Tied in with the secrecy are of course – the lies. The old lies – that nuclear weapons are necessary, that nuclear power is safe, cheap, clean, the cure for climate change, waste disposal is solved.
The new lies – that new nuclear technology – reprocessing, small reactors, thorium reactors will be the salvation of the industry, and of the world’s climate and energy problems.
Above all – the lies that renewable energy is ineffective, uneconomic, doesn’t supply “base load” power. These are perhaps the worst lies – as the nuclear lobby tries to stop the world from getting 100% clean energy – now possible, from the sun, wind, and tides.
================================================
Economics 101: Moral Hazard
2013/08/30 に公開
An explanation of Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection using a simple example.
Enjoy!
(I am aware that the constant camera zoom adjustment is annoying. It is automatic and, for now, can't be turned off.)
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What economists call a moral hazard: John Fishback at TEDxBrookings
2014/04/03 に公開
When should we and when shouldn't we rely on economic theory to help us make our choices? Who is ultimately responsible for our communities? John Fishback tackles these issues in his TEDx talk: "What Economists Call a Moral Hazard."
John holds a BA from Georgetown University, an MA from NYU, and is a proud graduate of Brookings High School.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
Nuclear Watch: Japan Sendai Nuclear Plant Closer to Restart (07/16/2014)
2014/07/16 に公開
Procedures for restarting Sendai plant
Kyushu Electric Power Company in southern Japan still has many steps to clear before becoming the first utility in the country to restart a nuclear power plant.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority will hold 30 days of public hearings starting on Thursday on the draft safety assessment for the Sendai nuclear plant.
The NRA will then finalize the assessment and give permission for the utility to replace its current equipment. Meeting new stricter safety standards is required for resuming operations.
Kyushu Electric will then seek agreement for a restart from Kagoshima Prefecture and the hosting municipality of Satsuma Sendai.
The prefectural government plans to hold town meetings in the city and 4 other municipalities within 30 kilometers from the plant to hear explanations from NRA officials on the assessment.
Then the governor of the prefecture is to confirm the views of Satsuma Sendai city and prefectural assembly members, and decide whether to agree to the restart.
Kyushu Electric will also be required to submit quake-resistance data for its equipment and safety devices to the NRA for its approval.
The utility must also present arrangements to deal with serious accidents, including personnel training programs to ready them for such contingencies.
The company will need to have newly installed equipment checked before ultimately resuming operations at the plant.
But some local residents have already voiced criticism, saying that local municipalities have not yet set up sufficient measures to counter nuclear contingencies.
They point out that facilities for evacuation have been designated in locations which are likely to be downwind from the plant. They also demand feasible evacuation plans for hospitals and nursing-care facilities for the elderly.
They say that in the US, reactor operation needs federal government approval of evacuation plans submitted by local municipalities. They call for a similar system in Japan.
Local officials have approved to restart a nuclear power plant in Japan's south, ushering the country's return to nuclear power generation more than three years after the Fukushima disaster.
Kagoshima Governor Yuichiro Ito said two reactors at the Sendai Nuclear Power Station would be restarted despite concerns among some local residents.
"I want to inform the economy, trade and industry minister about my understanding of the government's policy to push for restarting nuclear power plants," he said on Friday, adding he had considered "various situations comprehensively".
The local approval came after the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said in September that it believed the two units at Sendai met toughened safety standards introduced after the Fukushima accident in 2011.
The actual restart, however, is likely to be delayed until next year as technical procedures are still under way, including more NRA approvals for remedial work at the site.
Japan had 54 nuclear reactors before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima power station. That incident prompted the government to shut down all its plants.
Two reactors were briefly restarted in 2012 but their shutdown last September heralded an entirely nuclear-free Japan.
Industry Minister Yoichi Miyazawa welcomed Friday's move, telling reporters in Tokyo that the government "really appreciates that Kagoshima prefecture is doing so many things" for restarting the reactors.
Lessons of Fukushima
Communities living right next door to nuclear plants, who often enjoy grants from utility companies and depend on the power stations for employment, are frequently sympathetic to the reopening of nuclear plants.
However, there is hostility from those living farther afield who enjoy no direct benefits, but see themselves in the firing line in the event of another accident like Fukushima.
Some critics have also warned that the Sendai plant could be at risk from a nearby volcano.
"In contrast to the government, regulator and the nuclear industry, the people of Kagoshima understand the lessons of Fukushima," Kazue Suzuki nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace Japan, said in a statement before the decision was announced.
Pro-nuclear Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has set his heart on persuading a wary electorate that the world's third largest economy must return to an energy source which once supplied more than a quarter of its power.
Fukushima was the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. It forced tens of thousands of people from their homes, with many of them still displaced amid warnings some areas might have to be abandoned forever.
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Ten years after Chernobyl :What do we really know?
Based on the proceedings of the IAEA/WHO/EC International Conference, Vienna, April 1996
The accident was by far the most devastating in the history of nuclear power
• Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor was completely destroyed by explosions that blew the roof off the reactor building and released large amounts of uranium fuel and other radioactive material into the environment. The reactor's remains are currently contained within a larger structure known as the shield or "sarcophagus" built in the months following the accident. One of the four original reactors at the site is in operation.
• Large amounts of radioactive material—12 trillion (1018) international units of radioactivity, termed "bec- querels" — were released into the environment, particularly during the first ten days. The discharge included over a hundred, mostly short-lived radioactive elements, but iodines and caesiums were of main relevance from a human health and environmental standpoint. Radioactive material from the plant was detectable at very low levels over practically the entire Northern Hemisphere.
• Compared with other nuclear events: The Chernobyl explosion put 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; atomic weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s all together are estimated to have put some 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Chernobyl accident.
"Some comments have been made in which the radioactive release of the Chernobyl event is claimed to be 300[4] or 400[5] times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The work of SCOPE[6][7] suggests that the two events can not be simply compared with a number suggesting that one was XX times larger than the other."
を削除して、
“Compared with other nuclear events: The Chernobyl explosion put 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; atomic weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s all together are estimated to have put some 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Chernobyl accident.” :This article is written in page 8(9) of "Ten years after Chernobyl:What do we really know? "of the PDF official document.[4]
Hello, Matuoka yuuji! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! RegistryKey(RegEdit) 21:30, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
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Comparison of Chernobyl and other radioactivity releases
This article compares the radioactivity release and decay from the Chernobyl disaster with various other events which involved a release of uncontrolled radioactivity.
Chernobyl compared to background radiation
The external relative gamma dose for a person in the open near the Chernobyl disaster site. The intermediate lived fission products like Cs-137 contribute nearly all of the gamma dose now after a number of decades have past, see opposite.
Natural sources of radiation are very prevalent in the environment, and come from cosmic rays, food sources (bananas have a particular high source), radon gas, granite and other dense rocks, and others. The collective radiation background dose for natural sources in Europe is about 500,000 man Sieverts per year. The total dose from Chernobyl is estimated at 80,000 man sieverts, or roughly 1/6 as much.[1] However, some individuals, particular in areas adjacent the reactor, received significantly higher doses.
Chernobyl's radiation was detectable across Western Europe. Average doses received ranged from 0.02 mrem (Portugal) to 38 mrem (portions of Germany).[1]
Chernobyl compared with an atomic bomb
Far fewer people died as an immediate result of the Chernobyl event than the immediate deaths from radiation at Hiroshima. Chernobyl is eventually predicted to result in up to 4,000 total deaths from cancers, sometime in the future, according to the WHO and create ~ 41,000 excess cancers according to the International Journal of Cancer, with, depending on treatment, not all cancers resulting in death.[2][3] Due to the differences in half-life the different radioactivefission products undergo exponential decay at different rates. Hence the isotopic signature of an event where more than one radioisotope is involved will change with time.
"Compared with other nuclear events: The Chernobyl explosion put 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; atomic weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s all together are estimated to have put some 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Chernobyl accident." :This article is written in page 8(9) of "Ten years after Chernobyl:What do we really know? "of the PDF official document.[4]
The radioactivity released at Chernobyl tended to be more long lived than that released by a bomb detonation hence it is not possible to draw a simple comparison between the two events. Also, a dose of radiation spread over many years (as is the case with Chernobyl) is much less harmful than the same dose received over a short period.
The impact of the different isotopes on the radioactive contamination of the air soon after the accident. Drawn using data from the OECD report [1] and the second edition of 'The radiochemical manual'.
The relative size of the Chernobyl release when compared with the release due to a hypothetical ground burst of a bomb similar to the Fat Man device dropped on Nagasaki.
Isotope
Ratio between the release due to the bomb and the Chernobyl accident
90Sr
1:87
137Cs
1:890
131I
1:25
133Xe
1:31
A comparison of the gamma dose rates due to the Chernobyl accident and the hypothetical nuclear weapon.
Normalized to the same Cs-137 level (dose rate on day 10000).
The graph of dose rate as a function of time for the bomb fallout was done using a method similar to that of T. Imanaka, S. Fukutani, M. Yamamoto, A. Sakaguchi and M. Hoshi, J. Radiation Research, 2006, 47, Suppl A121-A127. Our graph exhibits the same shape as that obtained in the paper. The bomb fallout graph is for a ground burst of an implosion-basedplutonium bomb which has a depleted uraniumtamper. The fission was assumed to have been caused by 1 MeV neutrons and 20% occurred in the 238U tamper of the bomb. It was assumed, for the sake of simplicity, that no plume separation of the isotopes occurred between the detonation and the deposit of radioactivity. The following gamma-emitting isotopes are modeled 131I, 133I, 132Te, 133I, 135I, 140Ba, 95Zr, 97Zr, 99Mo, 99mTc, 103Ru, 105Ru, 106Ru, 142La, 143Ce, 137Cs, 91Y, 91Sr, 92Sr, 128Sb and 129Sb. The graph ignores the effects of beta emission and shielding. The data for the isotopes was obtained from the Korean table of the isotopes. The graphs for the Chernobyl accident were computed by an analogous method.
A ground burst of a nuclear weapon creates considerably more local deposited fallout than the air bursts used at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. This is due in part to Neutron activation of ground soil and greater amounts of soil being sucked into the nuclear fireball in a ground burst than in a high air burst. In the above neutron activation is neglected, and only the fission product fraction of the total activity resulting from the ground burst is shown.
