Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[seemslikeadream]

Fasting for Fukushima on Third Anniversary

Harvey Wasserman, Jill Stein and David Swanson
The disaster that has struck Fukushima has much about it that’s unique. But it’s just the tip of the radioactive iceberg that is the global atomic reactor industry.

(WASHINGTON DC EcoWatch) - Fasting can be a way of mourning, of cleansing, of meditation, of focus. Tuesday, March 11, the third anniversary of the beginning of the disaster at Fukushima, we will abstain from food from dawn to dusk. Our purpose is tied to the atomic disaster that continues to threaten life on Earth.

The three melt-downs, four explosions, scattered fuel rods and continual gusher of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima have torn a deadly hole in the fabric of our ability to survive on this planet.

Its corporate perpetrators were repeatedly warned by tens of thousands of citizen activists not to build these reactors in an earthquake zone that has been washed by tsunamis. Not only did they build them, they took down a natural 85-foot-high sea wall in the process that might have greatly lessened the damage of the tsunami that did come.

The disaster that has struck Fukushima has much about it that’s unique. But it’s just the tip of the radioactive iceberg that is the global atomic reactor industry.

There are other reactor sites threatened by earthquakes and tsunamis. Among them is Diablo Canyon, whose two reactors could be turned to rubble by the multiple fault lines that surround it, spewing radiation that would irradiate California’s Central Valley and send a lethal cloud across the U.S.

There are other reactors threatened by suicidal siting, such as the triple reactor complex at South Carolina’s Oconee, downriver from a dam whose failure could send also send a wall of water into multiple cores.

Throughout the world more than 400 rust bucket reactors are aging dangerously, riddled with operator error, shoddy construction, leaky cooling systems, least-cost corner cutting and official lies.

In all cases, the revolution in renewables has made them economically obsolete. The long-dead hype of a failed “too cheap to meter” technology has been buried by a Solartopian vision, a green-powered Earth in the process of being born.

What would speed that process most is the rapid shutdown of a these old-tech dinosaurs that do nothing but cost us money and harm our planet and our health.

For decades we were told commercial reactors could not explode. But five have done just that.

The industry said that radiation releases could do no harm at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during the atmospheric bomb tests, with medical x-rays, with atomic waste storage, at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and of course at the next major melt-down and the one after that and the one after that.

The automatic industry response is always the same: “not enough radiation has escaped to harm anyone.” Push a button, no matter what the disaster, no matter where the radiation goes and how little anybody knows about it, that’s what they say now, and will say yet again each time another nuke bites the radioactive dust.

So today we live in fear not only of what’s happening at Fukushima, but of what is all-too-certain to come next.

This must finally stop. If we are to have an economic, ecological or biological future on this planet, all atomic reactor construction must halt, and all operating reactors must be phased out as fast as possible.

To honor this vision, we won’t eat from dawn to dusk on March 11.

It’s a small, symbolic step. But one we feel is worth taking. Feel free to join us!

[seemslikeadream]

Three years later, the lessons of Fukushima are uglier than ever

So much for safety measures: Fukushima unit 4, one year after the disaster. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/EPA / March 10, 2014)
By Michael Hiltzik
March 10, 2014, 4:09 p.m.

Three years ago--2:49 p.m. March 11, 2011, Tokyo time, or late on the night of March 10 in continental U.S. time zones--what may be history's worst, most enduring nuclear power plant disaster began in Japan. It's a baleful anniversary that bears object lessons for the entire nuclear power industry in the U.S. and around the world.

The Fukushima Daiichi power complex, largely destroyed by the earthquake that struck Japan at that hour and the two tsunami waves that followed starting about 40 minutes later, is almost certain never to operate again. Only two of Japan's 50 power reactors have received permits to restart in the wake of the disaster. Communities for miles around Fukushima have been rendered uninhabitable for decades to come. Cleaning up the site itself will cost tens of billions of dollars and take almost a half-century.

That's the state of affairs for now. For more details, we urge you to read "Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster" by David Lochbaum, Edwin Lyman and Susan Q. Stranahan of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which we reviewed in these pages last month. But the authors of that book did not stop with a meticulous reconstruction of the events; they made clear how the events arose from the careless regulation of nuclear technology in Japan and the lax management of Fukushima's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Make no mistake: The same flaws exist among the regulatory agencies and nuclear utilities of the U.S. As Lyman observed in congressional testimony, "We have plants that are just as old…. We have a regulatory system that is not clearly superior to that of the Japanese. We have had extreme weather events that exceeded our expectations and defeated our emergency planning."

The history of nuclear power in the U.S. is one of hasty, sloppy engineering overseen by indulgent regulators who took their duty to promote nuclear power more seriously than their duty to make it safe.

The industry was born out of the Eisenhower-era "atoms for peace" campaign that aimed to strip nuclear technology of its Hiroshima-born image as an instrument of destruction. Its proselytizer-in-chief was Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who coined the come-on that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter." Within a few years it became clear that nuke plants would more expensive than coal- and oil-fueled generation; by then an international juggernaut had been launched, spurred by U.S. trade credits to sell American-made reactors overseas and by manufacturers such as GE and Westinghouse offering domestic utilities power reactors at loss-leader prices.

The implications of handing over to utilities a technology far more complex than anything they had ever dealt with became clear only later. The implications are still before us--witness San Onofre on the Southern California coast, a nuclear plant now consigned to mothballs because its owner, Southern California Edison, screwed up an important refurbishment so badly they can't afford to repair the damage.

Fukushima is yet another reminder of a lesson that the nuclear power industry has had to learn over and over again--that one must prepare even for occurrences you think are safely out of the range of probability, like earthquakes and tsunamis. The heart of the disaster at Fukushima was a dreaded "station blackout" caused by flooding, in which the complete absence of electrical power made the entire array of safety valves and emergency cooling systems inoperable and rendered the plant operators effectively blind to what was happening inside the reactor containment vessels. A station blackout, as the authors of "Fukushima" observe, is a race against time to restore power before the emergency batteries run down; at that point cooling ceases and the reactor core begins to melt down.

In the U.S., regulators require most nuclear plants to have an emergency plan to deal with a station blackout of no more than four hours. The station blackout at Fukushima lasted for 10 days.

What makes the lessons of Fukushima so relevant today is that interest in nuclear power has been on the upswing. Handled safely and properly, nuclear generation could be relatively "green." It contributes nothing to climate change and lacks some of the more obvious drawbacks of fossil fuel generation--no atmospheric pollution, no acid rain. But managed improperly, its drawbacks might be even worse.

Can nuclear power be managed properly if the lessons of Fukushima are ignored? The answer is no. The problem is that lessons very much like those of Fukushima have been ignored consistently in the past. Moreover, the instincts of U.S. regulators in the days, months and years after Fukushima have shown the same pattern of minimizing the risks and telling the public about all the reasons that such an accident couldn't happen here. But it can, and unless we take the responsibilities of managing and regulating nuclear power much more seriously than we have in the past, it very well might.

Nuclear regulators misled the media after Fukushima, emails show
Published time: March 10, 2014 20:11
An employee (C) of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) measures using a dosimeter at the central operating control room of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at TEPCO's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant at Fukushima prefecture March 10, 2014 (Reuters/Koji Sasahara)An employee (C) of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) measures using a dosimeter at the central operating control room of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at TEPCO's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant at Fukushima prefecture March 10, 2014 (Reuters/Koji Sasahara)

Emails obtained by journalists at NBC News reveal that officials at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission — the government agency that oversees reactor safety and security — purposely misled the media after the Fukushima, Japan disaster in 2011.

On Monday this week — one day shy of the third anniversary of the Fukushima meltdown — NBC published emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act that for the first time exposes on a major scale the efforts that NRC officials undertook in order to diminish the severity of the event in the hours and days after it began to unfold.

“In the tense days after a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, staff at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission made a concerted effort to play down the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis to America’s aging nuclear plants,” Bill Dedman wrote for NBC.

Through the course of analyzing thousands of internal NRC emails, Dedman and company unearthed evidence that proves nuclear regulators went to great lengths to keep the scary facts about the Fukushima meltdown from being brought into the public eye.

Even when the international media was eager to learn the facts about the Fukushima tragedy while the matter was still developing, emails suggest that the NRC’s public relations wing worked hard to have employees stick to talking points that ignored the actual severity of the meltdown.

"While we know more than these say,” a PR manager wrote in one email to his colleagues, "we're sticking to this story for now."

That story, Dedman wrote, was filled with “numerous examples…of apparent misdirection or concealment” waged by the NRC in an attempt to keep the true nature of the meltdown hidden, especially as concerns grew that a similar event could occur on American soil.

“The talking points written during the emergency for NRC commissioners and other officials were divided into two sections: ‘public answer’ and ‘additional technical, non-public information,’” Dedman wrote. "Often the two parts didn't quite match.”

According to NBC, emails indicate that the NRC insisted on sticking to talking points that painted a much different picture than what was really happening three years ago this week. Japanese engineers employed by the NRC at American facilities were effectively barred from making any comments to the media, some emails suggest, and at other times those regulators rallied employees at the NRC to keep from making any comment that could be used to disclose the detrimental safety standards in place at American facilities.

In one instance cited by Dedman, spokespeople for the NRC were told not to disclose the fact that American scientists were uncertain if any US facilities could sustain an earthquake like the one that ravaged Fukushima .

