“Radiophobia” and other terms to belittle opponents of nuclear power
The Nuclear Cancer inside of the United Nations, blog by Jan Hemmer June 1, 2013 by Mikkai 妊娠中の日本人女性の避難す “……….At the Chernobyl IAEA forum the term “Radiophobia” was invented and used: “What’s worse, the IAEA is going public these days with statements ridiculing the so called “radiophobia” of the population and calling for an end of aid programs, which, according to the IAEA report of 2005, only serve to instil a victim mentality in a totally healthy population – a claim not only cynical, but potentially dangerous for the health of the affected population.” Source:http://www.ippnw-students.org/chernobyl/coverup.html
“Presently the international organizations (WHO, IAEA) recognize as the main cause of increase of thyroid cancer in liquidators and children population after the accident their irradiation with radioactive iodine, I-131. The rest of diseases, they suppose, are provoked by psycho-emotional reactions..” (!!!…… ” http://www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NSRG/reports/kr21/kr21pdf/Burlakova.pdf IGNORED BY IAEA, UNSCEAR, ICRP, WHO http://tekknorg.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/the-nuclear-cancer-insidie-of-the-united-nations/#comment-5111
Britain’s pro nuclear spin in the 1980s – denigrating opponents
Labour and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND ) were tarred as Communist sympathisers or stooges. Greenham women were projected as naïve (coupled in some narratives with the condescending qualification “well-meaning mothers and grandmothers”, and in others with “squalid” and “dangerous feminists”). The Conservative line was “If you knew what we know, you wouldn’t question the need for Trident and Cruise”. History has confirmed that the peace movement understood much more than we were given credit for. Perhaps that is why Thatcher’s government refused to engage in an intelligent debate over nuclear policy, finding it easier to belittle their opposition while asserting their status quo decisions and preferences as if they were factual, evidence-based necessities.
Pro-nuclear propaganda in 1983: lessons for 2013 50/50 Inclusive Democracy REBECCA JOHNSON 9 August 2013 Read the first.] Cabinet papers and secret government letters from 1983 that have been made public under the 30 year rule show that Margaret Thatcher’s government was more seriously worried about the electoral impact of nuclear weapons deployments than had previously been revealed.
Their concerns included the popular opposition to Trident replacement and to the US siting of cruise missiles at Greenham Common.
Though Labour was tearing itself apart over the break-away faction that formed a new Social Democratic Party (SDP), some 700,000 more people voted for the disarmament-oriented Labour Party of 1983 than in the 1979 election when the Party was led by Prime Minister James Callaghan, who took the first steps towards Trident replacement and the deployment of cruise missiles in 1979. Callaghan lost that election, and Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. Labour’s defeat in 1983 had far more to do with the SDP factor in a two-party system, economic reconstruction, and innovative use of media and advertising techniques by the Tories……… Continue reading
Australian government’s hypocritical pretense of ‘helping’ Julian Assange
Australia could seek an assurance from Sweden that following the completion of all Swedish legal proceedings that Assange would be deported to Australia. This would be an entirely appropriate outcome for an Australian citizen who has been subject to extradition to a foreign country.
If the Gillard government was able to obtain these diplomatic assurances, which are consistent with international law, then Assange would face his accusers in Sweden and not face the prospect of onward extradition to the United States.
How Australia can end the Assange stalemate The Drum Australia can help Julian Assange negotiate his legal problems while remaining consistent with the norms of international law and with the level of assistance that would be offered to other Australians, writes Donald Rothwell. …….. the UK has indicated that it does not recognise Ecuador’s granting of asylum and if Assange were to leave the Embassy he is liable to arrest and extradition to Sweden.
Ecuador revealed in mid-August – as the Assange matter reached a pivotal point- that Britain had threatened to rely on its Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act and revoke the Ecuadorian Embassy’s diplomatic protection so as to enter and seize Assange.
This threat was extraordinary and without modern precedence and it was unsurprising that the Ecuadorian Government responded with such fury. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has now downplayed any suggestion that the Ecuadorian Embassy will be raided, and emphasised Britain will act consistently with international law.
Nevertheless, Hague and the British government have made it clear that they have a legal obligation to Sweden to extradite Assange and that they will continue to seek his arrest for breach of his bail 
conditions……..
Australia has been remarkably silent on some of these recent developments. Throughout the year Assange has been highly critical of what he claims has been a lack of support from the Australian government, but Foreign Minister Bob Carr insists that Assange has received more consular assistance than any other Australian in similar circumstances.