Chernobyl compared with Tomsk-7
The release of radioactivity which occurred at Tomsk-7 (an industrial nuclear complex located in Seversk rather than the city of Tomsk) in 1993 is another comparison with the Chernobyl release. During reprocessing activities, some of the feed for the second cycle (medium active part) of the PUREX process escaped in an accident involving red oil. According to the IAEA it was estimated that the following isotopes were released from the reaction vessel:[5]
106Ru 7.9 TBq
103Ru 340 GBq
95Nb 11.2 TBq
95Zr 5.1 TBq
137Cs 505 GBq (estimated from the IAEA data)
141Ce 370 GBq
144Ce 240 GBq
125Sb 100 GBq
239Pu 5.2 GBq
It is important to note that the very short lived isotopes such as 140Ba and 131I were absent from this mixture, and the long lived 137Cs was only at a small concentration. This is because it is not able to enter the tributyl phosphate/hydrocarbon organic phase used in the first liquid-liquid extraction cycle of the PUREX process. The second cycle is normally to clean up the uranium and plutonium product. In the PUREX process some zirconium, technetium and other elements are extracted by the tributyl phosphate. Due to the radiation induced degradation of tributyl phosphate the first cycle organic phase is always contaminated with ruthenium (later extracted by dibutyl hydrogen phosphate). Because the very short lived radioisotopes and the relatively long lived caesium isotopes are either absent or in low concentrations the shape of the dose rate vs. time graph is different from Chernobyl both for short times and long times after the accident.
The size of the radioactive release at Tomsk-7 was much smaller, and while it caused moderate environmental contamination it did not cause any early deaths.
While both events released 137Cs, the isotopic signature for the Goiânia accident was much simpler.[6] It was a single isotope which has a half-life of about 30 years. To show how the activity vs. time graph for a single isotope differs from the dose rate due to Chernobyl (in the open air) the following chart is shown with calculated data for a hypothetical release of 106Ru.
Three Mile Island-2 was an accident of a completely different type from Chernobyl. Chernobyl was a design flaw-caused power excursion causing a steam explosion resulting in a graphite fire, uncontained, which lofted radioactive smoke high into the atmosphere; TMI was a slow, undetected leak that lowered the water level around the nuclear fuel, resulting in over a third of it shattering when refilled rapidly with coolant. Unlike Chernobyl, TMI-2's reactor vessel did not fail and contained almost all of the radioactive material. Containment at TMI did not fail. A small quantity of radioactive gases from the leak were vented into the atmosphere through specially designed filters under operator control. A government report concluded that the accident caused no increase in cancer rates for local residents.[7]
Chernobyl compared with criticality accidents
During the time between the start of the Manhattan project and the present day, a series of accidents have occurred in which nuclear criticality has played a central role. The criticality accidents may be divided into two classes. For more details see nuclear and radiation accidents. A review of the topic was published in 2000, "A Review of Criticality Accidents" by Los Alamos National Laboratory (Report LA-13638), May 2000. Coverage includes United States, Russia, United Kingdom, and Japan. Also available at this page, which also tries to track down documents referenced in the report.
In the first class (process accidents) during the processing of fissile material, accidents have occurred when a critical mass has been created by accident. For instance at Charlestown, Rhode Island, United States on July 24, 1964 one death occurred and at Tokaimura, Japan, nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, on September 30, 1999[8] two deaths and one non fatal overexposure occurred as result of accidents where too much fissile matter was placed in a vessel. These accidents tend to lead to very high doses due to direct irradiation of the workers within the site, but due to the inverse square law the dose suffered by members of the general public tends to be very small. Also very little environmental contamination normally occurs as a result of these accidents. A release of radioactivity occurred as a result of the Tokaimura event. The building in which the accident occurred was not designed as a containment building, yet it was able to retard the spread of radioactivity. Because the temperature rise in the nuclear reaction vessel was small, the majority of the fission products remained in the vessel.
Reactor accidents
In this type of accident a reactor or other critical assembly releases far more fission power than was expected, or it becomes critical at the wrong moment in time. The series of examples of such events include one in an experimental facility in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on September 23, 1983 (one death)[9] and during the Manhattan Project several people were irradiated (two, Harry K. Daghlian and Louis Slotin, fatally) during "tickling the dragon's tail" experiments. These accidents tend to lead to very high doses due to direct irradiation of the workers within the site, but due to the inverse square law the dose suffered by members of the general public tends to be very small. Also very little environmental contamination normally occurs as a result of these accidents. For instance at Sarov according to the IAEA report (2001)[10] the radioactivity remained confined to within the actinide metal objects which were part of the experimental system. Even the SL-1 accident failed to release much radioactivity outside the building in which it occurred.
Tied in with the secrecy are of course – the lies. The old lies – that nuclear weapons are necessary, that nuclear power is safe, cheap, clean, the cure for climate change, waste disposal is solved.
The new lies – that new nuclear technology – reprocessing, small reactors, thorium reactors will be the salvation of the industry, and of the world’s climate and energy problems.
Above all – the lies that renewable energy is ineffective, uneconomic, doesn’t supply “base load” power. These are perhaps the worst lies – as the nuclear lobby tries to stop the world from getting 100% clean energy – now possible, from the sun, wind, and tides.
Can you hear the People Now?!! Or will you be of those who soon wail,
“OMG! We did not know!”
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Fukushima caesium leaks 'equal 168 Hiroshimas'
Japan's government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs.
Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children who are from the evacuation area near the Fukushima nuclear plant Photo: REUTERS
Image 1 of 2
The Fukushima nuclear plantPhoto: AP
Image 2 of 2
The Fukushima nuclear plantPhoto: AP
Image 2 of 2
Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children who are from the evacuation area near the Fukushima nuclear plant Photo: REUTERS
1:54PM BST 25 Aug 2011
Government nuclear experts, however, said the World War II bomb blast and the accidental reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, which has seen ongoing radiation leaks but no deaths so far, were beyond comparison.
The amount of caesium-137 released since the three reactors were crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami has been estimated at 15,000 tera becquerels, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, quoting a government calculation.
That compares with the 89 tera becquerels released by "Little Boy", the uranium bomb the United States dropped on the western Japanese city in the final days of World War II, the report said.
The estimate was submitted by Prime Minister Naoto Kan's cabinet to a lower house committee on promotion of technology and innovation, the daily said.
The government, however, argued that the comparison was not valid.
While the Hiroshima bomb claimed most of its victims in the intense heatwave of a mid-air nuclear explosion and the highly radioactive fallout from its mushroom cloud, no such nuclear explosions hit Fukushima.
There, the radiation has seeped from molten fuel inside reactors damaged by hydrogen explosions.
"An atomic bomb is designed to enable mass-killing and mass-destruction by causing blast waves and heat rays and releasing neutron radiation," the Tokyo Shimbun daily quoted a government official as saying. "It is not rational to make a simple comparison only based on the amount of isotopes released."
Government officials were not immediately available to confirm the report.
The blinding blast of the Hiroshima bomb and its fallout killed some 140,000 people, either instantly or in the days and weeks that followed as high radiation or horrific burns took their toll.
At Fukushima, Japan declared a 20-kilometre (12 mile) evacuation and no-go zone around the plant after the March 11 quake and tsunami triggered the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.
A recent government survey showed that some areas within the 20-kilometre zone are contaminated with radiation equivalent to more than 500 millisieverts per year – 25 times more than the government's annual limit.
On 11 March 2011 a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, followed by a tsunami
that slammed the country’s eastern coast, destroying communities and taking the lives of tens of
thousands of people.
The event led to the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. It also exposed serious
failures in the Japanese system for ensuring the safety of nuclear reactors.
Nuclear meltdown
The earthquake caused the loss of external power at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,
a site with six reactors. The subsequent tsunami flooded the plant’s back-up diesel generators,
causing complete loss of power and leading to a failure of the cooling systems. Due to the lack of
cooling, the nuclear fuel was damaged and melted in reactors #1, #2 and #3. The build-up of
hydrogen gas due to the damaged fuel resulted in hydrogen explosions in these three units and
damaged the containment structure in reactor #4.
The nuclear disaster was rated Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), the highest
rating. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) estimated that the amount of radioactive
caesium sent into the atmosphere by the explosions was equivalent to 168 Hiroshima bombs.1
The possibility of a meltdown as a result of a tsunami had been predicted in documents made
public since 2008 by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organisation. Tokyo Electric Power
Company (TEPCO), the plant owner, was aware of the possibility of a tsunami exceeding the
design limits of the Fukushima nuclear plant, but never attempted to upgrade or fortify its facilities.
Instead, regulators and TEPCO ignored the danger. This failure of human institutions to invest in
safety measures led to the Fukushima disaster.
Evacuation
More than 150,000 people fled the contaminated areas up to 50km around the Fukushima plant.
The 20km evacuation zone is still off limits; experts expect it will be uninhabitable for decades.
Most of those who evacuated from other areas have thus far chosen not to return, due to
concerns about radiation, unemployment and fears of living in a ‘ghost town’.
Contamination
A study conducted by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Society called the Fukushima
disaster ‘the largest accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history’. In April 2011, oceanic
levels of caesium-137 measured off the coast of the Fukushima Daiichi plant were 50 million times
higher than before the disaster.2
Concerned researchers warn that the full effects of radiation on the ecosystem will not be known for
decades. Testing of oceanic samples gathered by Greenpeace showed excessive levels of
radioactive caesium in seaweed and fish. An analysis by Asahi News, using data from TEPCO,
showed that 462 TBq (terabecquerel = trillion becquerel) of radioactive strontium have been
released into the Pacific Ocean.3 If it enters the food chain, radioactive strontium accumulates in
bones and can cause leukaemia and bone cancer.
In Japan, contaminated rice, beef, fruits, vegetables, milk and baby formula were found, causing
distress among residents and taking a huge toll on the Japanese economy. In January 2012, the
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) admitted that radioactive gravel had been used
to construct new homes and condominiums, and to repair roads and other infrastructure damaged in the earthquake. No regulations had been established to monitor radiation in stone and gravel.
Homes, schools and municipal areas need to undergo extensive decontamination, including soil removal. About 29m cubic metres of radioactive soil will need to be removed from Fukushima Prefecture alone. Removal is extremely difficult, and the government is still trying to determine where that radioactive soil will be stored. Waste disposal is an ongoing and growing concern.
State of the Fukushima reactors
In December 2011, the government and TEPCO declared the reactors had achieved a cold-shutdown-like status, even though they still can’t determine the exact location or temperature of the melted fuel.