"We're not so sure about, but again we are not talking about that," reads one email cited by NBC.

At other times, the report added, NRC officials were left in the dark about what was actually unfolding on the other side of the Pacific because access to social media sites had been blocked on their work computers, causing some regulators to only hear about information pertaining to Fukushima once it trickled down to a point where they could access it.

In one email, for example, NRC public affairs official David McIntrye wrote in apparent disbelief to his colleagues that scientist and actor Bill Nye was participating in “an incoherent discussion on CNN” about a potential hydrogen explosion at Fukushima.

“I’m not buying it,” McIntyre wrote.

Five minutes after that email was sent, a colleague responded by writing, “There is a good chance it was a hydrogen explosion that took the roof off that building, though we are not saying that publicly.”

Days later, McIntyre blasted his supervisor for hesitating during a CNN interview in which he was asked if US plants could withstand an earthquake on par with the one suffered by residents of Fukushima.

“He should just say ‘Yes, it can.’” McIntyre wrote, instead of hesitating. “Worry about being wrong when it doesn’t. Sorry if I sound cynical.”

NBC News did not respond specifically to emails published in Dedman’s report, but the agency’s public affairs director emails a statement ensuring that "The NRC Office of Public Affairs strives to be as open and transparent as possible, providing the public accurate information in the proper context."

“We take our communication mission seriously. We did then and we do now. The frustration displayed in the chosen emails reflects more on the extreme stress our team was under at the time to assure accuracy in a context in which information from Japan was scarce to non-existent. These emails fall well short of an accurate picture of our communications with the American public immediately after the event and during the past three years,” NRC Public Affairs Director Eliot Brenner wrote in the email.

Arguably more disheartening than the NRC officials’ attempt to whitewash the disaster, however, are the facts of the matter addressed in secret by the agency but not disclosed publically. More than 30 of the nuclear power reactors in the US are of the same brand used in Fukushima, NBC reported, and some of the oldest facilities in operation have been in use since the 1970s. Despite this, though, the NRC instructed employees to not mention how any of those structures would be able to stand up against a hypothetical disaster.

On Monday, Fukushima expert and author Susan Q. Stranhan published an op-ed carried by the Philadelphia Inquirer which called into question the safety of the several nuclear facilities within the state of Pennsylvania, where a disaster in 1979 at Three Mile Island refocused national attention on the issue of nuclear safety.

“During Fukushima, the NRC recommended that Americans living within 50 miles of the plant evacuate, a wise call based on a dangerous radiation plume that spread about 30 miles northwest of the reactors. Despite that experience, the NRC today remains steadfast in its belief that the existing 10-mile emergency evacuation zone around US nuclear plants is adequate and that there would be plenty of time to expand that zone if conditions warranted,” Stranahan wrote.

“Three years after Fukushima Daiichi, the NRC and the nuclear industry continue to repeat a familiar mantra: The likelihood of a severe accident is so low there is no need to plan for it. That was what the Japanese said, too.”

Meanwhile, RT reported last month that a new lawsuit has been filed by crewmembers who sailed on the USS Ronald Reagan three years ago to assist with relief efforts off of the coast of Fukushima but now say they were poisoned by nuclear fallout. When filed, Attorneys said that “up to 70,000 US citizens [were] potentially affected by the radiation” and might be able to join in their suit.

267,000 remain evacuees as earthquake-tsunami disasters’ 3rd anniversary approaches
Mar 10, 2014 Maan Pamintuan-Lamorena National No Comments

267,000 remain evacuees as earthquake-tsunami disasters’ 3rd anniversary approaches
Three years since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami disaster that rocked the country’s northeast region and caused the world’s biggest nuclear crisis, many continue to remain homeless and unable to return to their hometowns. Around 267,000 people are still living in temporary housing and makeshift residences, a day before the third year anniversary of one of Japan’s biggest tragedies.

A magnitude 9.0-earthquake struck Japan around 2:46 PM on March 11, 2011 followed by a tsunami that washed away most of the northeastern part of the country, or Tohoku region, forcing some 470,000 people to evacuate. Up until today, authorities are still searching for those missing and unaccounted for since the incident. The National Police Agency has recorded 15,884 people killed with 2,636 people still missing. Most of the victims came from the Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures along the east coast. Suicides caused by the disasters were recorded at 2,916 in September of last year. However, the number continues to rise as the mental and physical stresses of living in shelters take its toll on many people. According to the Reconstruction Agency, 97,000 people and more continue to live in makeshift houses in the three disaster-hit prefectures. During a House of Councillors Budget Committee meeting, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to “make this a year in which (people) can achieve more reconstruction than before.” Despite this, the towns continue to struggle as issues of delays in reconstruction plague the rebuilding efforts.

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, debate on the use of nuclear power has been on-going, as 48 of the commercial reactors in the country remain offline. However, the government has been pushing to restart them as soon as new safety regulations have been met. Many of the affected areas have started commemorating the anniversary of the tragedy in advance. Municipalities in Fukushima held memorial services last Sunday, as well as the city of Rikuzentakata in Iwate. “Tuesday is a weekday and we do not have a big facility that can host a ceremony, and it is easier for many people who lost their families to go on a Sunday,” reasoned a city official.

3 Years After Fukushima: How Survivors’ Mental Health Continues Deteriorating

Brandon Baker | March 11, 2014 10:05 am | Comments
27 0 0 49
So much of the impact of a disaster like the earthquake and tsunami three years ago in Fukushima, Japan is tangible—radioactive leaks, food scares, petitions and lawsuits have all taken place since March 11, 2011.

The emotional distress faced by many in the areas near the six-reactor Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is far less palpable, though. Predictions on the nuclear future of Japan and other large nations like the U.S. are much easier to find than accounts of impacted and displaced residents whose mental health continues to suffer from the events of that day.

Volunteers work on an affected property in at Minamisoma city, Fukushima. Photo credit: Hajime NAKANO/Flickr Creative Commons
Volunteers work on an affected property in at Minamisoma city, Fukushima. Photo credit: Hajime NAKANO/Flickr Creative Commons
Though thousands died from the impacts of the earthquake and tsunami, no deaths directly related to radiation have been reported, according to the BBC. But that doesn’t ease concerns for people like Myuki Arakawa, a mother of two who routinely takes her sons to the hospital for thyroid cancer. Since 2011, surveys have revealed 33 cases of thyroid cancer in children and another 42 suspected cases.

Though Fukushima University Medical School Professor Shinichi Suzuki, who leads the team of researchers surveying children in the area, tires of people likening Fukushima to the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, there’s no denying one of Arakawa’s chief concern.

“After the Chernobyl disaster children were diagnosed many years later,” she told the BBC. “My boys may be fine now, but if there is any risk I need to find out as soon as possible.”

She’s not comfortable relying on the government for information. Just two weeks ago, Japanese officials announced plans to restart reactors that were closed after the incident, calling nuclear energy a “vital source” of power.

“The government gives us very little information,” Arakawa said. “I need to be completely sure my boys are fine. I want this hospital to follow up next year and the following year and the one after that.”

According to research revealed in a TIME report, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are on the rise in nearby towns like Hirono, Fukushima, where few people died, but survivors lived with haunting memories.

More than half of the 241 residents surveyed displayed “clinically concerning” symptoms of PTSD, said Brigham Young University professor Niwako Yamawaki, who authored a study of Hirono. Also, two-thirds reported depression symptoms.

All survey participants lived in temporary housing provided by the government. Their average age was 58, as researchers found that younger residents relocated at a higher rate. Healthy diets, exercise and even often frowned-upon habits like drinking alcohol appeared to be the only positive buffers from the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

“In the U.S., if people are drinking after a psychologically traumatic event, it is seen as a negative consequence,”Yamawaki said. “But what we found was that when people were drinking in Japan, they were interacting with community members–usually over dinner or at meetings.”

For some, that hasn’t been enough these past few years. Hideko Takeda, a 56-year-old near Namie, Fukushima, told the BBC that her father succumbed to the stress of being displaced and died after two years of his health deteriorating. She also spoke about a man who hanged himself after the disaster.

“I blame the power company [TEPCO] for his death,” she said of her father. “They took everything from him, his dreams, his hope. They took his land and scattered his family far from home.

“Nothing will ever bring those back.”

[elfismiles]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYGmEdr3A3o

Hanford Nuclear Site Workers Sickened by Unknown Vapors Rises to 17
Susannah Frame / King 5 News / March 28, 2014

The KING 5 Investigators have found that six Hanford workers were sickened Wednesday from ingesting chemical vapors at the nuclear facility.

Three were helping to conduct a video inspection of an underground nuclear storage tank. Two of the three were transported to Kadlec Medical Center by ambulance for treatment of symptoms. Another received treatment at Hanford’s onsite medical facility. Late Wednesday night KING learned both employees have been released from the hospital and are cleared to return to work.

A spokesman for their employer, the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), said three additional workers who do not work for WRPS reported “possible vapor-related symptoms” Wednesday after working in an area Tuesday that had a chemical release.

“All three were taken to the site medical provider," said Jerry Holloway, External Affairs Manager at WRPS. Those three have all been released from that facility "for return to work as well," said Holloway.

