Fukushima Update Special: Sept 29,2011
International Press Stories
The continued reports of spreading contamination and concerns with both the government and industry handling of the disaster have led to a spate of articles in the international press this week. The articles sited here are by no means an exhaustive list, however, they do show the continued and often mounting concern regarding the nuclear disaster at Fukushima specifically and the use of nuclear power in general. ~Nelle
This article at Global Research (http://www.globalresearch.ca/), a Canadian think-tank on Globalization, concerns the handling of the information from the disaster by government, regulatory agencies, industry and media and the effects of the disaster on public health.
Fukushima and the Battle for Truth
by Paul Zimmerman – 2011-09-27
"Fukushima's nuclear disaster is a nightmare. Ghostly releases of radioactivity haunt the Japanese countryside. Lives, once safe, are now beset by an ineffable scourge promising vile illness and death.
Large sectors of the population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination, setting the stage for a public health tragedy.
A subtle increase in the number of miscarriages and fetal deaths will be the first manifestation that something is amiss. An elevated incidence of birth defects will begin in the Fall and continue into the indefinite future. Thyroid diseases, cardiac diseases and elevated rates of infant and childhood leukemia will follow. Over the next decade and beyond, cancer rates will soar."
If you didn't read Keith Snow's Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan when it was first published on March 18th by Global Research, READ IT NOW!
It is a complete plain-English primer on all of the problems and concerns at Fukushima (and nuclear power in general) which have become headline news over the last 6 months.
He nailed all of them within days of the disaster.
"I began my career as a journalist [he is an engineer by trade] by looking deeply into the rabbit-hole of nuclear power from 1993 to 2000. I visited the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Public Document Rooms — which have since been closed in many places — where I read thousands of microfilms and scanned microfiche records and excavated document after document in search of truth. I visited nuke plants in New England and industry conferences. I interviewed officials and I attended the most boring and sometimes secretive public meetings with the most stifling and unimaginative bureaucrats and with engineers (like me) so dry they squeaked. And then I reported on regulatory corruption, technical failures, undemocratic initiatives to betray the public trust, and the accumulating radiation and nuclear poisons — and the many ways that the mass media supported and perpetuated the mythology. "
The New York Times runs this story today under a downplay headline.
The article is indeed very sobering with details regarding the high concentrations of radioactive cesium, how groundwater leaking into the reactors continues the sea contamination and how ocean currents are containing the concentrations rather than the conjectured dilutions occurring.
Fukushima's Contamination Produces Some Surprises at Sea
September 27, 2011:
Ken Buesseler, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who in 1986 studied the effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the Black Sea, said the Fukushima disaster appeared to be by far the largest accidental release of radioactive material into the sea.
Chernobyl-induced radiation in the Black Sea peaked in 1986 at about 1,000 becquerels per cubic meter, he said in an interview at his office in Woods Hole, Mass.
By contrast, the radiation level off the coast near the Fukushima Daiichi plant peaked at more than 100,000 becquerels per cubic meter in early April.
Before Fukushima, in 2010, the Japanese coast measured about 1.5 becquerel per cubic meter, he said.
‘‘Chernobyl might have been five times bigger, over all, but the ocean impact was much smaller,'' Mr. Buesseler said.
The Wall Street Journal carries this story today although it is not really new news.
Japan Officials Failed to Hand Out Radiation Pills in Quake's …
Japan Officials Failed to Hand Out Radiation Pills in Quake's Aftermath quote from article:
“In interviews with The Wall Street Journal, several national and local government officials and advisers blamed the delay on a communications breakdown among different government agencies with responsibilities over various aspects of the disaster.
They also cited an abrupt move by the government shortly after the accident, when local officials raised sharply the level of radiation exposure that would qualify an individual for iodine pills and other safety measures, such as thorough decontamination.
"Most of our residents had no idea we were supposed to take medication like that," said Juichi Ide, general-affairs chief of Kawauchi Village, located about 20 miles from the plant. "By the time the pills were delivered to our office on the 16th, everyone in the village was gone."