The nuclear fuel is believed to have burned through the substantial steel floor of the reactor’s pressure vessel and possibly even hrough the thick concrete base of the containment vessel below.
The government declared cold-shutdown for political reasons, to fulfil an earlier promise to achieve cold-shutdown efore the end of 2011. The reality is that the four nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi are not in a stable state, and the release of radioactive materials continues to contaminate the ocean as well as pollute ground water.
Radiation levels remain too high for workers to enter the reactors, and efforts to view the interior using an ndoscope have failed. Workers continue to inject nitrogen into the reactors to prevent another hydrogen explosion.
Efforts to decontaminate highly radioactive water used to cool the reactors have been fraught with difficulty; urrently, over 100,000 tonnes of contaminated water is being stored at the plant. Cooling operations are akeshift. The damaged reactors continue to contaminate the environment and remain vulnerable to damage from apan’s frequent earthquakes.
Current estimates indicate decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors will take 40 years.
Costs he Japan Centre for Economic Research has estimated the entire cost of compensation and decommissioning of he six Fukushima reactors at between $520bn and $650bn US dollars4. TEPCO’s liabilities will soon outweigh its ssets. As a result, the Japanese government has already agreed to provide TEPCO $11.6bn and the company as asked for an additional $9bn. These amounts do not include government funds used to underwrite ompensation costs for the victims of the disaster.
Compensation process
Only a small fraction of the people evacuated has received compensation. TEPCO’s compensation procedures ave been complicated and restrictive, slowing down applications. Initially, TEPCO required applicants to fill in a 8-page form, accompanied by a 158-page manual. In contrast, one TEPCO nuclear accident manual was just hree pages long, and another only six pages long. Victims complained about the form and the company has implified it.
Political and social effects
Outside Japan, the effects of the disaster were felt around the world. Many nations re-evaluated the ability of their wn nuclear reactors to withstand natural disasters. Germany has shut down some of its reactors and has vowed to bandon nuclear energy entirely.
The Fukushima disaster raised serious questions about the myth of nuclear safety. In Japan, it revealed onsiderable corruption in the nuclear power sector, including efforts to mislead the public, as well as repeated xamples of cronyism between power companies and the government agencies that regulate them.
Public support for nuclear power in Japan has largely eroded. Currently, over 90% of Japan’s 54 reactors are offline All could by offline by May 2012, if none is restarted. Many local government officials have said they will not grant approval for restarting reactors. Contrary to the cries of the nuclear industry, there have been no significant problems with the electricity supply, and Japan has shown that it can survive without nuclear power.
For more information, contact: enquiries@greenpeace.org
Greenpeace International
Ottho Heldringstraat 5, 1066 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 7182000
1 The Telegraph (2011). Fukushima caesium leaks ‘equal 168 Hiroshimas’: Japan's government estimates the amount
of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima
bombs. 25 August 2011. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8722400/Fukushimacaesium-
leaks-equal-168-Hiroshimas.html
4 Japan Centre for Economic Research (2011). Abstract
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Adventure Time AMV "Radioactive"
2013/07/13 に公開
I love this song so much. I wanted to concentrate on the post-apocalyptic part of Adventure Time and the scary creatures within the series.
Cartoon Network and Imagine Dragons
Most Americans still have Strontium in their bones. Cremating people releases that radioactive strontium back into the air, along with any other radioactive elements that can turn to gas or small particles. If one takes the ashes of a cremated person who has some strontium in their bones, and dissolves it in a liter of water, it would be considered radioactive waste.
This strontium that is leftovers from the open air nuclear testing of 2,400 nuclear bombs is still having negative health effects even today in the form of leukemia and bone cancer, just to name a few of the many dis-eases it causes.
STRONTIUM MIMICS CALCIUM, SEEKS OUT BONES, TEETH, AND CONCENTRATES THERE
Unpublished personal note by (Dr) Ernest Sternglass for Radiation Public Health Project (RPHP) 8nov03 "Strontium-90 is considered to be the most hazardous bone-seeking element created in the fission of uranium or plutonium because of its long half life of 28 years and because it resembles calcium so closely. By masquerading as calcium needed to form bone and teeth, it is readily taken up and concentrates in bone. In a pregnant woman, the Strontium-90 that has accumulated in the bone together with that in her diet is transported with calcium into the rapidly dividing cells of the embryo and fetus, where it can either kill or mutate them by the emission of high energy electrons or beta particles. When Strontium-90 lodges near the bone marrow where stem-cells form blood and immune system cells, there is an increased risk of leukemia, many other forms of cancer and autoimmune diseases, especially in newborn infants and elderly adults whose immune system functions are weak."
FUKUSHIMA STILL POURING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF STRONTIUM INTO PACIFIC
As of 204, three years after the 3/11 mega nuclear disaster, Fukushima is STILL releasing massive amounts of radioactive Strontium, Cesium, Iodine and other radioactive elements from an out of control multiple nuclear plant melt out, into the air, groundwater and ocean. Strontium has been measured in the Pacific ocean over a 1,000 square mile area.
Newspaper: Strontium-90 from Fukushima found along west coast of N. America — “Plutonium… might be in the plume” — Scientist: There needs to be more monitoring… No sign radioactive releases from plant are going to stop
Each reactor that melted down is broken open and busted up due to the earthquake and tsunami. Through multiple holes, cracks and corium caused melts, the 'cooling water' is going straight out of the reactor and then into the basements, which are connected by gravel bottom trenches directly to the ocean and other buildings, all of which leak like sieves into the groundwater. All of this groundwater goes into the ocean as well.
VanneV August 29, 2014 December 7th, 2011 “Host: [...] The architect of Reactor No. 3 at Fukushima spoke out recently criticizing Tepco saying their explanations don’t make sense. And he claimes that it’s inevitable that nuclear fuel has leaked into the groundwater which means China Syndrome is upon us, or could be [...] Based on what the architect said, have we officially reached the edge of the China Syndrome stage at Fukushima?
“Gunter: [...] The former president of Saga university, this info is also corroborated by an earlier report from September by an assistant professor at the Kyoto Research Reactor Institute who said reactors 1 and 3 already had a melt-through and that by his projection the corium had moved 10-12 meters into the ground already [...]…”
The above is quoted so that the reader will understand that not only are the reactors all leaking very high level radioactive liquids into the ocean, so are the multiple melted out coria in the basements or in the ground under the reactors. Who knows how many leaks or melted out coriums there are, because Ineptco does not want to know and keeps making excuses about why it can't stop the multiple Niagara Falls of toxic, radioactive water going straight into the Pacific.
STRONTIUM FOUND INSIDE CITY LIMITS OF TOKYO
Strontium is being found inside the city limits of Tokyo.
Strontium mimics calcium in the body and is absorbed by the bones, where it then causes bone cancer and/or leukemia many years after the initial exposure. Even areas that are one hundred miles away from Fukushima such as Tokyo, measure radioactive contamination in amounts that are higher than those areas measured 1 mile away from Fukushima Daichi.
Fukushima has recently admitted that it has been dumping 400 tons of highly radioactive water into the ocean PER DAY, with that water containing strontium, tritium, uranium, plutonium and other radioactive elements, in violation of international laws. This has been going on for two years in secret and hidden from the public, ON PURPOSE. Only one picocurie of plutonium per liter of water can be deadly.
Isn't this evidence of a genocidal crime against humanity? Isn't this a criminal action? This 400 tons of high level radiation is not harmless and neutral. Diluted radiation is something that concentrates up the food chain through seafood in this case, right back up to humans. The Japanese government recently announced that NO ONE will be held criminally liable around Fukushima. That pronouncement is the equivalent of giving Hitler a medal for killing millions of people, possibly billions, over the next ten years. And the killing will not stop for the next hundred thousand, or even MILLION years, as the nuclear fire continues to rage inside of everyone.
TEPCO has no plans to stop this 'leaking'. They claim this leak is out of their control and there is nothing that they can do to stop it. Is that the best TEPCO can do? The Soviets put 1 million people to work to try and stop the harm to humanity from the Chernobyl meltdown.
Japan has a few thousand guys working at Fukushima at best, and they take weekends off. According to villagers who surround the plant, there are just a couple of guys wandering around during the day, and no one is out at night. So what are they doing, besides playing around and lying about what is going on? When will TEPCO and the Japanese government start taking this seriously?
Radioactive fire here, fire there, nuclear internal fires for everyone.
There is a fire burning deep down inside the common pool of humanity. It is a radioactive fire that everyone has inside of them. Where it burns, no one knows. The radioactive fire could be in the bones, the heart, the liver, the brain, or thyroid. It could be strontium, uranium, plutonium, cesium or many others.
What it burns out, no one knows. It could burn out the thyroid, especially in a fetus or newborn. It could burn out the brain, or form a permanent lesion on the heart, causing an early heart attack. None of this will be blamed on radiation, although it is to blame for at least some of the deaths. Since no one is looking for this as a cause, no one pays attention to how radiation may be responsible for many more deaths than is talked about.
What a radioactive element inside the body incubates, initiates and then turns into cancer, can only be wondered about. Cancers of the jaw, neck, thyroid, liver, lungs, we can keep going on and on and on, through a long, long list.. many of them will be caused by Fuku, initiated on 3/11, and showing up like a time bomb many years later.
YTTRIUM CAUSES LUNG DISEASE
Strontium 90 decays or transmutes into Yttrium, which has no known biological role. Exposure to radioactive yttrium compounds can cause lung disease in humans.
Yttrium isotopes are among the most common products of the nuclear fission of uranium occurring in nuclear explosions and nuclear reactors. In terms of nuclear waste management, the most important isotopes of yttrium are 91Y and 90Y, with half-lives of 58.51 days and 64 hours, respectively.[25] Though 90Y has the short half-life, it exists in secular equilibrium with its long-lived parent isotope, strontium-90 (90Sr) with a half-life of 29 years.