This brings the total to 17 Hanford employees who have needed medical care since last Wednesday due to the inhalation of toxic vapors. All but three of the workers are employed by WRPS, which has the multi-million dollar contract to manage all of the site’s underground nuclear waste storage tanks. There are 177 tanks holding 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemically contaminated sludge at the site.

“Data collection and analysis is underway in the affected (tank) farms to understand what happened and what might be done to reduce the likelihood of future occurrences,” said Holloway.

On Wednesday, March 19, two WRPS workers inhaled a release of unknown chemicals in what’s called the AY-AZ tank area. Those employees returned to work but continue to receive medical care for persistent symptoms such as coughing, difficulty breathing and headaches.

Six days later, on Tuesday, March 25, four more WRPS workers also working in the AY-AZ area inhaled fumes that made them sick. Immediately afterward, two workers with expertise in investigating chemical releases went into the area to attempt to find the source when they too became ill. KING 5 has found they were not wearing appropriate protective gear such as respirators. The area was evacuated after incident and remains closed.

A few hours later Tuesday three more WRPS employees breathed in fumes approximately eight miles away in the S-SX tank area. It is not known what they inhaled, but two were transported to the hospital and one to the Hanford medical clinic.

The incident Wednesday occurred in yet another location at the Hanford site, at what’s called the T tank farm, about a quarter mile from the S-SX area. Sources tell the reporter 17 people were working on the video inspection when three were suddenly sickened by the release of vapors.

Chemicals that were used in the production of plutonium at Hanford from 1943 to 1989 are mixed with other wastes in the tanks and create vapors. At times the vapors exit the tanks through ventilation systems. Some workers have been critical of their employer, WRPS, for not installing enough safety mechanisms to prevent the exposures. A spokesperson for the company told KING “in recent years WRPS has taken a number of steps to reduce potential vapor exposures to its workers.”

“It’s pretty scary. It doesn’t usually happen like this. Usually you see four or five a year. But to have this many in eight days is really abnormal,” said retired WRPS employee Mike Geffre. In his 26-year career at Hanford, Geffre was exposed to chemical releases three times. One of the incidents left him sick for a week.

“Whenever you hear of someone getting tank vapors, you never know what the long term affects are. The affects of exposures like this can show up as health problems years down the road,” said Geffre.

“The presence of chemical vapors is one of the hazards of tank farm operations, and WRPS takes a conservative approach to dealing with its risks – one designed to minimize potential worker exposure and provide an appropriate medical response, when necessary,” said Holloway.


http://www.king5.com/news/hanford/Numbe ... 62811.html

[seemslikeadream]

In the Wake of Fukushima: Japan’s Nuclear Energy Policy Impasse

60% of Japan’s 48 viable nuclear reactors,are not as yet being considered for application to the Nuclear Regulation Agency (NRA) for restart

By Andrew Dewit
Global Research, April 07, 2014

Japan’s energy policy regime appears dangerously adrift in the context of accelerating climate change. The core problem is agency. On the one hand, Japanese PM Abe Shinzo and the nuclear village appear obsessed with nuclear power restarts and 20th century paradigms of the power economy. On the other hand, Japan’s anti-nuclear civil society lacks the political vehicle to force a combined nuclear pullout plus drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Some anti-nuclear forces do not yet understand the urgent need to reduce emissions, and are content to burn coal, despite of the patent threat of climate change. This is precisely what Japan has done in the wake of 3.11. The Abe cabinet is focused on getting restarts and a nuclear-based energy plan. Yet the scope for restarts is surprisingly limited and – incredible in this era of multiple crises and revolutions – the draft new energy plan lacks concrete numbers.1 The country needs better leadership on smart growth, in the context of what McKinsey specialists refer to as a “resource revolution”2 and MIT economists depict as “the second machine age.”3

Nuclear Is Probably No Longer Baseload

All of Japan’s 48 viable nuclear reactors are at present offline, and have been since September of 2013. The Abe cabinet is keen to restart as many of these as possible. But regulatory rules, public opinion and other factors constitute significant barriers to achieving even a third of Japan’s pre-Fukushima 30% reliance on nuclear power. That will mean nuclear will no longer be a “baseload” source of electricity, capable of supplying a reliable load to the grid at all times.

Indeed, an Asahi Shimbun survey of the utilities themselves indicates that fully 60% of Japan’s 48 viable nuclear reactors, meaning 30 reactors, are not as yet being considered for application to the Nuclear Regulation Agency (NRA) for restart. And of these 30 reactors, it appears that at least 13 are write-offs due to age, proximity to a seismic fault, and other factors that render them incapable of satisfying the new safety standards of the NRA.4 For that reason, at present there are only 17 reactors for which restart applications have been filed.

Of these, it appears – even to Japanese supporters of nuclear power – that perhaps only 8 will finally get approval and be restarted. Highly regarded energy specialist Tom O’Sullivan, of Mathyos Japan, concludes this on the basis of a survey of “various established Japanese policy institutes that are close to Japan’s industrial interests.” O’Sullivan notes that “[t]his level of restarts would only amount to 56 TWh of power output or 6% of Japan’s total power requirements and thus may not constitute a baseload power supply.”5

Reuters conducted its own analysis, using a broader set of questionnaires and interviews of over a dozen experts, along with input from the 10 firms that operate nuclear capacity. One suspects these operators painted as optimistic a picture of their restart prospects as possible. Even so, the result of this survey led Reuters’ expert journalists, Mari Saito, Aaron Sheldrick and Kentaro Hamada, to conclude that at best there will be 14 nuclear restarts at some point in time. They add that there is great uncertainty about the remaining 34 nuclear reactors. Their conclusion is that nuclear energy “will eventually make up less than 10 percent of Japan’s power supply.”6

Part of the reason nuclear appears not likely to recover its status as base-load power are the NRA’s new safety rules, in tandem with maintenance schedules and other factors that make a very shrunken fleet unreliable. But another large reason for this likely outcome is the stubbornness of the opposition to nuclear power.

Sustained Public Opposition

The most recent Japanese opinion poll on nuclear restarts is the March 18 survey by the Asahi Shimbun. It indicates that 59% of the Japanese public oppose restarts of any nuclear capacity, whereas only 28% support restarts. The poll’s results not only confirm that the opposition to nuclear is holding; it also shows a great sensitivity to risk. According to the poll, a mere 12% of the Japanese public have either no or only minimal concern regarding the risk of further nuclear accidents at facilities other than the infamous Fukushima Daiichi. By contrast, 50% have a fair degree of concern, and 36% have a very high degree of concern. In addition, the poll shows that only 4% of respondents regard the lack of nuclear waste disposal facilities as of no or only minimal concern. By contrast, 19% believe it is to some extent a problem. And a massive 76% regard it as a serious problem.7

Nationwide, there are 135 local communities that lie within 30 kilometers of a reactor, and 21 prefectures that are host to one or more reactors. The news service Kyodo Tsushin surveyed these 156 local governments in mid- to late-February of 2014, and found that only 13 were ready to agree to restarts without conditions. A further 24 would agree to restarts, but with conditions. Of the remainder, 32 declared their opposition to restarts, 66 replied that they could not decide, and 21 offered no reply at all.8 The NRA decided on March 13 to prioritize Kyushu Electric’s Sendai rectors 1 and 2 (in Kagoshima Prefecture) for restart.9 But that decision itself came under criticism, due to perceptions of undue haste amid suggestions that seismically active zones are nearby.10

Hard-Pressed Utilities

As for the utilities themselves, Tepco is not viable in its current form, having lost a stunning 81.2% of its market capitalization between March 10 of 2011 and April 2 of 2014. It was nationalized in June 2012 via a YEN 1 trillion injection of public capital, “the biggest state intervention into a private non-bank asset since America’s 2009 bail-out of General Motors (Economist, 2012). Resolving pressing matters such as the Fukushima and area clean-up and compensation, the decomissioning of ruined assets and the like are well beyond Tepco’s means. Some specialists question whether the other nuclear-dependent utilities are viable as well (Kaneko, 2013), and in early April of 2014 Kyushu Electric and Hokkaido Electric were revealed to be in discussion with the public sector Development Bank of Japan for bailouts (Financial Times, April 2, 2014). Kyushu Electric’s reliance on nuclear power is 42% of generating assets and Hokkaido Electric’s reliance is 30%. Their respective losses of market capitalization are 38.9% and 58.2%.11

The Japanese public sector has thus long been in a powerful position vis-à-vis the utilities, enabling it to press for reform. But this authority was used sparingly by the central government, even under the previous Democratic Party administration. The Tepco bailout was notable for protracted negotiations between Tepco and its politico-bureaucratic allies and state officials. They were not bargaining about weighty matters such as ownership of the power grid, but rather salaries and the size of increases on rate-payers. Outsiders regarded it as “bewildering” to see such minor items on the table. The Financial Times’ Jonathan Soble, also a close follower of Japan’s post-Fukushima power crisis and politics, argued that it “underscored the depth and resilience of Tepco’s resilience, and that of the ‘nuclear village’ of utility executives, bureaucrats and lawmakers that built Japan’s atomic power industry.“12

But now Tepco’s siblings are lining up for bailout, and this seems unlikely to end. Like big utilities in Europe and North America, Japanese utilities face the existential challenge of the ICT, renewable and efficiency-driven “electricity revolution” summarized nicely by Brookings energy security specialists Charles Ebinger and John Banks.13 A recent very detailed article in Scientific American shows how America’s 3000-plus utilities are fighting a losing battle against solar power and smart grids.14 Centralized power and monopolized conventional-grid ownership are confronting a far larger tsunami than the mobile phone shock to land-line telephony. But Japan’s monopolized and nuclear-reliant utilities have the added conundrum of nuclear power’s delegitimation in a very seismically sensitive country.