The reality is that Australia can still play a proactive, and perhaps even pivotal role, in seeking to bring about a resolution to the current stalemate. Continue reading
Nuclear lobby’s big advertising push – the Sydney “CON”ference
Putting the Con back into Conference: No social license for nuclear power. July 25: Natalie Wasley, Beyond Nuclear Initiative and Uranium Free NSW On July 25/26 the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) is holding a conference in Sydney titled ‘Nuclear Energy for Australia?’
The conference might be framed as a question but the answer is predictable given that the majority of keynote speakers are from organisations in favour of developing a nuclear power industry in Australia, including industry representative bodies and pro-nuclear think tanks. Continue reading
UK government out of step with public, on nuclear power
Government has announced £10 billion of Treasury guarantees to EDF to build Hinkley C nuclear power station. Ed Davey has said (see two blog posts earlier) that nuclear power will receive premium rate payments for 35 years while his Government has just announced that the premium price contracts for renewables will be cut from 20 years under the Renewables Obligation to just 15 years under the proposals for ‘Electricity Market Reform’ . One could list other things, but it is already clear that the Government strategy is completely out of step with the priorities of the electorate.
So how is it that nuclear commands such support from within the establishment? One clue can be found from survey evidence itself which tends to show that the most pro-nuclear parts of the population are older people and males, and the least supportive of nuclear power (and most supportive of real green energy solutions) are young people and females. But guess which general type of person makes up the scientific and engineering establishment? Well, older males of course.
Public prefers reductions in room temperature to nuclear power as an energy solution says key survey http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.co.uk/ Dr David Toke 20 July 2013 A comprehensive survey published by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) of attitudes of the British public has found low support for nuclear power as a solution to the UK’s problems compared to energy efficiency and renewable energy. Indeed, when ranked as a solution to the problems of energy security, climate change and affordability, nuclear power was perceived as being less preferable than reducing the heating temperature inside the home.
Busting the nuclear industry’s propaganda fairy tale
As always in the face of failure, the industry puts forth new designs as a basis for new promises, now touting small modular reactors with the same fervour with which it touted large, partially modular reactors a decade ago. Congress finds a few hundred million to preserve these dreams even as its cutbacks shatter so many others.
A new movie, Pandora’s Promise (no film-maker familiar with nuclear history would include “promise” in a title intended to be pronuclear), recently screened at Sundance.Featuring the same old converts and straw men, it opened in cinemas a few weeks ago to tiny audiences and generally unenthusiastic reviews, especially from reviewers knowledgeable about nuclear power.
In the astonishing persistence of the global appetite for false nuclear promises lies the critical importance of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, published on Thursday.
Nuclear renaissance was just a fairy tale http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/11/nuclear-renaissance-power-myth-us The promise of cheap, low-carbon power – with 31 new reactors in the US – was based on rhetoric and obedience. Anyone who doubts that should read the new status report on the industry Peter Bradford guardian.co.uk, 12 July 2013 Nuclear power requires obedience, not transparency. The gap between nuclear rhetoric and nuclear reality has been a fundamental impediment to wise energy policy decisions for half a century now.
For various reasons, in many nations the nuclear industry cannot tell the truth about its progress, its promise or its perils. Its backers in government and in academia do no better.
Rhetorical excess from opponents of nuclear power contributes to the fog, but proponents have by far the heavier artillery. In the US, during the rise and fall of the bubble formerly known as “the nuclear renaissance”, many of the proponents’ tools have been on full display. Continue reading
A critical review of nuclear advertising film “Pandora’s Promise”
Finally (as Beyond Nuclear and other watchdog groups have noted), relying on nuclear power to mitigate CO2-driven climate change is unaffordable and impractical since it would require putting a new reactor online every two weeks……
Ultimately, Pandora’s Promise comes across as a well-executed but disingenuous exercise in special pleading. Instead of devoting 89 minutes to honestly and fully assessing the pros and cons of renewable technologies alongside the risks and benefits of new, untried nuclear power systems,Pandora’s Promise promotes a narrow agenda. As a result, the film winds up as little more than a tunnel-vision exercise in “plutonium Pollyannaism.”
Another Take on Pandora’s Promise EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL BY GAR SMITH – JUNE 28, 2013 Pro-nuclear power film obscures as much as it reveals You’ve got to give the producers of Pandora’s Promise credit for gumption. It takes a lot of chutzpah to release a pro-nuclear polemic in the wake of the triple meltdown in Fukushima, Japan. The film also suffered the ignominy of opening the same week that the owners of California’s troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station announced the permanent shutdown of the facility’s two crippled reactors. Even the film’s title takes a bit of nerve; it was Pandora’s Box, after all, that unleashed a host of once-contained evils into the world.