Water soluble compounds of yttrium are considered mildly toxic, while its insoluble compounds are non-toxic.[40] In experiments on animals, yttrium and its compounds caused lung and liver damage, though toxicity varies with different yttrium compounds. In rats, inhalation of yttrium citrate caused pulmonary edema and dyspnea, while inhalation of yttrium chloride caused liver edema, pleural effusions, and pulmonary hyperemia.[6]
Exposure to yttrium compounds in humans may cause lung disease.[6] Workers exposed to airborne yttrium europium vanadate dust experienced mild eye, skin, and upper respiratory tract irritation—though this may have been caused by the vanadium content rather than the yttrium.[6] Acute exposure to yttrium compounds can cause shortness of breath, coughing, chest pain, and cyanosis.[6]NIOSH recommends atime-weighted average limit of 1 mg/m3 and an IDLH of 500 mg/m3.[65] Yttrium dust is flammable.[6]"
FUKUSHIMA IS PULSING GENOCIDAL DEATH AND POISON INTO PACIFIC OCEAN
Socrates August 28, 2014 "Fukushima Daiichi is a pulsed marine, time-released radionuclide dispenser apparatus. Underground water flows through the destroyed containments with a percolating effect over the corium. Some fuel rod material was blown upwards. Much was released into the atmosphere by fuel pool fires and explosions. Being downwind and down-current from this on the West Coast does not mean that our doses will be homogenized and, therefore, neatly diluted. Instead, there has been pockets of concentrated radioactivity here and there, deposited into the biosphere, some of which is bioaccumulated. These doses are being continuously released in air and water.
It is a dilemma between atmospheric releasing and oceanic releasing of the radioactive materials in the thousands of tons of fuel rods on site. Workers can pick away at the vast inventory while trying to keep it from heating up or fissioning, but it seems like an impossibility. After 3 1/2 years, little progress has been made. There comes a time to accept the grim reality, and to flee from the increasing concentrations in our food and water, if all we have to look forward to is increasing concentrations. Scientists need to figure this out and governments must develop policies to minimize the effects rather than promoting this dangerous technology. The nuclear industry has no solution as to where to dispose of the waste. It needs to be shut down, not promoted. Profits and subsidies have locked it in, however. They can't change…"
FUSES HAVE BEEN LIT FOR MASSIVE GLOBAL CANCER AND DISEASE EXPLOSION, COMING SOON
The Fukushima nuclear mega disaster on 3/11 set the fuse to detonate in a radioactive internal cancer or dis-ease explosion set to go off anywhere from 2 -10 years later, when no one even remembers what happened. The murderers just walk away with their no bid contracts, their fancy new cars, the bonuses, and stock options and retirement plants.
No murderer could come up with a better and more evil weapon. Invisible, time delayed, not traceable back to the murderer, and completely silent. What a horrible, brilliant evil weapon of mass destruction, taking out one child at a time, with no trace of the weapon visible to anyone, not even the security guard at the entrance to the hospital.
But one thing is for sure, a nuclear fire continues to rage inside everyone, and the weapon of mass destruction that was set off on 3/11, has not yet begun to work it's evil. The radioactive bomb timer that is inside everyone is ticking, ticking, ticking and the fire continues to burn, burn, burn.
It is feared that some cities may have to be evacuated if winds blow inland from the the Fukushima Daiichi plant; the people working at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are risking their lives with their heroic efforts to limit the scale of the damage. The accident should be classified at Level 6 right under Chernobyl (Level 7). The authorities are withholding vital data about the internal exposure to radiations and no data has been released about the volumetric contamination of the air (Bq/m3). Soil contaminations will affect the food chain, fish and sea food will need to be tested in some areas.
It cannot be excluded that the nuclear experts and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) are lying to the politicians about the real extent of the contamination.
It is possible that some people in the affected areas who have been given iodine tablets but not yet told to use them should start administrating them if there are enough reasons to suspect an Iodine-131 contamination in the area, yet no relevant data asserting such levels have been disclosed. Especially concerned are the children, pregnant woman and breastfeeding women.
People need to drink preferably bottle water and tinned milk. Fresh garden produce in the contaminated area (which can be hundreds of miles from the source) should not be consumed. Green vegetables such as spinach are very risky. The next rice and tea crops in the affected areas may also have to be sacrificed. This will have a tremendous impact on a country almost self-sufficient for food.
The very scarce amounts of data about the levels of radioactive contaminations bears similarities to the situation in France, days after the Chernobyl accident, when the French were told that high atmospheric pressure blocked the contaminated clouds at the german border. At the time it was the french minister for Industry who was telling the minister for health what to do and what to say.
Politicians may have prefered not to alarm the population with orders to evacuate major cities while american and british citizens have been advised to leave an 80 km wide perimeter round the Fukushi Daiichi plant.
This friday Yukio Edano, the Chief Cabinet Secretary reiterated his plea for american help. Japan lacks of equipments and of qualified personnel to deal with a radiological emergency of such a scale and the tools of the japanese army (SDF) are inadequate to deal with such high rates of radiation.
If the spent rods ignites, in particular the rods containing Plutonium, extremely harmful radionuclides will be spread and severely contaminate the environement. Tokyo should implement immediately the evacuation of a larger perimeter - 30 or 40 km from the plant- to keep the situation under control before the circumstances degenerate and then plan for a full evacuation of a 60-80km radius. The peoplee who have been told to stay home need to know that homes aren't airtight and offer only a very temporary and limited protection. They should leave as soon as possible the 20-30 km security perimeter. Some are advocating the evacuation of the island of Honshu, an extreme measure to face the likelihood of a full blown Level 7 catastrophe of an epic proportion. Nevertheless the governement ought to consider now - in the event of a disaster similar or worse in scale than Chernobyl- to organize the evacuation of the Kantō region conurbation (42 million inhabitants) and warn the population about the eventuality of such an exodus. Some western countries governement have already told their citizens to consider leaving Tokyo. People are hungry, thirsty, dirty, homeless, worried, wounded or ill, they have lost their homes, some have no clothes or are mourning their relatives, their gardens have been soiled and the governement isn't telling them the truth. Urgent civil defence is required immediately.
Japan needs you premier Naoto Kan, the whole of yourself and of your government, your enemy is the nuclear industry, not the people it has betrayed.
Alexandre de Perlinghi
March 19th
...In the area of the Fukushima Daiichi plant samples of milk and spinach showed level of radioactivity superior to the legal limit. The Health minister has forbidden the sale of food coming from the Fukushima prefecture...small amounts of radioactivity have been found in water in Tokyo and Gunma.. (Corriere della Sera)
March 18th:
...Italy: 40 Bq of Iodine-131 have been found in urine samples from people coming back from Japan...(Corriere della Sera)
...WMRhas been told by informed Japanese sources that the close relationship between TEPCO and Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) neutered effective oversight of TEPCO's safety problem-ridden reactors for a number of years. The lack of effective contingency planning and TEPCO's overriding interest in it's corporate bottom led to the post-quake/tsunami Level 5 nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant. The lack of effective NISA oversight is a direct result of the cozy relationship between the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency, according to our sources.
One of the major reasons why the Japanese Cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has not been fully informed of the dire situation at the Fukushima reactor facilities is that Chief Cabinet Secretary, attorney Yukio Edano, cut his teeth in politics as an outspoken opponent of Japan's nuclear power industry.
WMR has been told that TEPCO and NISA, skeptical of Edano's past anti-nuclear stance, feared that Edano stands to amplify the threat posed by the current nuclear disaster at Fukushima. TEPCO and NISA has, therefore, acted to limit what information has been passed to Edano to avoid the Cabinet Secretary heightening fears during his many news conferences. Edano has been the chief Japanese government's face in televised news conferences on Fukushima's nuclear meltdown and radiation release....(WMR)
...number of dead and missing after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that flattened Japan's northeast coast a week ago has topped 16,600, with 6405 confirmed dead, police say.(news.com.au)
The Sun 17 march
Japan Nuke Disaster Could Be Worse Than Chernobyl
Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 17, 2011 (IPS) - A global nuclear disaster potentially worse than Chernobyl may be under way in Japan as hundreds of tonnes of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel are open to the sky, and may be on fire and emitting radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Many countries have advised their citizens in Japan to leave the country. "This is uncharted territory. There is a 50-percent chance they could lose all six reactors and their storage pools," said Jan Beyea, a nuclear physicist with a New Jersey consulting firm called Consulting in the Public Interest.
"I'm surprised the situation hasn't gotten worse faster... But without a breakthrough it's only a matter of days before spent fuels will melt down," said Ed Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and an expert on nuclear plant design.
Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant was damaged by a powerful earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11. It has an estimated 1,700 tonnes of used or spent but still dangerous nuclear fuel in storage pools next to its six nuclear reactors, according to Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a U.S. anti-nuclear environmental group.
The storage pools holding 30 to 35 years worth of spent fuel at reactors No. 3 and No. 4 have lost containment and most if not all of their coolant water. They may be on fire, venting radioactive particles into the atmosphere, Kamps told IPS.
..."If some of the spent fuel ignites and propagates throughout the rest of the fuel enormous areas of Japan could be contaminated by radioactive caesium 137 for 30 to 50 years," Beyea told IPS.
Caesium 137 remains radioactive for more than a hundred years and is a known cause of cancer and other health impacts. Once released, it is very difficult to cope with. Caesium is why a large region around the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster remains uninhabitable 25 years later...
"Caesium particles were blown hundreds of miles away during the intense fire at Chernobyl," Kamp said... Chernobyl held 180 tonnes of nuclear fuel. Fukushima Daiichi has 560 tonnes of nuclear fuel in its reactors along with 1,700 tonnes of spent fuel.
"The nuclear industry in Japan and the U.S. knew the loss of coolant at spent-fuel storage pools would be a big problem but they simply said it couldn't happen," said Beyea, who is a co-author of a 2004 study on this very topic for the U.S. National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Having worked in the industry, Beyea says it is run by overconfident engineers who minimise or ignore low- probability disasters even if they might have huge consequences.
Nuclear reactors generate enormous amounts of heat and must be constantly cooled to keep the metal fuel casing from catching on fire and the fuel from melting. Since a nuclear reaction cannot be turned off, when spent fuel is removed from a reactor it still generates a great deal of heat and must be cooled underwater for five to 20 years. All reactors have storage pools with thick reinforced-concrete walls and are about 15 metres deep, containing around 1.5 million litres of water. This water soon warms and must be constantly replaced with cooler water.
The loss of electricity and failures of backup generators at Fukushima Daiichi has meant little water has been pumped through the storage pools or into the reactors. Radiation levels inside the plant have now climbed so high that it is hazardous for workers to try to keep jury-rigged pumps pumping sea water. Normally only fresh water is used because sea water contains salts that eventually degrade the metals.
Radiation levels are deadly when there is not enough water to cover a spent fuel pool, said Kamps. "It will be very difficult to get close enough to cool these pools down," he noted. "If the worst happens, and the six pools burn, it will be an unimaginable disaster. It could be worse than Chernobyl."