After Fukushima, the Japanese public debate received a very accelerated course of instruction on how various political economies were responding to the risks of resource price increases as well as climate change and the opportunities of developing new industries in renewable energy and related fields. The public debate also became apprised of just how far behind Japan was in its deployment of energy alternatives such as solar and wind. Moreover, the old arguments that these forms of power generation were not suited to Japan, because of “unique” winds and lack of space, lost their credibility.

The Push for Local Resilience

In addition, local governments exhibit increasing efforts to seize opportunity in the emergence of alternatives to highly centralized and concentrated nuclear power. Centralized power, such as Tepco’s nuclear reactors, led to concentrated economic benefits for a few communities whereas the risks of accident were distributed among a much broader range of communities. Fukushima Prefecture’s post-3-11 commitment to 100% renewable energy by 2040 encouraged other prefectures and cities, including Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, to adopt ambitious targets.15

Moreover, at the end of 2013, Japan’s 16 trillion yen power market featured 192 independent power producers, including such new entrants as Toyota. That number was 79 at the end of 2012, and there has thus been a 240% increase in the number of firms.16 Japan’s “feed in tariff” policy support for diffusing renewables, effective from July of 2012, saw over four gigawatts (roughly four large nuclear reactors worth) of new renewable capacity deployed in the initial year. Japanese domestic shipments of solar cells and modules during July-September of 2013 leapt to 2.075 gigawatts, over triple the 627 megawatt level of a year earlier.17 The Pew Research April 3, 2014 publication of “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race? 2013” argues that China remains the leader, at USD 54.2 billion, but that “Japan experienced the fastest investment growth in the world, increasing 80 percent, to almost $29 billion.”18

Since Japan’s public debate on energy is so polarized between Team Abe and the majority, it seems useful to examine which of the two idealized options – nuclear or green – offers the better return. Table 1 is an aid to this objective by its highlighting of the profoundly skewed energy R&D priorities of all the IEA countries. Over two-thirds of the 1980 peak in energy R&D expenditures by all IEA members was devoted to nuclear fission and fossil fuels. By contrast, only 12.3% was invested in renewables and only 6.4% in efficiency. Yet according to the IEA Energy Efficiency Market Report of 2013, global energy efficiency investment in 2011 was worth roughly USD 300 billion, “a similar scale to renewable energy and fossil fuel power investments.”19 Directly comparative data on nuclear power investments appear not to be available. But Mycle Schneider, and Antony Froggatt’s authoritative “The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013” reveals that the 2013 global total of 427 reactors with an installed capacity of 364 GWe was considerably lower than the 2010 peak of 444 reactors with an installed capacity of 375 GWe.20

Table 1 Energy R&D Expenditures by IEA Countries, 1975-2005(2005 USD million)
Year 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Efficiency 587 955 725 510 1240 1497 1075
Fossil Fuels 587 2564 1510 1793 1050 612 1997
Renewable 208 1914 843 563 809 773 1113
Nuclear Fission 4808 6794 6575 4199 3616 3406 3168
Total Energy R&D 7563 15034 12186 9394 9483 9070 9586
Total: Japan 1508 3438 3738 3452 3672 3721 3905
Total: Excluding Japan 6055 11596 8448 5842 5811 5349 5681
Source: WNA, 201321
Moreover, the IEA Energy Efficiency Market Report 2013 also stresses how potent efficiency has become in an era of high energy prices. Its analysis indicates that efficiency has led to avoided energy use for 2010 in 11 IEA member countries22 that greatly exceeds even the consumption of oil. And the IEA itself stresses that there is much more efficiency potential to be exploited.

Smart Cities

Amazingly, a smart and green, ICT-centred growth strategy was approved by the Abe Cabinet on June 14 of 2013. The growth strategy is also very powerfully informed by the disruptive potential opened up by the rebuild of the devastated regions on the basis of renewable and distributed energy.23 But it also has a larger purchase in the political economy debate because – as with ICT-centered “industrial Internet,” “machine to machine,” “big data,” and related emergent paradigms – it is aimed at a profound restructuring of the energy economy as well as much of the rest of the infrastructures that make up the modern urban community and the exchange of resources and information among citizens, businesses and their governments. This emergent paradigm is not peculiar to Japan. The smart city model began to take shape in the early 2000s. But from the beginning of the 2010s, worsening resource, economic, and climate crises were paralleled by such technical advances as the diffusion of “big data” analytics via the cheapening and miniaturization of sensors.24 These and other developments increasingly point to the disruption not just of centralized power generation and transmission but also of a resource-intensive growth dynamic that has characterized the developed economies over the past six decades.25

The “dematerialization” of the economy has been an aim in Japan and Germany since the 1980s, with an increasing sophistication of policies and programs for reducing resource waste through greater efficiency and recycling, development and deployment of more sustainable practices, and the other initiatives. But these initiatives were generally seen as more or less costly interventions in the mainstream economy to reformat and reduce its throughputs and polluting outputs. The ICT strategy, through its deployment of sensors that monitor a multitude of aspects of the ambient environment as well as system parameters, is already working to accelerate this transformation of the conventional economy through increasing the payback from new processes.

In this respect, it is very ironic but telling that some of the most aggressive deployment of ICT is evident in conventional energy. The mining firm Rio Tinto, for example, revealed in early 2014 that its initial deployment of “big data” ICT to enhance efficiencies saved it USD 80 million over 2013.26 The oil industry’s use of “big data” in what it refers to as the “digital oil field” is another example. Their per-barrel price for oil exploration and production has roughly quintupled over the past decade, to over USD 100/barrel. Their aggressive of ICT shows what very hard-pressed actors can do in the face of rapidly rising costs.27

Team Abe might want to learn a lesson from this, and stress the ICT-centred renewable and radical efficiency policies they have already passed. The same goes for the simplistic anti-nuclear critics who would be satisfied with continuing to burn more coal.

[seemslikeadream]

Study finds Fukushima radioactivity in tuna off Oregon, Washington
Source: Reuters - Tue, 29 Apr 2014 10:22 PM

By Shelby Sebens

PORTLAND, Ore., April 29 (Reuters) - A sample of albacore tuna caught off the shores of Oregon and Washington state have small levels of radioactivity from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, researchers said on Tuesday.

But authors of the Oregon State University study say the levels are so small you would have to consume more than 700,000 pounds of the fish with the highest radioactive level to match the amount of radiation the average person is annually exposed to in everyday life through cosmic rays, the air, the ground, X-rays and other sources.

Still, the findings shed some light about the impact of the meltdown on the Pacific Ocean following the March 2011 tsunami and subsequent power plant disaster, said Delvan Neville, a graduate research assistant at OSU and lead author of the study.

"I think people would rather have an answer on what is there and what isn't there than have a big question mark," Neville said.

At the most extreme, radiation levels tripled from fish tested before Fuskushima and fish tested after. That level was 0.1 percent of the level set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for concern.

"The levels were way too small to really be a food safety issue, but we still want to tell people about it so they know what's there." Neville said.

Jason Phillips, a research associate in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and co-author of the study, said he did not expect to find high levels of radiation in the fish, but rather thought it would be a way to track the migratory patterns of the albacore.

He said that thanks to continued support from the Oregon Sea Grant, the research will continue and they will expand the pilot program to look at fish from California and other parts of the North Pacific.

Their study looked at 26 Pacific albacore from 2008 to 2012. Phillips said the albacore tuna was a good species to study because it migrates as far as Japan.

"If we were going to see it in something, we would see it in albacore' or other high level predators," he added. (Editing by Dan Whitcomb. Editing by Andre Grenon)

Fukushima Didn’t Just Suffer Three Meltdowns … The Nuclear Core Has Finally Been Found … Scattered All Over Japan

It Also Suffered "Melt-Throughs" and "Melt-outs"

By Washington's Blog
Global Research, April 25, 2014

We reported in May 2011 that authorities knew – within days or weeks - that all 3 active Fukushima nuclear reactors had melted down, but covered up that fact for months.

The next month, we reported that Fukushima’s reactors had actually suffered something much worse: nuclear melt-throughs, where the nuclear fuel melted through the containment vessels and into the ground. At the time, this was described as:

The worst possibility in a nuclear accident.

But now, it turns out that some of the Fukushima reactors have suffered even a more extreme type of damage: melt-OUTS.

By way of background, we’ve noted periodically that scientists have no idea where the cores of the nuclear reactors are.

And that highly radioactive black “dirt” has been found all over Japan.

It turns out that the highly radioactive black substances are likely remnants of the core.

The Journals Environmental Science & Technology and Journal of Environmental Radioactivity both found (hat tip EneNews) that the highly radioactive black substances match fuel from the core of the Fukushima reactors.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission agrees.

Indeed, “hot particles” with extremely high levels of radiation - 7 billion, 40 billion , and even 40 billion billion Bq/kg – have been found all over the Fukushima region, and hundreds of miles away … in Tokyo.

