1-689000.aspx
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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