The amount of caesium that could be released at Fuskushima is many thousands times that from the Hiroshima atomic bomb during World War Two, acknowledged Beyea. However, it was the bomb blast that killed over 120,000 people in the immediate months afterwards, he said.
"Japan is facing enormous potential impacts on its economy, its society and on the health of its people," he said, adding that people will be worried sick about the potential impacts on their health for decades to come.
"We recommended that the nuclear industry move spent fuel into dry storage containers after five years to reduce this risk but they said a loss-of-pool coolant event would never happen," said Beyea.
The status as of Thursday, 4 pm EST according to Tokyo Electric, the owner and operator of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant:
Reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 nuclear cores have partially melted as they lost cooling functions after the quake.
Reactor No. 2 containment vessel suffered damage and has been breached.
The buildings housing the No. 1, No. 3 and No. 4 reactors and storage pools have been severely damaged by apparent hydrogen blasts. Water levels and temperatures at storage pools of the Nos. 1 to 4 units are unknown. Temperatures at storage pools at No. 5 and No. 6 are climbing.
Fukushima Daiichi
...The radiation reading came to 279.4 microsievert per hour at the point roughly 1 kilometer west of the No. 2 reactor at 5 a.m. Friday, compared with 292.2 microsievert per hour at 8:40 p.m. Thursday, shortly after the SDF discharged water from fire trucks, according to the agency...up to 64 tons of water was discharged by helicopters and fire trucks of the SDF as well as a water cannon truck of the Metropolitan Police Department into the pool at the No. 3 unit of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima plant Thursday...The government has set the exclusion zone covering areas within a 20 kilometer radius of the plant, and urged people within 20 km to 30 km to stay indoors. (Kyodo)
...the radiation reading at 5 a.m. Friday came to 279.4 microsievert per hour, compared with 292.2 microsievert per hour at 8:40 p.m. Thursday...(Kyodo)
March 17th
Frustrated with TEPCO, Kan turns to SDF in nuclear crisis "In the worst case scenario, we have to assume that all of eastern Japan would be wrecked. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has almost no sense of urgency whatsoever."
So said Prime Minister Naoto Kan at a meeting with special advisor to the Cabinet Kiyoshi Sasamori on the night of March 16. Handling of the crisis had been entrusted to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and plant operator TEPCO. However, with the reactors' immediate surroundings now being bombarded with high radiation levels and the "worst case scenario" just on the horizon, the prime minister has turned the dangerous mission over to the Self-Defense Forces (SDF).
The SDF used Chinook heavy transport helicopters to dump water primarily on reactor No. 3, which may have a damaged reactor vessel. Reactors No. 3 and No. 4 are in the most dangerous condition. The helicopters swooped low over the reactor housings and released their load from a special bucket as they passed over reactor No. 3.
Originally, the SDF considered hovering directly over the stricken reactors, but decided against the plan as it would have exposed the helicopter crews to radiation for too long.
"This is a battle against radioactivity," a senior Defense Ministry official stated. "Unfortunately, with the pass-over method, the water dissipates and there isn't much of a cooling effect," he added with concern.
At the beginning of the nuclear crisis -- set off by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami -- the Defense Ministry and the SDF had said they did not have the know-how to deal with it.
"We have protective clothing for after a nuclear attack, but it was not made to withstand the high radiation levels (emitted by a nuclear reactor)," one senior SDF officer stated. Another staff officer voicing deep concern over participation in the cooling operation said recently, "We can't guarantee the lives of our personnel. This is an extremely dangerous mission."
The same staff officer added that "if it's nuclear power know-how that's needed, then there's no-one to turn to but the U.S. military," hoping U.S. forces would join the SDF in dealing with the overheating reactors.
However, the U.S. military -- which has nine navy vessels in the area including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan assisting with quake relief and search and rescue operations -- is openly worried over radiation exposure. The U.S. military contributed two pumper trucks to TEPCO for use in the cooling effort, but has not joined the operation on the ground. Furthermore, the U.S. Navy is shifting the position of its fleet off the east coast of the disaster zone to avoid fallout carried by wind.
"We can't ask the U.S. military to take on the most dangerous duty before the SDF even tries," said one SDF staff officer on March 16, adding, "This is an emergency. Decisions are up to the most senior officer, the prime minister, and if he says 'Do it,' then we must obey." (Mainichi)
Fukushima City (60km W) 21.4 uSv/h
Onagawa (120km NNE) 4.8 uSv/h
Kohriyama City (58km W) 3.18 uSv/h
Kita Ibaraki City (75km SSW) 15.8 uSv/h ***
Shinjuku (inner Tokyo, 220km SW) 0.16 uSv/h
Yokosuka (260km SSW) 0.182 uSv/h
...170 uSv/h (ionization chamber) at 30km NW, measured by MEXT mobile off-site monitoring team, no rain, 2pm 17 March. (K. Hosokawa, MagpieNews)
The relatively high figure of Kita Ibaraki could be due to Tokai-II nuclear power station (south of the city).
Off-site figures at 20-60km:
(measured by a mobile team of the Ministry of Education and Science)
highest: 80 uSv/h at 25km WNW
second highest: 58.5 uSv/h at 30km NW
lowest: 26.5 uSv/h at 25km SW
(measured 8:15am-14:15 on 16 March, at 14 points within 20-60km)
There was reportedly a dispute between the science ministry and the Cabinet over whether to publicize these figures. Now it’s open and the mobile team continues to work.
Low concentrations of radioactive particles from Japan's disaster-hit nuclear power plant have been heading eastwards and are expected to reach North America in days, a Swedish official said on Thursday...(Reuters).
Gov't must provide accurate information on nuclear disaster risks
Japan's nuclear power plant disaster is widening. The water level in a pool for spent nuclear fuel at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s Fukushima No. 1 plant has dropped, creating the possibility of a meltdown.
The container of the No. 3 reactor at the plant has possibly been damaged and the fuel in the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors is no longer fully covered with cooling water. If no countermeasures are adopted the fuel will melt, which could result in a large radiation leak. Workers handling the disaster must unite their efforts to secure a water supply as quickly as possible and cool the fuel.
Equally important as bringing the nuclear power disaster under control is a proper response to the threat of radiation.
It goes without saying that people's health must be protected. At the same time we must ensure the well-being of people put at risk and ease people's anxiety.
It is only natural that people living within a 20 kilometer radius of the nuclear power plant have been evacuated. People living between 20 and 30 kilometers from the plant have been ordered to stay indoors, but is this an appropriate response?
Even though the risk may be low in this area at present, the government should consider ordering evacuations in the outer ring as well to ease people's anxiety and ensure that they can get back to life as normal. We also call on local government bodies around the nation to consider accepting people from these areas.
Even in areas located far away from the plant, people have started evacuating. With only limited information available, it is only natural that they feel uneasy. But if people in areas that face an extremely low risk start evacuating, confusion will arise, and this could hinder efforts to aid the people who really need help. What is important is for people to have a "healthy" measure of fear.
At the Fukushima nuclear power plant, fission reactions were brought to a halt immediately after the earthquake struck, so the situation is fundamentally different from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. But could the situation worsen to a level on par with Chernobyl, and if so what kind of risk would people across Japan face? Many people want answers.
When calling for a calm response, authorities must assess not only the current risk, but also the risks in a worst-case scenario, and provide people with accurate information, including the probability of such a scenario.
The government is unequivocally responsible for establishing guidelines. We want the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission and other related bodies to actively carry out their responsibilities. At the same time it is also probably necessary for academic committees and other expert organizations to analyze the risks, support the government and provide information to residents.
We have pointed out in the past that establishing a reliable and consistent source of information is an important part of crisis management. But the government must not go too far in controlling information. To cover the mouths of people in specialist fields will only harm the nation's interests. We call for combined wisdom that will enable Japan to overcome this crisis. (Mainichi)
The US state department has urged Americans living within 80km (50 miles) of Fukushima Daiichi, which lies 220km from Tokyo, to leave the area - a much wider exclusion zone than the 20km advised by the Japanese government. (BBC)
The radiation level rose at the troubled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant Thursday after the Self-Defense Forces' helicopters dropped water at its crisis-hit No. 3 reactor...The level around the plant's administration building rose to 4,000 microsievert per hour at 1:30 p.m. from 3,700 in the morning. It was unchanged shortly after the choppers dumped seawater onto the reactor ...The level around the plant's quake-proof building at which workers are standing by had risen to about 3,000 microsievert per hour, it said in the morning... (Kyodo)
Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a congressional hearing, ''There is no water in the spent fuel pool and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.''...Based on the NRC's finding, the U.S. Embassy in Japan has asked American citizens living within an 80-kilometer radius of the Fukushima No. 1 power station to evacuate as a precautionary measure.The Japanese government is currently setting the evacuation zone as areas within a 20-km radius of the plant and advises people outside the zone but within a 30-km radius to stay indoors. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it believes the U.S. evacuation recommendation is ''not appropriate'' and will bolster information sharing with U.S. authorities so as not to cause misunderstandings. Edano said that after the NRC chief made the remarks, the Japanese government provided U.S. experts with more detailed data. (Kyodo)
...at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant as the radiation level was 4.13 millisievert per hour at an altitude of 1,000 feet. The level comes to 87.7 millisievert at 300 feet, the minister also said. (Kyodo)
...A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday. (peak of oil)
Still no data about the air contamination when the radioactivity blatantly is not negligible.
The data released only concern the dose rate which only provide information about the external exposure...
Internal contamination by inhalation: the air is filled with radioactive elements (rise of the dose rate). Simple dust masks do not provide adequate breathing protection, They are only efficient if regularly changed against radioactive dust and warm particles.
To evaluate the dose levels thus the risks run by the population and the workers, internal and external exposure have to be added. The intensity of soil depositions need also to be worked out...
230,000 iodine tablets have been distributed but no order to use it has yet been given. To protect efficiently the thyroid they need to be intaken not later than at the beginning of the iodine contamination ( and they will only protect the thyroid gland if well administered)...
Weather is a key element. Wind blows contaminated air masses and rain can intensify soil depositions...
The situation has greatly deteriorated:
14th march 6h20 am local time:
1/ Explosion on reactor #2. Loss of containment. The problem originates in the pressurization chamber connected to the reactor where the pressure has decreased...rejections of radioactivite now become important and continuous;
2/ Radioactive emissions arising from the spent fuel pool containing the irradiated combustibles from reactor #4 are released straight into the athmosphere (lack of containment).