Let’s put this in perspective. The Atlantic notes:

Japanese regulations required nuclear waste with 100 or more bq/kg of Cesium to be monitored and disposed of in specialized containers.

***

The new government limit for material headed for landfills is 8000 bq/kg, 80 times the pre-Fukushima limit.

So the hottest hot particle found so far is 5 million billion times greater than the current government limits of what can be put in a landfill.

In other words, the core of at least one of the Fukushima reactors has finally been found … scattered all over Japan.

Nothing like this has ever before happened before.

Nuclear Japan Series: ‘Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape’
April 23, 2014 Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV 2 Comments
TBL
Gilberto Flores
Staff Writer

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan just off the coast of the Tohoku region and triggered a massive tsunami that washed away more than 20,000 people living on the coastline. The tsunami also caused three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex to melt down, essentially creating the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Presenting Japan’s confrontation and reaction to this disaster, the Carsey-Wolf Center’s film series, “Nuclear Japan: Japanese Cinema Before and After Fukushima,” began with the 2011 film “Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape” at Pollock Theater on Tuesday, April 15, 2014. The three-part film series is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center, the Department of Film and Media Studies, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies.

“Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape” is director Matsubayashi Yojyu’s third film and first feature documentary following the 2011 catastrophe. The film follows a small community of evacuees from the town of Minamisoma in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, which lies within the 20 kilometers exclusion site of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Immediately following the tsunami and nuclear meltdown, Matsubayashi hurried to the site to provide victims with relief goods; there, he met city councilor Tanaka Kyoko and her neighbors. Matsubayashi follows and lives with the evacuees, and it is at this moment that he begins filming his documentary.

Matsubayashi captures the intimate and challenging moment in the lives of the local people, such as the times they sleep in the school classrooms (designated as temporary living areas) and when they are allowed to momentarily return to their homes to gather any possessions left unaffected. The film paints an intimate picture of a rich local culture that was washed away by tragedy.

After the screening, there was a discussion and Q&A with event moderator Naoki Yamamoto, assistant professor at UCSB’s Film and Media Studies department and organizer of the “Nuclear Japan” film series, and David Novak, an associate professor in UCSB’s Music department. Complications with Novak’s flight from Portland, Ore., could not keep him from joining the audience at Pollock Theater, and he joined via Skype.

Novak is a musicologist with a specialty in Japanese noise music. In the film, music plays a significant role, and Matsubayushi documents several protests in which Japanese musicians take to the streets to protest against nuclear power. Currently, Novak is working on a new project on the ongoing disaster in Japan, especially in relation to the Japanese musicians and their commitment to the anti-nuclear movements.

“When this triple disaster happened in 2011, I was not in Japan, but [attending a conference] in New Orleans,” said Yamamoto. “Needless to say, I was really shocked by the news. But at the same time I wasn’t able to embrace what was happening in Japan as my own experience.”

Yamamoto tried to keep himself updated on the events in Japan, but avoided watching TV news and Internet videos. Yamamoto’s intentional detachment from the disasters in Japan left him with a sense of guilt.

“As a Japanese native, I just thought it would be ethically incorrect to talk about Japanese people suffering from the position of an outsider,” he said.

It wasn’t until moving to Santa Barbara last September that Yamamoto’s opinion on this changed. Yamamoto said that he quickly began seeing the triple catastrophe in Japan as a global issue that affects everyone, not just the region. He cites three reasons for this change. The first being Santa Barbara’s coastal location facing the Pacific Ocean, where the contaminated water from Fukushima drastically disrupted the ecological system of marine life. The second is California’s familiarity with earthquakes, resulting from constantly shifting fault lines. And the third is Santa Barbara’s vulnerability to the constant threat of nuclear disaster, given its proximity to the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, which is built directly above an active fault line.

“Taken together, the specific situation of Santa Barbara allows me to rethink the ongoing disaster in Fukushima, not simply as [a Japanese] problem, but also as our own problem,” said Yamamoto. “So this is why I came to the idea of organizing this film series on the nuclear disaster in Japan.”

The “Nuclear Japan” film series continues with “Odayaka” on April 22 and “Ashes to Honey” on April 29. Check out Carsey-Wolf Center’s website (http://www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu/) for more details.

- See more at: http://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2014/0 ... b7sMA.dpuf

[cptmarginal]

http://www.japansubculture.com/tepco-mo ... eputation/

TEPCO makes $4.3 Billion in 2013 despite meltdown. Crime doesn’t pay, criminal negligence does

Posted by Angela Erika Kubo on Thursday, May 1, 2014

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) announced a profit of ¥43.2 billion ($4.3 billion) for the 2013 fiscal year. It is the first time the company moved into the black since an earthquake and tsunami crippled the reactors, leading to a nuclear meltdown in March of 2011.

Despite a drop in electricity sales due to higher than usual winter temperatures, overall sales increased 11 percent from the previous fiscal year due to a rate increase and fuel cost adjustments. Out of ten electric companies, TEPCO was one of the four that posted a profit. The remaining six, which includes power companies in Kansai and Kyushu, recorded a deficit due to relying on fossil fuels to offset the shut down nuclear plants, according to Asahi Shimbun.

Last September, the Abe administration announced that it would give ¥47 billion of taxpayer money to prevent further contaminated water from leaking from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. That amount is far greater than the profits that TEPCO posted on April 30th, meaning that if the government had not given them any money last year, the company would have announced another year of losses.

The company has not made it clear what the profits will be used for and whether any of the money will be used to support supplement the taxpayer funds allocated to clean up the disaster or compensate those who in Fukushima whose homes fell under the evacuation zone. However, TEPCO’s stockholders, which include LDP politicians such as Masahiro Imamura and LDP Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba have a cause to celebrate. Both hold 6000 and 4813 shares in the company respectively.

As nuclear waste continues to leak into the ocean surrounding Fukushima Prefecture, pro-nuclear advocate Shigeru Ishiba who resembles the Japanese anime hero, Anpanman, seems less like a hero, and more like the arch-villain of the series, Baikinman (Germ Man.) Or maybe in the eyes of the LDP, the general public, 80% of which oppose nuclear power are just like “germs.” In any event, for the large number of ruling party members with stock shares in TEPCO, the profits are good news; the losers are everyone else.

[seemslikeadream]

News Flash: Fukushima Is Still a Disaster

Posted on Jun 3, 2014

By Harvey Wasserman



U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy wearing a yellow helmet and a mask inspects the central control room for the Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors of the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant last month. AP /Toru Yamanaka

The corporate media silence on Fukushima has been deafening even though the melted-down nuclear power plant’s seaborne radiation is now washing up on American beaches.

Ever more radioactive water continues to pour into the Pacific.

At least three extremely volatile fuel assemblies are stuck high in the air at Unit 4. Three years after the March 11, 2011, disaster, nobody knows exactly where the melted cores from Units 1, 2 and 3 might be.

Amid a dicey cleanup infiltrated by organized crime, still more massive radiation releases are a real possibility at any time.


Radioactive groundwater washing through the complex is enough of a problem that Fukushima Daiichi owner Tepco has just won approval for a highly controversial ice wall to be constructed around the crippled reactor site. No wall of this scale and type has ever been built, and this one might not be ready for two years. Widespread skepticism has erupted surrounding its potential impact on the stability of the site and on the huge amounts of energy necessary to sustain it. Critics also doubt it would effectively guard the site from flooding and worry it could cause even more damage should power fail.
Meanwhile, children nearby are dying. The rate of thyroid cancers among some 250,000 area young people is more than 40 times normal. According to health expert Joe Mangano, more than 46 percent have precancerous nodules and cysts on their thyroids. This is “just the beginning” of a tragic epidemic, he warns.

There is, however, some good news—exactly the kind the nuclear power industry does not want broadcast.

When the earthquake and consequent tsunami struck Fukushima, there were 54 commercial reactors licensed to operate in Japan, more than 12 percent of the global total.

As of today, not one has reopened. The six at Fukushima Daiichi will never operate again. Some 30 older reactors around Japan can’t meet current safety standards (a reality that could apply to 60 or more reactors that continue to operate here in the U.S.).

As part of his desperate push to reopen these reactors, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shuffled the country’s regulatory agencies, and removed at least one major industry critic, replacing him with a key industry supporter.

But last month a Japanese court denied a corporate demand to restart two newer reactors at the Ooi power plant in Fukui prefecture. The judges decided that uncertainty about when, where and how hard the inevitable next earthquake will hit makes it impossible to guarantee the safety of any reactor in Japan.

In other words, no reactor can reopen in Japan without endangering the nation, which the court could not condone.

Such legal defeats are extremely rare for Japan’s nuclear industry, and this one is likely to be overturned. But it dealt a stunning blow to Abe’s pro-nuke agenda.

In Fukushima’s wake, the Japanese public has become far more anti-nuclear. Deep-seated anger has spread over shoddy treatment and small compensation packages given downwind victims. In particular, concern has spread about small children being forced to move back into heavily contaminated areas around the plant.

Under Japanese law, local governments must approve any restart. Anti-nuclear candidates have been dividing the vote in recent elections, but the movement may be unifying and could eventually overwhelm the Abe administration.

A new comic book satirizing the Fukushima cleanup has become a nationwide best-seller. The country has also been rocked by revelations that some 700 workers fled the Fukushima Daiichi site at the peak of the accident. Just a handful of personnel were left to deal with the crisis, including the plant manager, who soon thereafter died of cancer.