So, given the extensive history of nuclear mishaps and near-catastrophes, how do the producers of Pandora’s Promise manage to spin their counter-narrative of a “safe, green” nuclear future? Basically by: (1) at first accepting the criticisms of traditional nuclear power and then (2) arguing that the solution lies in “new, improved” nuclear reactors. Like a smart defense attorney, director Robert Stone begins by admitting all of the defendant’s worst foibles up front, thereby depriving the prosecution of an opportunity to score points by revealing these issues later…….
The filmmakers pronounce the radioactive contamination “infinitesimal” and proclaim there has been “no evidence of medical consequences.” No citations are offered to support this positive conclusion. The fact that 40 percent of Fukushima’s evacuated children have subsequently developed thyroid abnormalities goes unmentioned. Continue reading
IAEA chief confident of nuclear energy’s future
Nuclear industry has learnt its lessons: IAEA chief The global nuclear industry has learned its lessons from the Fukushima nuclear plant accident in Japan in 2011 and can look to the future with “confidence and optimism,” said the United Nations nuclear energy chief….“Nuclear power is a tried and tested technology,” Mr Amano THE HINDU 27 June 13
Exelon tries (unsuccessfully) to blame wind energy for nuclear power’s commercial failures
Exelon Still Blaming Wind PTC For Nuclear Challenges, Exelon Still Wrong About It Think Progress, By Adam James, Guest Blogger on Jun 27, 2013 Exelon recently shelved plans to expand nuclear capacity at their LaSalle and Limerick plants, taking a $100 million hit and once again reverting to the tired old strategy of blaming subsidized wind. The specific target of their ire is the Production Tax Credit (PTC). For wind, that is, not the one that they happily collect for nuclear.
Exelon is (again) wrong about the PTC, as anyone who read our last post already knows.
First, let’s look at the big picture. Wind power has been a tremendous boon for North America. Costs have fallen 90 percent since 1992, the domestic content of wind turbines has dramatically risen, and 75,000 people are employed in the industry. This growth is directly tied to the continued extension of the Production Tax Credit. Wind power is cheap and carbon free, making it good for consumers and the climate alike.
However, Exelon has decided that wind power is bad for their business. The argument they’ve been making is that because wind can collect tax credits for producing energy at times when demand for electricity is very low, electricity prices become negative as the generator pays consumers to take electricity. This hurts their other generators, like nuclear plants, who then have to sell at a loss. Buried in the story about Limerick and LaSalle is a very important point though: negative prices didn’t occur once in springtime.
We debunked this tale before, but I’ll recap the highlights here:……http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/27/2210711/exelon-still-blaming-wind-ptc-for-nuclear-challenges-exelon-still-wrong-about-it/?mobile=nc
There is no budding environmentalist movement for nukes.
Some thoughts on “Pandora’s Promise” and the nuclear debate By David Roberts, Grist 14 June 13 “……..Ever since I started paying attention to “nuclear renaissance” stories about a decade ago, there’s always been this credulous, excitable bit about how enviros are starting to come around. The roster of enviros in this purportedly burgeoning movement: Stewart Brand, the Breakthrough Boys, and “Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore,” who has been a paid shill for industry for decades (it sounds like thePandora folks were wise enough to leave him out). More recently George Monbiot and Mark Lynas have been added to the list. This handful of converts is always cited with the implication that it’s the leading edge of a vast shift, and yet … it’s always the same handful.
Anyway, if environmentalists are as omni-incompetent as Breakthrough has alleged all these years, why the eagerness to recruit them? I get the media appeal of “even hippies know the hippies are wrong,” but to me it smells of flop sweat.
As of now, of the 10 leading enviro groups in the U.S., zero support new nuclear power plants. In the movie, Shellenberger says, “I have a sense that this is a beautiful thing … the beginning of a movement.” I fear he has once again mistaken the contents of his navel for the zeitgeist. http://grist.org/climate-energy/some-thoughts-on-pandoras-promise-and-the-nuclear-debate/
Unconvincing film advertisement for the nuclear industry
Movie Review: Put “Pandora’s Promise” Back in the Box, Union of Concerned Scientists Ed Lyman, senior scientist June 12, 2013 “….. By oversimplifying the issues, trivializing opposing viewpoints and mocking those who express them, and selectively presenting information in a misleading way, it serves more to obfuscate than to illuminate. As such, it adds little of value to the substantive debate about the merits of various energy sources in a carbon-constrained world.