The increase of the dose level proves the transit of contaminated air masses.
NORTH: OGANAWA (update)
...
16th march 5 pm local time: 1.1 and 3.6 μSv/h (chart below)
... 75 KM SOUTH: PREFECTURE OF IBARAKI
Results given for 3 neighboring towns Kitaibaraki and Takahagi, coastal towns and Daigo 30km inland. The dose rate are multiplied by 100 reaching 4 to 5 μSv/h between 4 am and 10 am local time. Levels then decrease regularly still remaining 10 times over the normal level...
230 KM SOUTH: TOKYO (update)
16th march 6h10 pm local time: 1,1 μSv/h at Hiroguchi
...Still no public release on the volumic activity in Bq/m3 of the appearing radionuclides. The lack of data about the air contamination...precludes assessing the real level of risk faced by the population...
Even more worrying is the increase of the dose rate which can - and probably does - correspond with levels of air contamination that are not negligible contrary to the official declarations, and that require safety measures. The people have the right to this information.
People are living for days under the threat of a nuclear catastrophe without knowing practically nothing about the levels of radioactivity to which they are exposed.
The CRIIRADdenounces the underevaluation of the severity of the accidents that occured at the nuclear plant of Fukushima Daiichiand the crucial lack of information as much about the amounts of radioactive rejections since friday as of the levels of air contamination. Without these data it is impossible to estimate the levels of radiological risks. The few figures available preclude in any case qualifying the rejections as "minor" (level 4 on the INES scale) or "low".
A premature classification
Saturday 12 march, the japanese authorities have ranked at level 4 on the INES scale the accident of reactor #1 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant while the accident was still in progress and while several other reactors faced a state of radiological emergency. The workforce of the plant continues exposing itself to very high levels of radiations to avoid a cooling system failure of reactors #1, #2 and #3 becoming a nuclear catastrophe. Extreme steps have been taken to cool the reactors at any price such as the injection of sea water despite the inherent risks. [By wednesday this job was being undertaken by air with helicopters].
The AIEA has registered the level 4 ranking without any correction. To this day as we know no nuclear safety authority has put it into question.
The International Nuclear and radiological Event Scale (INES) classifies nuclear accidents according to their consequences on site or oustside of the nuclear site. Concerning the consequences inside the site, level 4 corresponds to an important damage to the core of the reactor or the radiological barriers;when the damage is severe the classification reaches level 5, 6 or 7 according to the importance of the radioactive rejections outside of the plant which obviously conditions the level of the exposure risk of the population.
Level 4 corresponds to a minor rejection of radioactivity in the environment;
Level 5 to a limited rejection capable of generating a partial implementation of preplanned countermeasures;
Level 6 to an important rejection capable of requiring a full implementation of the preplanned countermeasures;
Level 7 to a major rejection with significant effect on health and the environment.
To support the classification to level 4 (important damage but not severe to the core of the reactors and minor rejections of radioactivity) neither the japanese authorities, nor the IAEA have released figures; neither on the scale of the rejections, nor their isotopic composition (nature and ratio of the appearing radionuclides that work out the radiotoxicity of the radioactive emissions) nor on the levels of the air contamination at various distances from the plant.
Suprisingly too are the televised declarations about the radioactive rejections described as "minor" by the minister for Ecology sunday morning, even though she admitted having no data at her disposal. Was this description based on the appraisal given by the french experts from the Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire(IRSN), the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) and Areva that she had brought together earlier to evaluate the situation? It would be interesting to know if the minimization is imputable to the official experts [as it happened in France in 1986 during the Chernobyl accident] or to the politicans. [...Andre-Claude Lacoste, head of France's Nuclear Safety Authority, said today he thought it was "worse than Three Mile Island but not as great as Chernobyl". ..."We have the feeling that we are at least more than level five and probably at level six," Mr Lacoste said. "I say this after speaking to my Japanese counterparts."... (news.com.au)]
According to the CRIIRAD the rejections are neithe "minor" nor "low".
Based on the too rare measures available the CRIIRAD refutes categorically this classification...
A terrible lack of transparency
If the authorities maintain that the rejections are minor or low they have to justify this based on objective and verifiable figures.
The CRIIRAD asks for the estimates on the total amount of the rejection of radioactivity for every accidented reactors, and for the isotopic composition of the rejections, to be made public. The CRIIRAD calls also for the publlication of the levels of the air contamination: cartography of the volumic activity (Bq/m3) for the key radionuclidesfunctions of distance and time. It is important to work out the intensity and the movements of the contaminated air masses. Available data suggest indeed that radioactive rejections from Fukushima Daiichi have reached the Onagawa plant located 110-120 km to the North.
...If the informations on the size of the activities, the concentrations and the doses are not released during the crisis phase, we fear it will be very difficult to work out afterwards the real nature of the levels of exposure.
Japan is threathened by a nuclear catastrophe, very little is known about the level of radioactivity to which people are exposed ...at the Fukushima Daiichi plant worker's health is endangered..
12 march: dose levels next to the plant reached 1.5 milliSievert per hour (1.5 mSv/h), 10,000 times the normal level...in 40 minutes one absorbs the maximum level acceptable in a year for members of the public: 1 mSv ( 0.11 µSv/h)..
[the most exposed workers can reach in normal circumstances an upper limit of 20 mSv / year] The admissible risk for the public at 1mSv / year corresponds to 5 radio-induced cancers per 100,000 population...
Following the explosion of the building of reactor #2 the japanese authorities have disclosed extremely high level of exposure ( one million times the level of natural background radiation) :
Réacteur n°3 : 400 mSv/h (milliSieverts par heure) Réacteur n°4 : 100 mSv/h Réacteur n°2 et 3 : 30 mSv/h
Such values are very far from low levels of radiations with pathologies such as cancer occuring after decades...these high doses of irradiation generate massive amounts of cell destruction and the effects are tangible after hours, days, weeks or months depending on the level of exposition...
...in a couple of hours the most radiosensitive cells are severely damaged: bone marrow cells, bowel lining, skin cells..nervous syndroms.. plus cancers keeping their pace...
We don't know how the rotation of workers is organized in order to understand the exposure levels,... we only know for sure that they risking their lives to avoid a catastrophic situation...
[the levels of admitted exposure for people working during a radiation emergency can been raised from 20 mSv/y to 100 and even to 500 mSv/yin case of a radiological emergency. The maximum ceiling is 500 mSv/y. Many lives may be lost among workers as a consequence.]
The Internation Agency (for the promotion of) Atomic Energy (AIEA) in a press release underlines that the value of 400 mSv/h was...a « local value at a single location and at a certain point in time »..., without documenting their evidence...100 mSv/h and 30 mSv/h remain highly elevated values...no proof that 400 mSv/h was the the highest value in loco, just three results have been published ...they need valuation considering the surface of the area.
At 1 am CET the AIEA declares that at the main gate the level was 11,9 mSv/h and six hours later0,6 mSv/h equal to well over 1.000 times the normal level...
...doses accumulate hour after hour, ... we are days since the start of the emergency situation.
Radioactive spill and air contamination: no data!The figures made public only consider the absorbed dose through external exposure to radiations resulting from the disintegration of radioactive atoms at a distance from the organism, a bit like UV sun exposure.
Internal doses of exposure, absorbed by internal contamination when gas, halogen or radioactive aerosols are inhaled, have to be added. This is true evrywhere in Japan where high dose rates have occured [A slow rate of an identical exposure dose has a lesser impact than a quick one].
Therefore it is indispensable to know the levels of the air contamination: the volumic activity inbecquerel per volume [Bq/m3 ] for each radionuclide present or at least the most significants sanitarywise.
We ought to know the activity of... Iodine-131, Caesium-137, Krypton and Xenon isotopes...and the transuranians (Plutonium and Americium isotopes)...
The intensity of the soil depositions, is the second key parameter that works out the level of of the contamination of the food chain and the risks for population.
To this day the quantity of radioactivity leaked in the environment is still a mistery. Officialcommuniqués mention willingly controlled discharges relating to depressurizationoperations dictated by necessity otping for the lesser of two evils, none of which can control the radioactive emission .
Moreover the emissions associated with fires, broken pipes, or other incidents that are totally out of control need to be added.
What are the level of exposure 100 or 200 km from the Fukushima plant?
Chart: Oganaka contamination µSv/h12- 15 march 2011
The dose rates above put in µSv/h (microSieverts hour) or µGy/h (microgray hour) reports the external level of exposure. The results need to be compared to the natural background level ( background noise) which is lower than 0.1 µSv/h ( around 0.03 to 0.06 µSv/h ) in the zones we examined.
NORTH: ONAGAWA PLANT
Onagawa plant sits some 120 km NNE from Fukushima Daiichi...6 detectors are installed around the site.
12th march: ... 7 pm local time ( 11.oo am CET ) the dose levels seem to rise. ... midnight levels rise a hundredfold, overshoots 10 µSv/h ...peak at 21 µSv/h on the 13th near 2 am local time ( 500 times the normal level) then levels diminish significantly... ( up again at 8,3 µSv/h around 10 am )...but slowly.
This tuesday 15th at 4 pm local time ( 8am CET) the results read between 1,1 and 5,4µSv/h. These later values, at nearly 100 times the normal level, assert the persistant presence of contaminated air masses and/or rays emitted by ground depositions of radioactive particles.
The weather conditions should become favourable within hours probably for 24 hours with winds blowing from the NW pushing contaminated air masses emigrating from Fukushima Daiichi towards the SE.
SOUTH: TOKYO
Tokyo stands 230 km SW of the Fukushima Daiichi.
march 14th: available results show normal levels of radiation fluctuating around 0.05 µSv/h
Tokyo's municipality declares dose rates of 0.81 µSv/h between 10 and 11 am local time, 16 times the background noise. Levels decreased to 0.075 µSv/h afterwards. These results are related to incoming flows of contaminated airmasses.
In the nuclear site of TOKAI, 115 km SSW of Fukushima Daiichi, the increase has been slightly more important this morning reaching 1.2 µSv/h. The preceding evening these levels were at 0.03 and 0.005 µSv/h. This was forcastable given the wind changed direction.