In the meantime, Abe’s infamous, intensely repressive state secrets act has seriously constrained the flow of technical information. At least one nuclear opponent is being prosecuted for sending a critical tweet to an industry supporter. A professor jailed for criticizing the government’s handling of nuclear waste has come to the U.S. to speak.

The American corporate media have been dead silent or, alternatively, dismissive about the radiation now washing up on our shores, and about the extremely dangerous job of bringing intensely radioactive fuel rods down from their damaged pools.

Fukushima’s General Electric reactors feature spent fuel pools perched roughly 100 feet in the air. When the tsunami hit, thousands of rods were suspended over Units 1, 2, 3 and 4.

According to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, the bring-down of the assemblies in Unit 4 may have hit a serious snag. Gundersen says that beginning in November 2013, Tokyo Electric Power removed about half of the suspended rods there. But at least three assemblies may be stuck. The more difficult half of the pile remains. And the pools at three other units remain problematic. An accident at any one of them could result in significant radiation releases, which have already far exceeded those from Chernobyl and from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

At least 300 tons of heavily contaminated Fukushima water still pour daily into the Pacific. Hundreds more tons are backed up on site, with Tepco apologists advocating they be dumped directly into the ocean without decontamination.

Despite billions of dollars in public aid, Tepco is still the principal owner of Fukushima. The “cleanup” has become a major profit center. Tepco boasted a strong return in 2013. Its fellow utilities are desperate to reopen other reactors that netted them huge annual cash flow.

Little of this has made its way into the American corporate media.

New studies from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have underscored significant seismic threats to American commercial nuclear sites. Among those of particular concern are two reactors at Indian Point just north of New York City, which sit near the highly volatile Ramapo Fault, and two at Diablo Canyon, between Los Angeles and San Francisco, directly upwind of California’s Central Valley.

The U.S. industry has also suffered a huge blow at New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project. Primarily a military dump, this showcase radioactive waste facility was meant to prove that the industry could handle its trash. No expense was spared in setting it up in the salt caverns of the desert southwest, officially deemed the perfect spot to dump the 70,000 tons of high-level fuel rods now backed up at American reactor sites.

But an explosion and highly significant radiation release at the pilot project last month has contaminated local residents and cast a deep cloud over any future plans to dispose of American reactor waste. The constant industry complaint that the barriers are “political” is absurd.

While the American reactor industry continues to suck billions of dollars from the public treasury, its allies in the corporate media seem increasingly hesitant to cover the news of post-Fukushima Japan.

In reality, those gutted reactors are still extremely dangerous. An angry public, whose children are suffering, has thus far managed to keep all other nukes shut in Japan. If they keep them down permanently, it will be a huge blow to the global nuke industry—one you almost certainly won’t see reported in the American corporate media.

[smoking since 1879]

https://www.facebook.com/MutatedDandelions

[seemslikeadream]

Fukushima’s Children are Dying

Harvey Wasserman | June 14, 2014 10:11 am | Comments

Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times (40x) normal.

More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000 kids—tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.

More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three would be expected, says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.

The nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public health tragedy. Some have actually asserted that “not one person” has been affected by Fukushima’s massive radiation releases, which for some isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30.
.
More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000 kids—tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts.
But the deadly epidemic at Fukushima is consistent with impacts suffered among children near the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island and the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, as well as findings at other commercial reactors.

The likelihood that atomic power could cause such epidemics has been confirmed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which says that “an increase in the risk of childhood thyroid cancer” would accompany a reactor disaster.

In evaluating the prospects of new reactor construction in Canada, the Commission says the rate “would rise by 0.3 percent at a distance of 12 kilometers” from the accident. But that assumes the distribution of protective potassium iodide pills and a successful emergency evacuation, neither of which happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima.

The numbers have been analyzed by Mangano. He has studied the impacts of reactor-created radiation on human health since the 1980s, beginning his work with the legendary radiologist Dr. Ernest Sternglass and statistician Jay Gould.

Speaking on www.prn.fm’s Green Power & Wellness Show, Mangano also confirms that the general health among downwind human populations improves when atomic reactors are shut down, and goes into decline when they open or re-open.



Nearby children are not the only casualties at Fukushima. Plant operator Masao Yoshida has died at age 58 of esophogeal cancer. Masao heroically refused to abandon Fukushima at the worst of the crisis, probably saving millions of lives. Workers at the site who are employed by independent contractors—many dominated by organized crime—are often not being monitored for radiation exposure at all. Public anger is rising over government plans to force families—many with small children—back into the heavily contaminated region around the plant.

Following its 1979 accident, Three Mile Island’s owners denied the reactor had melted. But a robotic camera later confirmed otherwise.

The state of Pennsylvania mysteriously killed its tumor registry, then said there was “no evidence” that anyone had been killed.

[seemslikeadream]

Fukushima: A Race to Extinction
By Sergey Baranov

Sergey Baranov
shamansworld.org
Japanese Medical Scientist says that smiling and laughing will save people from radiation

During the 5 min speech by Mr. Syunichi Yamashita, a Japanese medical scientist, professor at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Nagasaki University and Fukushima Radiation Health Risk Advisor, I felt ill and outraged.

In his speech about the Fukushima nuclear radiation he said the following:

‘’As citizens of a democratic nation, we at least have to trust the national policies and the information from the government. However, we don’t have an independent organization to audit and evaluate such information and tell you whether it’s correct or not’’. ‘’The only thing we need to keep an eye on is the amount of exposure of plant workers who are working with a do-or-die resolution‘’. “But we don’t have to worry about the health effects of ordinary people’’. ‘’Every radiation protection safety limit is based on the amount allowable for babies’’. ‘’Adults over 20 years old have very little sensitivity to radiation. Almost zero’’. ‘’You smoke and drink, and worry about radiation? They are much more dangerous. Men don’t have to worry’’. ‘’To tell you the truth, radiation doesn’t affect those who are smiling, but those who are worried. This has clearly been demonstrated by animal studies’’. ‘’Drinking may be bad for your health, but happy drinkers are less affected by radiation, luckily’’. ‘’Im not advising you to drink, but laughter will remove your radiation-phobia’’[1]

I wonder why such a simple measures to battle the nuclear radiation exposure such as smiling or drinking alcohol were not advised and implemented in Chernobyl? Instead, the citizens of the nearby city Pripyat were evacuated within 24 hours after the explosion and a large concrete sarcophagus had been built around the crippled reactor to seal off its content to prevent further release of radiation into the atmosphere. It is said that the cost of the containment and decontamination of Chernobyl disaster had cost the Soviet Union 30 billion rubles, which was at the time equivalent to 30 billion dollars. Would it not be cheaper to supply the people of Pripat with vodka instead?

Just make them drunk and tell them to smile. Sounds like the problem solved. But how would the people of Ukraine feel if told by the officials that radiation exposure has minimal effects on their health and that laughter will remove their radiation-phobia? And even though there has been an attempt to conceal the scale of the disaster by the Soviet government, nevertheless, the measures to halt the crises were taken promptly. It took them 8 months to completely seal the damaged reactor with concrete.

What measures were taken by the TEPCO and the government of Japan to halt the Fukushima nuclear disaster other than drastically increasing the permissible level of radiation exposure? So are we to believe that the worst nuclear disaster in human history has become somehow safer because the safety level was raised? Same thing, by the way, was done in Chernobyl where guidelines for levels of radioiodine in drinking water, were temporarily raised, allowing most water to be reported as safe.

I remember my outrage when I’ve first heard that the American and Canadian government has stop monitoring airborne radiation and had raised the acceptable levels of radiation shortly after Fukushima explosion. In other words, if a certain radiation was said to be deadly for you yesterday, today it has suddenly became safe just because the government has said so. Is this an international nuclear conspiracy or just a standard procedure? And yet we are asked to trust our government even though our government is constantly lying to us.

I was recently asked why did I care for the Fukushima so much if I live far away, high in Peruvian Andes? Can you believe that question? I don’t blame you if you don’t. Because I can’t believe it either, and I was the one who was asked. Well, I guess, I am human enough to care for human suffering as such, and I would care for the people of Japan even if I wouldn’t be affected by Fukushima myself. But I also understand that there is no such a thing as separate oceans on our planet. In reality, there is only one global interconnected and continuous body of water which is called World Ocean.

Thus, contaminating a part of it means contaminating all of it. And it’s only a matter of time when all of the water on our planet will be radioactive. Also, it doesn’t take to be a nuclear physicist to understand that dangerous radioactive isotopes released from the Fukushima damaged reactor are here to stay for billions of years, continuously contaminating our air, our water and our food supply with a deadly radiation forever. We are doomed as human race if we will not stop the Fukushima disaster now.

One morning after reading this article and realizing how Fukushima is killing our planet and our life, I started a simple petition to send to the government of Japan to let them know how the people of the world are feeling about Fukushima nuclear disaster.[2] I didn’t think that I could gather a substantial amount of signature to force the Government of Japan to take real actions, yet, I felt like taking some action is better than taking no action and this petition was my humble attempt to make my voice heard. It took me a minute to create it and it will take you a moment to sign it, if you care.[3]

[Col. Quisp]

[The Consul]

Read Richard Rhodes...."Twilight of the Bombs". As a species we should have outlawed enriching uranium fifty years ago. It is amazing that we are still here.
! Considering the absoluted assholes in power who were itching to incinerate us all.