This ABC Australia story and video ran yesterday.
Video: Japan's PM 'isolated, out of his depth' (Lateline)
Japan ‘scared' of telling truth to Fukushima evacuees,
ABC Australia, September 28, 2011:
"A former adviser to the Japanese cabinet has revealed the government has known for months that thousands of evacuees from around the Fukushima nuclear plant will not be able to return to their homes.
Nearly seven months after the meltdowns at Fukushima, about 80,000 people are still living in shelters or temporary housing.
Professor Kenichi Matsumoto says the government is too scared to tell people they cannot return to Fukushima."
Truthout ran this story and video yesterday which offers an important political perspective on Nuclear issues.
In Post-Fukushima Reality, What is the Future, and Who Is Winning It?
Wednesday 28 September 2011
The first 2 minutes of the video questions the new definition of "cold shutdown" and the accelerated rate of "achieving" this of which TEPCO and the Japanese government are both boasting. But the story is much broader and goes on to contrast Australian and American voting systems and hence their approach to nuclear power and its regulation.
We learn that Australia has no nuclear power plants because the public doesn't want them. The USA has 65. Canada with 22 nuke plants and follows the American approach of damn-public-opinion supported by a "first past the post" voting system. The Canadian government recently sold off their plants to SNC-Lavalin for the garage sale price of $15 million.
Furthermore we now see the re-opening of reporting on discussions of nuclear power plants in the tar sands. Will the Canadian public have any say in this?
On-line Rabble.ca ran this opinion piece on Monday, an excellent read.
Rust never sleeps … and neither do Alberta's tar sands nuclear …
By David J. Climenhaga
September 26, 2011
Rust never sleeps … and neither do Alberta's tar sands nuclear power boosters, quote:
“Just when you thought it was safe to breath the isotope-laden Western Canadian air again, now that the wind from Japan has died down a little, comes word that the tireless lobbyists for a nuclear power plant near the Alberta tar sands are back at it.
A Calgary Herald report last Friday told the story of a "debate" about nuclear energy in the oil sands at a conference of petroleum industry toffs at a famously luxurious Banff hotel.
Actually, if you read the story you'll find the kind of thing that could only pass for "debate" in the pages of the Calgary Herald, long justly known for its undeclared mission as the Fearless Champion of the Overdog.
The debate in question, at any rate, consisted of the differences between an oil industry exec who wants a $6-billion-plus taxpayer-paid nuclear power-generation plant here in the Peace River Country right flippin' now, and another big shot who only thinks the nuke should be built really, really soon.
At least as far as any alert reader could tell from the story, no one in a nicely tailored summer suit was standing up and asking, "Are we crazy, or what?"
Using nuclear power — either in the form of "controlled" explosions, or in the more conventional manner of electricity generated in a multi-billion-dollar reactor paid for by someone else — has long been a dream of the tar sands oil extraction industry.“ […]
CounterPunch ran this article yesterday, a rabble-rousing call to action with a great poster. Selected quotes below.
September 28, 2011
MICHAEL LEONARDI
Fighting Back Against Nuclear Power
"Look to the lessons we are learning from Japan. If there is a serious nuclear accident this is what we can count on from our governments, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and those "in charge". They will lie to us for months, they will abandon us to die and they will act like nothing is happening. This is what is unfolding in the Crime Against Humanity devastating the 3 million residents and mainly the children that have been left in areas 5 times more radioactive than the areas of the Ukraine evacuated until this day after Chernobyl. Try and get your minds around how callous and utterly disdainful our governments have become toward their populations.
The Coalition Against Nukes has mobilized for the past several months to begin a no nuke uprising that won't stop until ALL of our nuclear power plants are shut down and our future generations can look forward to a Nuke Free World."
A reader advises the book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment is available online as a PDF. Thanks for the heads up!
Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Yablokov et al, eds, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-57331-757-3 US $150/CDN $180, 400 pages, ppb. Also available as Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 1181, www.nyas.org