The values disclosed are generally labelled as negligible by the authorities in charge despite a lack of precision about the nature and the concentration of the radioactive elements, generating the elevation of the dose rate. To evaluate the level of air contamination and advice judiciously the affected people about the control of the contamination, one needs to know the level of the air contamination.
Specifically, the level of radioactive contamination of Iodine-131, -132...ought to be known. Emergency management plans require the distribution of stable Iodine tablets only at levels deemed to high for the CRIIRAD. In France e.g., tablets are distributed only if the authorities forecast dose to the thyroid equal or superior to 50 mSv. This figure is 5 times higher than the dose recommended by the WHO for children, pregnant women and breast feeding women. A total transparency about these values is indispensable to establish if the protection of people is provided or not, and at which level - be it in Tokyo or even more in the areas located nearer to the source of the radioactive rejections.map of Japan with significant radioactivity measurments
Bruno Chareyron, responsable du laboratoire de la CRIIRAD Roland Desbordes, Président de la CRIIRAD
CRIIRAD
471 avenue Victor Hugo
26000 Valence
France
Tel : 04 75 41 82 50
Fax : 04 75 81 26 48 asso@criirad.org Translation and [comments]
Alexandre de Perlinghi (copyleft) ==================================================================== march 15
Potential health consequences of the explosion at the Fukushima reactor in Japan
...
Dr. Busby said the reassurances being issued now by official sources and by apologists for the nuclear industry are exactly the same as those issued 25 years ago, at the time of Chernobyl. Risks were understated, as show by subsequent epidemiological studies.
Statements about allegedly low health risks are based on rates of gamma radiation measured at the site perimeter. These take no account of radiation from alpha-emitting radionuclides such as Uranium and Plutonium. It is of particular concern that the number 3 reactor at Fukushima which is now in a problematic condition is fuelled with Mixed-Oxide fuel containing Plutonium.
The health consequences of exposure to radioactive releases from nuclear plant cannot be accurately assessed by making radiation measurements based on absorbed dose. The authorities already downplay risks on the basis of the false radiation risk model advised by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). This is an exact replication of the responses to the similar Chernobyl explosion. The effects of the Chernobyl accident have been devastating and continue to affect the health of the exposed populations as far away from Chernobyl as Europe and the USA. A major volume published in 2010 by the New York Academy of Sciences reveals a death toll of approaching 1 million persons by 2005.
Absorbed dose readings (milliSieverts) cannot be employed as measures of risk because some radioactive substances act from within the body, with especially high risk imparted by those that bind to DNA (e.g Strontium-90 and Uranium). Dose to the local tissue or DNA can be enormous while the average dose recorded by a Geiger counter may be barely detectable. (More information)
If significant amounts of radioactivity from the Fukushima plume approach populated centres in any country (e.g. the western USA) the European Committee on Radiation Risk advises:
Do not believe assurances from radiation protection advisors working for any government. They are based on an obsolete model. This is a potential Chernobyl level event and must be seen as extremely serious.
If possible obtain a Geiger Counter or a similar radiation detector or readings from someone who owns one. If the readings increase to more that twice the normal background in your area or to a level of more than 300nSv/h (300nGy/h) then:
Get away as soon as possible to a clean area. If it is not possible to evacuate, stay indoors and keep all the doors and windows closed for as long as the radiation levels are higher than normal. Try to keep the house sealed as far as possible.
Drink bottled water, use only tinned milk. Avoid fresh garden produce. (We acknowledge that this is difficult advice for the people of Japan, where local produce is economically important.) Await further bulletins on this site and ECRR
...Hebrew University Professor Menachem Luria, an expert on air quality and poisoning, told Channel 2 on Saturday: "This is very worrying. There is no doubt that we have not seen anything like this in years, perhaps ever since nuclear experiments were conducted in the atmosphere in the 1950s. From what we can gather, this disaster is even more dangerous than Chernobyl, both from the standpoint of the population's exposure to radioactive material and the spread of radioactive contamination in the area."...(Haaretz)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)
On August 29, 2002, the government of Japan revealed that TEPCO was guilty of false reporting in routine governmental inspection of its nuclear plants and systematic concealment of plant safety incidents. All seventeen of its boiling-water reactors were shut down for inspection as a result. TEPCO's chairman Hiroshi Araki, President Nobuya Minami, Vice-President Toshiaki Enomoto, as well as the advisers Shō Nasu and Gaishi Hiraiwa stepped-down by September 30, 2002.[6]
The utility "eventually admitted to two hundred occasions over more than two decades between 1977 and 2002, involving the submission of false technical data to authorities".[7] Upon taking over leadership responsibilities, TEPCO's new president issued a public commitment that the company would take all the countermeasures necessary to prevent fraud and restore the nation's confidence. By the end of 2005, generation at suspended plants had been restarted, with government approval.
In 2007, however, the company announced to the public that an internal investigation had revealed a large number of unreported incidents. These included an unexpected unit criticality in 1978 and additional systematic false reporting, which had not been uncovered during the 2002 inquiry. Along with scandals at other Japanese electric companies, this failure to ensure corporate compliance resulted in strong public criticism of Japan's electric power industry and the nation's nuclear energy policy. Again, the company made no effort to identify those responsible.
In France the decommissionning costs of the nuclear power plants are estimated at 60 billion euros (source), in the United Kingdom at £73 million (source).
Measuring radioactivity can be confusing: various units coexist for different purposes. Different units allow measurement of the exposure intensity, the activity of the source, the absorbed dose and the effective biological dose. The main units in use are rem, gray, rad, sievert and becquerel.This summary intends to ease understanding the values. The natural background radiation, like radon gaz and high altitude exposure with air travel shouldn't be added to the calculus in most instances or has to be stricly differentiated.
A war is ongoing between scientists concerning the doses and the model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). One side pulls the concept of "there is no safe dose" which could put an end to nuclear electricity production as well as some medical radiations and nuclear weapons (see ECRR and ECRR Risk Model and radiation from Fukushima) because if there is no safe dose, no one can be exposed and thus cannot maintain the equipments. While the big biz side hums the tune "despite Chernobyl and Fukushima, it's safe".
EXPOSURE INTENSITY UNITS (1,2,3,4) The units used to measure ionizing radiation are rather complex. The ionizing effects of radiation are measured by units of exposure.
Old Unit: the curie (symbol Ci) is roughly the activity of 1 gram of the radiumisotope226Ra or15g of 239Pu .New SI unit: the becquerel (symbol Bq) is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second .
1 Ci = 3.7×1010Bq 1 Ci = 37 GBq 1 μCi = 37,000 Bq1 Bq = 2.70×10−11 Ci1 Bq =2.70×10−5 μCi 1 GBq = 0.0270 Ci 1 TBq = 27 Ci
The typical human body contains roughly 0.1 μCi (=37,000 Bq) of naturally occurring potassium-40
Activity of one ton of Uranium 238 = 0.3 Ci = 11.1 GBq
Activity one gram of plutonium 239 = 2.3 GBq
Definition of contaminated zones after the Chernobyl disaster:≥37 kBq/m2 of Cs-137 (= 1 Ci/km2)
Natural radioactiviy
Rain water: 0.3 à 1 Bq/L
River water : 0.07 Bq/L (226Ra et descendants) ; 0,07 Bq/L (40K) ; 11 Bq/L (³H)
Sea Water: 14 Bq/L (40K mainly)
Mineral Water : 1 -à 2 Bq/L (226Ra, 222Rn)
Milk: 60 Bq/L
Human body: 8,000 to 10,000 Bq ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABSORBED DOSE UNITS
Old unit: the rad or rd (Radiation Absorbed Dose)
New SI unit: the Gray (Gy) measures the deposited energy of radiation.
1 Gy = 1 Joule of ionizing radiation per kilo of body tissue 100 rad = 1 Gy
1 rad = 0.01 Gy
A whole-body exposure to 5 or more Gy of high-energy radiation at one time usually leads to death within 14 days. Hair loss may be permanent with a single quick dose of 10 Gy.
A slow rate of an identical exposure dose has a lesser impact than a quick one.
Old unit: the rem [Roentgen (or rad) equivalent in man (or mammal)]
New unit: the Sievert (Sv) attempts to quantitatively evaluate the biological effects of ionizing radiation as opposed to the physical aspects, which are characterised by the absorbed dose, measured in gray. The equivalent dose to a tissueis found by multiplying the absorbed dose (Gy) by a "quality factor" Q, dependent upon radiation type, and by another dimensionless factor N, dependent on all other pertinent factors.N depends upon the part of the body irradiated, the time and volume over which the dose was spread, even the species of the subject. Together, Q and N constitute the radiation weighting factor, WR (1)
1 Sievert = 100 rem 1 rem = 0.01 Sv
The conversion from rad and Gy to rem and Sv, depends of the level of Linear Energy Transfer (LET), a measure of the energytransferred to material as an ionizing particle travels through it (2).The biological effects of alpha particles and neutrons (high LET radiation) are in general much greater than the effects of beta particles and gamma rays (low LET radiation) of the same energy. The Radiation Weighting Factor wR is introduced to take account of thedifferent biological effectiveness of alpha and beta particles, neutrons, X and gamma rays.(TORCH)
For alpha particles and neutrons (which have a HIGH LET):
"Roughly" (I don't want to detail everything here this post is long enough already) 1 rad = 20 rem and 1 Gy = 20 Sv
For beta particles, gamma rays and X-rays (which have a LOW LET)1 rad = 1 rem, 1 Gy = 1 Sv
The international limit for radiation exposure for member of the public is 1 mSv per year, for nuclear workers it is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year,[198]however for workers performing emergency servicesEPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv/y when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv/y when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations." The limit to certain parts of the body can reach 500 Sv/y.
The ICRP sets the admissible risk for the public at 1mSv / year which corresponds to 5 radio-induced cancers per 100,000 population.
European Committee on Radiation Risk recommends that the total maximum permissible annual dose limit to members of the public involving releases of anthropogenic isotopes or natural isotopes delivered in a novel fashion should be kept below 0.1mSv (nuclear workers should be 2mSv) as calculated using the ECRR model.
The ICRP cancer risk coefficient is about 0.05 per Sievert and that of the ECRR is 0.1 per Sievert. (ECRR)
It is complicated to convert Bq in Sv, (see links below and ECRR ). To eat 80,000 Bq of wildboar meat (= 2 kg in certain occurences in Bavaria [TORCH]), corresponds to 1 mSv.
Telco in Japan has hiked the radiation exposure limit for its workers at the plant from 100 millisieverts per shift to 150 millisieverts.