They have not gone away. Dont worry, be Happy Japan! Boatloads of Bud And Dave Chapelle videos are on the way. Will a tenth of the population end up being potential dirty nukes? What if one of them spontaneously combusts on the mound of an MLB game? Do we all share the same fate?

[stillrobertpaulsen]

If not earthquakes and tsunamis, there are also typhoons. This particular one may or may not get its own thread, but I thought this would be the best place to introduce this horrifying possibility:

‘Once In Decades’ Typhoon Approaches Japan, Two Nuclear Power Plants

By Andrew Breiner July 7, 2014 at 2:31 pm



Typhoon Neoguri reached sustained winds of over 150 miles per hour Sunday, making it a ‘super typhoon,’ as it continued to gain force and approach Japan’s southern and western islands. It is likely to cause heavy rains and strong winds across much of Japan, and threaten at least two nuclear power plants in its path.

Heavy rains from another storm have already been setting records in Kyushu, Japan’s southern and southwestern-most major island, where Neoguri is likely to make first landfall. Kyushu is home to two nuclear plants, which have been shut down for safety in advance of the storm’s arrival. A nuclear plant on nearby Shikoku island has been shut down for safety, as well. After making landfall, the storm is expected to move north through virtually all of Japan, losing strength as it travels up the island.

Fukushima, in the east, is likely to be spared. The 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi plant focused attention on the vulnerability of nuclear plants, as radioactive water continued leaking for over a year after a tsunami and earthquake hit. Tokyo is also likely to miss Neoguri’s worst.

Japan Meteorological Agency warned that Neoguri would be an “extremely intense” storm by Tuesday, and issued emergency warnings for the southern islands, calling the super typhoon a “once in decades storm.” While powerful and dangerous, Neoguri will not be as strong as Typhoon Haiyan, which killed thousands, left hundreds of thousands homeless and caused a major humanitarian crisis in the Philippines last year. Haiyan may have had the strongest sustained cyclone winds on record, at 195 mph.

Neoguri is currently as strong as a category 4 hurricane and it appears likely to hit Kyushu as a category 3, with winds between 111 and 130 mph.

Though the occurrence of a particular typhoon can’t be linked directly to climate change, a warmer climate can make storms much more destructive. Mr. Michel Jarraud, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General, said Typhoon Haiyan “tragically demonstrated” the “heavier precipitation, more intense heat, and more damage from storm surges and coastal flooding” from global warming. As climate change contributes to accelerated sea level rise along the U.S. East Coast, scientists warn that storm surges and coastal flooding will become more destructive, as was demonstrated in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.

While the current projected path has Neoguri missing Okinawa, it will pass close enough to cause hurricane-force winds on the island. Okinawa has a major U.S. military presence, including dozens of military bases and thousands of service members and their families. Okinawa is already experiencing heavy rain and winds, and it is expected to get worse. In a statement on the air base’s website, Brig. Gen James Hecker, 18th Wing commander at Kadena Air Base called Neoguri the most dangerous typhoon to hit Okinawa in 15 years. “I can’t stress enough how dangerous this typhoon may be when it hits Okinawa,” he said. “This is not just another typhoon.”

[seemslikeadream]

BEYONDNUCLEAR

A Scary Super Typhoon Is Bearing Down on Japan…and Its Nuclear Plants
After Fukushima, Japan shut down its reactors. Now, they're in Super Typhoon Neoguri's path. Are they safe enough?
—By Chris Mooney | Mon Jul. 7, 2014 1:55 PM EDT

Super Typhoon Neoguri as glimpsed by astronaut Reid Wiseman from the International Space Station Reid Wiseman/NASA
UPDATE, 11:30 AM on July 8: Typhoon Neoguri has weakened, and is no longer a Super Typhoon. But it is still headed straight at Japan, and in particular, at the island of Kyushu, with landfall expected on Thursday. For the latest forecasts from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, see here.

Japanese forecasters are calling it a "once in decades storm." And at Kadena Air Base, a US military installation on the island of Okinawa, one commander dubbed the storm "the most powerful typhoon forecast to hit the island in 15 years."

Super Typhoon Neoguri, currently sporting maximum sustained winds of nearly 150 miles per hour and just shy of Category 5 strength, is heading straight at Japan's islands, and its outer bands are currently battering the island of Okinawa. Here's the forecast map from the Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center. As you can see, the forecast for tomorrow brings the storm up to maximum sustained winds of 140 knots (161 miles per hour), or Category 5 strength (click for larger version):


Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
The Western Pacific basin, home to typhoons (which are elsewhere called tropical cyclones or hurricanes), is known for having the strongest storms on Earth, such as last year's devastating Super Typhoon Haiyan. July is, generally, when the Western Pacific typhoon season really starts getting into gear, but August, September, and October are usually busier months.

Neoguri will weaken by the time it strikes Japan's main islands, but as meteorologist Jeff Masters observes, "the typhoon is so large and powerful that it will likely make landfall with at least Category 2 strength, causing major damage in Japan."

One pressing issue is the safety of Japan's nuclear plants. In the wake of the 2011 tsunami and the subsequent disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, it's important to consider whether a similar vulnerability arises here.

Fukushima is located north of Tokyo on Japan's largest island, Honshu. By the time the typhoon reaches that point, it is forecast to be considerably weaker. But there are a number of other reactors spread across the islands; perhaps most exposed will be the southwestern island of Kyushu, where the current forecast has the typhoon making its first major landfall.

According to reporting by Reuters, there are two nuclear plants on the island. A company spokeswoman for Kyushu Electric Power Co. told the news agency that it "has plans in place throughout the year to protect the plants from severe weather."

Will that be good enough? According to Edwin Lyman, senior scientist in the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, the good news overall is that Japan's nuclear plants are currently shut down, awaiting permission to restart as they institute stronger safety protections, including the construction of higher seawalls. A shut-down plant is still not without risks, because "you still have to provide cooling for the fuel," says Lyman. But overall, he thinks that the newer protections, combined with the fact that the plants have been cooling while shut down, suggests less vulnerability than existed in 2011.

"I would say that they're probably in a better position than they were to withstand massive flooding from a typhoon, and the fact that the reactors have been shut for some time, increases the level of confidence," Lyman says. "But there's still issues, and we'll just have to hope that if there's a massive flooding event at one of the reactors, that the measures they've already put into place will be adequate to cope with them."

Here's a stunning NASA image of Neoguri, snapped yesterday:

[seemslikeadream]

WEEKEND EDITION JULY 18-20, 2014

Global Physicians Issue Scathing Critique of UN Report on Fukushima
Fukushima: Bad and Getting Worse
by JOHN LaFORGE
There is broad disagreement over the amounts and effects of radiation exposure due to the triple reactor meltdowns after the 2011 Great East-Japan Earthquake and tsunami. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) joined the controversy June 4, with a 27-page “Critical Analysis of the UNSCEAR Report ‘Levels and effects of radiation exposures due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East-Japan Earthquake and tsunami.’”

IPPNW is the Nobel Peace Prize winning global federation of doctors working for “a healthier, safer and more peaceful world.” The group has adopted a highly critical view of nuclear power because as it says, “A world without nuclear weapons will only be possible if we also phase out nuclear energy.”

UNSCEAR, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, published its deeply flawed report April 2. Its accompanying press release summed up its findings this way: “No discernible changes in future cancer rates and hereditary diseases are expected due to exposure to radiation as a result of the Fukushima nuclear accident.” The word “discernable” is a crucial disclaimer here.

Cancer, and the inexorable increase in cancer cases in Japan and around the world, is mostly caused by toxic pollution, including radiation exposure according to the National Cancer Institute.[1] But distinguishing a particular cancer case as having been caused by Fukushima rather than by other toxins, or combination of them, may be impossible ¾ leading to UNSCEAR’s deceptive summation. As the IPPNW report says, “A cancer does not carry a label of origin…”

UNSCEAR’s use of the phrase “are expected” is also heavily nuanced. The increase in childhood leukemia cases near Germany’s operating nuclear reactors, compared to elsewhere, was not “expected,” but was proved in 1997. The findings, along with Chernobyl’s lingering consequences, led to the country’s federally mandated reactor phase-out. The plummeting of official childhood mortality rates around five US nuclear reactors after they were shut down was also “unexpected,” but shown by Joe Mangano and the Project on Radiation and Human Health.

The International Physicians’ analysis is severely critical of UNSCEAR’s current report which echoes its 2013 Fukushima review and press release that said, “It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers.”

“No justification for optimistic presumptions”

The IPPNW’s report says flatly, “Publications and current research give no justification for such apparently optimistic presumptions.” UNSCEAR, the physicians complain, “draws mainly on data from the nuclear industry’s publications rather than from independent sources and omits or misinterprets crucial aspects of radiation exposure”, and “does not reveal the true extent of the consequences” of the disaster. As a result, the doctors say the UN report is “over-optimistic and misleading.” The UN’s “systematic underestimations and questionable interpretations,” the physicians warn, “will be used by the nuclear industry to downplay the expected health effects of the catastrophe” and will likely but mistakenly be considered by public authorities as reliable and scientifically sound. Dozens of independent experts report that radiation attributable health effects are highly likely.