“Pandora’s Promise,” taking a page from late-night infomercials, seeks to persuade via the testimonials of a number of self-proclaimed environmentalists who used to be opposed to nuclear power but have now changed their minds, including Stewart Brand, Michael Shellenberger, Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas and Richard Rhodes. The documentary tries to make its case primarily by impressing the audience with the significance of the personal journeys of these nuclear power converts, not by presenting the underlying arguments in a coherent way. This strategy puts great emphasis on the credibility of these spokespeople. Yet some of them sabotage their own credibility. …. the audience may reasonably wonder why it should accept what they believe now that they are pro-nuclear.
My hand got tired trying to jot down all the less-than-half truths put forth by the talking heads in the film, which could have benefited from some fact-checking. Here’s just one example. Gwyneth Cravens, when prompted by the interviewer about the leak of tritium from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, stated that someone would get more radiation from eating one banana than from drinking all the water coming out of the plant. Well, I thought I would double-check this one. The dose from eating a single banana is about 0.01 millirem. Entergy, Vermont Yankee’s owner, estimated in a 2011 report to the NRC that the leak detected in early 2010 released 2.79 curies of tritium into groundwater. Assuming someone consumed all of this tritium in the form of tritiated water, that person would receive a dose of 185,000 millirem. Ms. Cravens was only off by a factor of twenty million. Perhaps she was referring to the actual amount of tritium that would end up in the wells of the plant’s neighbors, given dilution effects—but that isn’t what she said. These sloppy soundbites greatly diminish the film’s credibility.
A more egregious example of dishonesty is in the discussion of the health effects of Chernobyl…… there is no mention of the fact that the Chernobyl Forum only estimated the number of cancer deaths expected among the most highly exposed populations in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and not the many thousands more predicted by published studies to occur in other parts of Europe that received high levels of fallout. Nor is there mention of the actual health consequences from Chernobyl, including the more than 6,000 thyroid cancers that had occurred by 2005 in individuals who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident. And the film is silent on the results of more recent published studies that report evidence of excesses in other cancers, as well as cardiovascular diseases, are beginning to emerge…….
The film also puts forth the Integral Fast Reactor, a metal-fueled fast breeder reactor, as a visionary nuclear reactor design that could solve all of nuclear power’s problems by being meltdown-proof and consuming its own waste as fuel. However, it glosses over the myriad safety and security problems associated with fast-breeder reactors…….
The biggest failing of the film, however, is the lack of any discussion of what the real obstacles to an expansion of nuclear energy are and what would need to be done to overcome them. In fact, nuclear power’s worst enemy may not be the anti-nuclear movement, as the film suggests, but rather nuclear power advocates whose rose-colored view of the technology helped create the attitude of complacency that made accidents like Fukushima possible. Nuclear power will only be successful through the vision of realists who acknowledge its problems and work hard to fix them—not fawning ideologues like filmmaker Robert Stone and the stars of “Pandora’s Promise.”http://allthingsnuclear.org/movie-review-put-pandoras-promise-back-in-the-box/#.Ubkvd1qPsGs.facebook
Film Pandora’s Promise – an infomercial for the nuclear lobby
Paper: CNN’s nuclear propaganda film “is dishonest to its core” — It’s “actually an infomercial” http://enenews.com/cnns-nuclear-propaganda-film-is-dishonest-to-its-core-pandoras-promise-is-actually-an-infomercial
Title: Pandora’s Promise: Would You Buy a Nuclear Reactor
Source: Seattle Weekly
Author: Brian Miller
Date: Jun 11 2013
My ears prick up whenever I hear how Bill Gates and Paul Allen are spending their money. Putatively a documentary about the resurgence of nuclear power, Pandora’s Promise is actually an infomercial for a business still stigmatized by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and our fears of all things atomic. […]
[…] Pandora’s Promise, which was produced by CNN and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions. (Robert Stone is the director-for-hire.) […]
But the doc’s bigger flaw is that no one is allowed to make a reasoned anti-nuclear argument. […] And when I hear Pulitzer-winning author Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) say that “to be anti-nuclear is fundamentally to be in favor of burning fossil fuels,” it sounds perfectly sensible. And that’s the problem with Pandora’s Promise: Though many of its claims may be truthful, the film is dishonest to its core.