Points of agreement: Fukushima is worse than reported and worsening still

Before detailing the multiple inaccuracies in the UNSCEAR report, the doctors list four major points of agreement. First, UNSCEAR improved on the World Health Organization’s health assessment of the disaster’s on-going radioactive contamination. UNSCEAR also professionally “rejects the use of a threshold for radiation effects of 100 mSv [millisieverts], used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in the past.” Like most health physicists, both groups agree that there is no radiation dose so small that it can’t cause negative health effects. There are exposures allowed by governments, but none of them are safe.

Second, the UN and the physicians agree that areas of Japan that were not evacuated were seriously contaminated with iodine-132, iodine-131 and tellurium-132, the worst reported instance being Iwaki City which had 52 times the annual absorbed dose to infants’ thyroid than from natural background radiation. UNSCEAR also admitted that “people all over Japan” were affected by radioactive fallout (not just in Fukushima Prefecture) through contact with airborne or ingested radioactive materials. And while the UNSCEAR acknowledged that “contaminated rice, beef, seafood, milk, milk powder, green tea, vegetables, fruits and tap water were found all over mainland Japan”, it neglected “estimating doses for Tokyo … which also received a significant fallout both on March 15 and 21, 2011.”

Third, UNSCEAR agrees that the nuclear industry’s and the government’s estimates of the total radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean are “far too low.” Still, the IPPNW reports shows, UNSCEAR’s use of totally unreliable assumptions results in a grossly understated final estimate. For example, the UN report ignores all radioactive discharges to the ocean after April 30, 2011, even though roughly 300 tons of highly contaminated water has been pouring into the Pacific every day for 3-and-1/2 years, about 346,500 tons in the first 38 months.

Fourth, the Fukushima catastrophe is understood by both groups as an ongoing disaster, not the singular event portrayed by industry and commercial media. UNSCEAR even warns that ongoing radioactive pollution of the Pacific “may warrant further follow-up of exposures in the coming years,” and “further releases could not be excluded in the future,” from forests and fields during rainy and typhoon seasons ¾ when winds spread long-lived radioactive particles ¾a and from waste management plans that now include incineration.

As the global doctors say, in their unhappy agreement with UNSCAR, “In the long run, this may lead to an increase in internal exposure in the general population through radioactive isotopes from ground water supplies and the food chain.”

Physicians find ten grave failures in UN report

The majority of the IPPNW’s report details 10 major errors, flaws or discrepancies in the UNSCEAR paper and explains study’s omissions, underestimates, inept comparisons, misinterpretations and unwarranted conclusions.

1. The total amount of radioactivity released by the disaster was underestimated by UNSCEAR and its estimate was based on disreputable sources of information. UNSCEAR ignored 3.5 years of nonstop emissions of radioactive materials “that continue unabated,” and only dealt with releases during the first weeks of the disaster. UNSCEAR relied on a study by the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) which, the IPPNW points out, “was severely criticized by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission … for its collusion with the nuclear industry.” The independent Norwegian Institute for Air Research’s estimate of cesium-137 released (available to UNSCEAR) was four times higher than the JAEA/UNSCEAR figure (37 PBq instead of 9 PBq). Even Tokyo Electric Power Co. itself estimated that iodine-131 releases were over four times higher than what JAEA/UNSCEAR) reported (500 PBq vs. 120 BPq). The UNSCEAR inexplicably chose to ignore large releases of strontium isotopes and 24 other radionuclides when estimating radiation doses to the public. (A PBq or petabecquerel is a quadrillion or 1015 Becquerels. Put another way, a PBq equals 27,000 curies, and one curie makes 37 billion atomic disintegrations per second.)

2. Internal radiation taken up with food and drink “significantly influences the total radiation dose an individual is exposed to,” the doctors note, and their critique warns pointedly, “UNSCEAR uses as its one and only source, the still unpublished database of the International Atomic Energy Association and the Food and Agriculture Organization. The IAEA was founded … to ‘accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world.’ It therefore has a profound conflict of interest.” Food sample data from the IAEA should not be relied on, “as it discredits the assessment of internal radiation doses and makes the findings vulnerable to claims of manipulation.” As with its radiation release estimates, IAEA/UNSCEAR ignored the presence of strontium in food and water. Internal radiation dose estimates made by the Japanese Ministry for Science and Technology were 20, 40 and even 60 times higher than the highest numbers used in the IAEA/UNSCEAR reports.



3. To gauge radiation doses endured by over 24,000 workers on site at Fukushima, UNSCEAR relied solely on figures from Tokyo Electric Power Co., the severely compromised owners of the destroyed reactors. The IPPNW report dismisses all the conclusions drawn from Tepco, saying, “There is no meaningful control or oversight of the nuclear industry in Japan and data from Tepco has in the past frequently been found to be tampered with and falsified.”

4. The UNSCEAR report disregards current scientific fieldwork on actual radiation effects on plant and animal populations. Peer reviewed ecological and genetic studies from Chernobyl and Fukushima find evidence that low dose radiation exposures cause, the doctors point out, “genetic damage such as increased mutation rates, as well as developmental abnormalities, cataracts, tumors, smaller brain sizes in birds and mammals and further injuries to populations, biological communities and ecosystems.” Ignoring these studies, IPPNW says “gives [UNSCEAR] the appearance of bias or lack of rigor.”

5. The special vulnerability of the embryo and fetus to radiation was completely discounted by the UNSCEAR, the physicians note. UNSCEAR shockingly said that doses to the fetus or breast-fed infants “would have been similar to those of other age groups,” a claim that, the IPPNW says, “goes against basic principles of neonatal physiology and radiobiology.” By dismissing the differences between an unborn and an infant, the UNSCEAR “underestimates the health risks of this particularly vulnerable population.” The doctors quote a 2010 report from American Family Physician that, “in utero exposure can be teratogenic, carcinogenic or mutagenic.”

6. Non-cancerous diseases associated with radiation doses — such as cardiovascular diseases, endocrinological and gastrointestinal disorders, infertility, genetic mutations in offspring and miscarriages — have been documented in medical journals, but ate totally dismissed by the UNSCEAR. The physicians remind us that large epidemiological studies have shown undeniable associations of low dose ionizing radiation to non-cancer health effects and “have not been scientifically challenged.”

7. The UNSCEAR report downplays the health impact of low-doses of radiation by misleadingly comparing radioactive fallout to “annual background exposure.” The IPPNW scolds the UNSCEAR saying it is, “not scientific to argue that natural background radiation is safe or that excess radiation from nuclear fallout that stays within the dose range of natural background radiation is harmless.” In particular, ingested or inhaled radioactive materials, “deliver their radioactive dose directly and continuously to the surrounding tissue” — in the thyroid, bone or muscles, etc. — “and therefore pose a much larger danger to internal organs than external background radiation.”

8. Although UNSCEAR’s April 2 Press Release and Executive Summary give the direct and mistaken impression that there will be no radiation health effects from Fukushima, the report itself states that the Committee “does not rule out the possibility of future excess cases or disregard the suffering associated…” Indeed, UNSCEAR admits to “incomplete knowledge about the release rates of radionuclides over time and the weather conditions during the releases.” UNSCEAR concedes that “there were insufficient measurements of gamma dose rate…” and that, “relatively few measurements of foodstuff were made in the first months.” IPPNW warns that these glaring uncertainties completely negate the level of certainty implied in UNSCEAR’s Exec. Summary.

9. UNSCEAR often praises the protective measures taken by Japanese authorities, but the IPPNW finds it “odd that a scientific body like UNSCEAR would turn a blind eye to the many grave mistakes of the Japanese disaster management…” The central government was slow to inform local governments and “failed to convey the severity of the accident,” according to the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission. “Crisis management ‘did not function correctly,’ the Commission said, and its failure to distribute stable iodine, “caused thousands of children to become irradiated with iodine-131,” IPPNW reports.

10. The UNSCEAR report lists “collective” radiation doses “but does not explain the expected cancer cases that would result from these doses.” This long chapter of IPPNW’s report can’t be summarized easily. The doctors offer conservative estimates, “keeping in mind that these most probably represent underestimations for the reasons listed above.” The IPPNW estimates that 4,300 to 16,800 excess cases of cancer due to the Fukushima catastrophe in Japan in the coming decades. Cancer deaths will range between 2,400 and 9,100. UNSCEAR may call these numbers insignificant, the doctors archly point out, but individual cancers are debilitating and terrifying and they “represent preventable and man-made diseases” and fatalities.

IPPNW concludes that Fukushima’s radiation disaster is “far from over”: the destroyed reactors are still unstable; radioactive liquids and gases continuously leak from the complex wreckage; melted fuel and used fuel in quake-damaged cooling pools hold enormous quantities of radioactivity “and are highly vulnerable to further earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and human error.” Catastrophic releases of radioactivity “could occur at any time and eliminating this risk will take many decades.”

IPPNW finally recommends urgent actions that governments should take, because the UNSCEAR report, “does not adhere to scientific standards of neutrality,” “represents a systematic underestimation,” “conjures up an illusion of scientific certainty that obscures the true impact of the nuclear catastrophe on health and the environment,” and its conclusion is phrased “in such a way that would most likely be misunderstood by most people…”

John LaForge works for Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog and anti-war group in Wisconsin, and edits its Quarterly.