See also: Experts: The planet can be powered solely by wind, water and solar energy (NO ‘fossil fuels’ or nuclear power)
UNSCEAR’s skewed message about Fukushima radiation
Fukushima and the nuclear industry’s fight against fear, Independent Australia, 12 June 13, Now that the Fukushima meltdown has faded from public consciousness, says Noel Wauchope, the nuclear industry is trying to persuade the world there is nothing to fear from fission.“…… how come that the World Nuclear Association and the media can be so confident that the main task now is to overturn that unwarranted fear?
They are relying largely on phone interviews with some members of The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) ― notably UNSCEAR chair, Wolfgang Weiss. On 31 May, UNSCEAR released ‒ not an extensive official report ‒ but a brief preliminary report on Fukushima radiation and health ― the full report will be presented at the United Nations in October this year. The world press has been quoting this statement from this unofficial UNSCEAR press release
‘It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers.’ But the World Health Organisation’s comprehensive report (February 2013) concluded that an increased rate of breast cancer is to be expected in future years amongst women who were children when exposed to low level Fukushima radiation. It also predicted increased leukaemia amongst Fukushima clean-up workers.
If you dissect the UNSCEAR statement, you can see how very carefully it is worded so that it does not contradict the World Health Organisation. Continue reading
Latest UNSCEAR Fukushima report says opposite to World Health report
On May 31, 2013 the United Nations said it did not expect to see elevated rates of cancer from Fukushima, though it recommended continued monitoring <link> .
The report by the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation said prompt evacuation meant the dose inhaled by most people was low. But that assessment was at odds with a report by the World Health Organization in February that warned of an elevated cancer risk.
Life and Death Choices: Radiation, Children, and Japan’s Future, 04 June 2013 By David McNeill, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus | Report Like most fathers, Fujimoto Yoji frets about the health of his young children. In addition to normal parental concerns about the food they eat, the air they breathe and the environment they will inherit, however, he must add one more: the radioactive fallout from a major nuclear disaster.
Three days after meltdown began at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on 11 March, 2011, Fujimoto moved his two daughters, then aged four and three, to safety hundreds of kilometers away. In December, 2012 the eldest of the two was diagnosed with adenoidal cysts, the prelude to a type of cancer that often strikes the salivary glands. “I was told by the doctor that it’s very rare,” he says.
Although Mr Fujimoto and his family were in Chiba Prefecture, over 100km (60 miles) from the nuclear plant and in the opposite direction from the worst of the fallout, he believes his daughter inhaled enough radiation to cause her illness. “I’m convinced this is because of the Fukushima accident.” Continue reading
UNSCEAR the publicity arm of the nuclear lobby declares Fukushima radiation safe
Fukushima Radiation Risk Media Deception, Lynda Lovon Sassy musings on science, politics, and culture.3 June 13“……..Huffington post carried a Reuters story No Rise In Cancer Seen From Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, UN Says in which they quote a senior member of the committee, Dr.Wolfgang Weiss:
“Weiss, who chairs work on UNSCEAR’s Fukushima report, told reporters that dose levels were “so low that we don’t expect to see any increase in cancer in the future in the population”.”
But who is this Weiss Guy? Who is UNSCEAR and why should I believe what they report? UNSCEAR is subservient to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global pimp of nuclear power. UNSCEAR, which I like to pronounce “unscare” as it seems that their main purpose is to dispel any concerns about nuclear radiation, are not an autonomous independent agency. Not only is UNSCEAR loaded with scientists in the nuclear industry, every report must be approved by the IAEA. UNSCEAR was strongly criticized by the international scientific community a few years ago with its assessment of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident in which they claimed only 31 people died as a result of radiation. For more information on that coverup, read my blog about it here.
Who is this Weiss guy? Wolfgang Weiss is a boss on Euratom which, according to Wikipedia is an international organisation founded in 1958 with the purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, developing nuclear energy and distributing it to its member states while selling the surplus to non-member states. Weiss is in the business of promoting nuclear power! Do you trust his opinion on the health effects or consequences of ionizing radiation and nuclear accidents?
More importantly, why didn’t Reuters or Huff Post point this out? They have access to google too. It is unethical and irresponsible for the media to not expose the bias and conflict of interest with these nuclear agencies and agents. It is irresponsible for the media to perpetuate the lie and illusion of neutrality of scientists. But it doesn’t end there……… http://lyndalovon.blogspot.de/2013/06/fukushima-radiation-risk-media-deception.html
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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