Exposure (unprotected) begins to be lethal at 2 Sv/y.Vomiting and hair loss occur at 70 rem and 75 rem respectively, while exposure to 400 rem can mean possible death in two months. (WSJ)
Medical Scanner: lowest estimates 0.05 mSv ( local), 25 mSv (head), 150 mSv (whole body) according to Wikipedia. The Wall Street Journal says a computer tomography scans, which emit roughly 1,500 microsieverts of radiation, or a full set of dental X-rays, about 400 microsieverts.
The CRIIRAD assesses that in France, 5 to 10,000 people die each year of medical irradiations. (Trait d'union , Criirad, n°6, decembre 1997).
EFFECTIVE COLLECTIVE DOSE
1950-1970: The total radioactivity caused by atomic weapons in the world: +/- 30,000,000 Sv Chernobyl: 600.000 Sv
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
..... There are important concerns with respect to the heterogeneity of dose delivery within tissues and cells from short-range charged particle emissions, the extent to which current models adequately represent such interactions with biological targets, and the specification of target cells at risk. Indeed, the actual concepts of absorbed dose become questionable, and sometimes meaningless, when considering interactions at the cellular and molecular levels.(CERRIE Majority Report Chapter 2.1 paragraph 11).
In other words, where hot or warm particles or Plutonium or Uranium are located in body tissueor where sequentially decaying radionuclides like Strontium 90 are organically bound (e.g. to DNA) “dose” means nothing. This is massively significant. Official radiation risk agencies universally quantify risk in terms of dose. If it means nothing the agencies know nothing and can give no valid advice.Their public reassurances fall to the ground. They can no longer compare nuclear industry discharges with the 2 millisieverts we get every year from natural radiation, or the cosmic rays you’d receive flying to Tenerife for a holiday.Dose is meaningless ... emerging consensus ====================================================================
CHERNOBYL
Russia, Belarus and Ukraine received the highest amounts of fallout while formerYugoslavia, Finland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Norway, Rumania, Germany, Austria andPoland each received more than one petabecquerel (10E15 Bq or one million billionbecquerels) of caesium-137, a very large amount of radioactivity.
In the particular case ofthyroid cancer, there is evidence that the risk is directly proportional to dose, down todoses as low as 10 mSv
...CRIIRAD maintains that as a result of the Chernobyl accident there are still ‘accumulation points’ above 1 500 metres altitude across the entire alpine arc where the soil presents such high levels of radioactivity that it must be considered low‑ to medium‑level radioactive waste(1). In some places in France, CRIIRAD has taken caesium 137 soil contamination readings of over 500 000 Becquerels per kilo...(question of MEP Marco Cappato to the European Commission) Restrictions on Food Still in PlaceIn many countries
Restriction orders remain in place on the production, transportation andconsumption of food still contaminated by Chernobyl fallout:22% of the surface of Belarus and 6% of Ukraine have been contaminated with levels of Cs-137 superior to 40,000 Bq/m2
In the United Kingdom restrictions remain in place on 374 farms covering 750 km2 and200,000 sheep. In parts of Sweden and Finland, as regards stock animals, including reindeer, in naturaland near-natural environments. In certain regions of Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Polandwild game (including boar and deer), wild mushrooms, berries and carnivore fish fromlakes reach levels of several thousand Bq per kg of caesium-137. In Germany, caesium-137 levels in wild boar muscle reached 40,000 Bq/kg. Theaverage level is 6,800 Bq/kg, more than ten times the EU limit of 600 Bq/kg.
Cotterill et al (2001) reported an increasing incidence of thyroid cancer in the Northof England, particularly Cumbria one of the two areas in the UK receiving the heaviest fallout. They pointed out that iodine-131 concentrations in rainwater were as high as 784 Bq/litre and in goat’s milk as high as 1,040 Bq/litre. These concentrations are higher than the EC’s Community Food Intervention Levels shown in table 4.2.(TORCH)
Food contamination limits in Europe (2004) .......................................................................Cs-134 Cs-137....Cs-134 Cs-137 CEE/EU internal production ................................(import) ...... [during a radiological emergency]
dairy products: ..........................................370 Bq................ (600 Bq/kg)...... [1,000 Bq/l] milk and baby food: ................................ 370 Bq/l ...............(370 Bq/l)...... ...[370 Bq/l] fruits and veg. : ......................600 Bq/kg............(600 Bq/kg)...... [other food: 1,250 Bq/kg] other products: ........600 Bq/kg............ (600 Bq/kg) ....... [liquids 1,000Bq/l other products 600Bq/kg]................................. [condiments 12,500 Bq/l] Pu-239:
dairies 1 Bq/kg id.
baby food 20 Bq/kg id.
other 80 Bq/kg id
I-131:
dairies 150 Bq/kg id.
baby food 500 Bq/kg id.
other 2,000 Bq/kg id
Sr-90:
dairies 75 Bq/kg id.
baby food 125 Bq/kg id.
other 750 Bq/kg id Ukraine bread and potatoes20 Bq/kg milk: 100 Bq/l
meat: 200 Bq/kg
Compared with other nuclear events: The Chernobyl explosion put 200 / 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; atomic weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s all together are estimated to have put some 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Chernobyl accident.(source IAEA)
One of the episodes of the Cold war was the Chernobyl meltdown (April 25, 1986). It was never properly investigated, as the Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, at that time in power only about a year, blamed the meltdown on the previous administration and 'malaise' of the Soviet society he wanted to reform with his perestroika.He announced the meltdown as follows:
All of you know that there has been an incredible misfortune -- the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It has painfully affected the Soviet people, and shocked the international community. For the first time we confront the real force of nuclear energy, out of control.
Western media repeated Gorbachev's interpretation of this meltdown as an 'accident,' and obscured the 'qui bono' question with verbiage about the environmental impact of this catastrophe. At that time Gorbachev still did not know that this event will be a significant factor in the fall of his government that preceded the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Increasing doubtsYears later, Russian people began to grasp the impact of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and realized who likely benefited from it. Also, with the passage of time, the naive belief of Russian people in the benevolence of the United States, nurtured for decades by the Cold War propaganda, had to face the reality of the Bush I, and later Bush II foreign policies, abnegating on assurances given and treaties concluded with the Gorbachev administration prior to withdrawal of Soviet armies from the Eastern Europe. About that time, articles about the possibility that Chernobyl 'accident' was staged by foreign secret service agencies started to emerge in the Russian press (Sovietskaya Rossiya, June 16, 1992, April 25, 1996, Za Ruskoe Delo 6, 38, 1996, Trud, April 26, 1995) and elsewhere, recently reappearing on Pravda.ru (February, 2004) . These allegations were based on observations that, under scrutiny, "It is unlikely that the sequence of events that led to the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor could have been accidental" and that "Technicians which disconnected the safety mechanisms of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, Alexandrov, Feinberg, Sagdeev, Zaslavsky,are now living in comfort abroad."
Technologies with hidden malfunctions
In the late 1960's Western intelligence agencies started to sabotage the Soviet Union's economy through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions. On June 3, 1973, Russia's supersonic rival to Concorde, the TU-144, crashed during the air show at the Le Bourget airport. Pilot of the Tupolev's supersonic plane Mikhail Kozlov and his five crew died in the crash. The wreckage of the plane which looked so like the British-French machine that it was dubbed Concordski hit the village of Goussainville, killing eight persons.Unknown to the public at that time, the French intelligence agency sent a Mirage III jet on a collision course with the TU-144. To avoid collision, the pilot of the Soviet aircraft took an evasive action during which his airplane with the built-in construction flaw, broke apart in midair. The press, as in the numerous other staged "accidents," blamed the crash on the pilot error.
The Ronald Reagan's initiative
In 1982, US president Ronald Reagan officially approved the covert transfers of technologies that contained hidden malfunctions, including computer software, to the Soviet Union (Washington Post, February 26, 2004). This program, among other "accidents," triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian gas pipeline. Thomas Reed, former member of the National Security Council, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and a Special Assistant to President Reagan for National Security Policy described this episode in his (2004, Presidio Press) book At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War. His narrative is complemented by the Gus Weiss (1996) article The farewell dossier, published in now declassified CIA journal Studies in Intelligence, 39, 5. Also, two years prior to the Chernobyl disaster, a US computer software consulting agency won the contract on the upgrade of Chernobyl’s nuclear plant software. We might as well to add in passim that in China, before 1911, anyone who passed the Imperial Examinations could become a Mandarin with a single exception of actors, as the nature of their profession is to pretend and to deceive.
Disinformation
On July 25, 1986 New York Times published Serge Schmemann's Chernobyl Fallout: Apocalyptic Tale where he claims that a 'prominent Russian writer' said that Chernobyl means wormwood. This led some to believe that the Chernobyl's nuclear plant meltdown was predicted in the Biblical Revelation 8:10-11, abstracted as 'the third angel sounded and there fell into water a great meteorite called Wormwood. Many people died drinking this bitter-tasting poisoned water.' Chernobyl (chornyi, black + [byl]inka a blade of grass, a herb) was likely named after some 'black herb' growing at that locale. While a 'black herb' could be translated into English as wormwood, the linguistic controversy that developed around this issue markedly added to the plethora of disinformation surrounding the nuclear meltdown of the Chernobyl power plant, diverting attention from the relevant issues into the trivia. Serge Schmemann is son of Alexander Schmemann, a collaborator of 30 years of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), an organization which receives its funds from the US Congress passed through CIA. After the fall of the Soviet Union, this organization started to broadcast to Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, prior to military invasions of these countries. Recently, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/ started its Persian service beamed at Iran. Surrounded by concrete barricades and circled by armored vehicles, it is now located in Prague, Bohemia (Czech Republic). While the second allegation might have been a happenstance, perusing the sequence of events that led to the Chernobyl nuclear explosion leaves one with a doubt that these events could have been unintentional or accidental.
Notes
Chernobyl and the Nevada test site.
The overwhelming attention the media paid to Chernobyl nuclear incident can be contrasted with the virtual media blackout on the nuclear contamination of the American Southwest from more than four decades of the above-the-ground testing of the nuclear bombs on the Nevada Test Site. The fallout clouds from these over 400 nuclear explosions floated across the American Southwest.
Comparisons of radiation level released at Chernobyl with radiation level of the Hiroshima bomb vary substantially, a reasonable estimate is that the Chernobyl radioactive release was equivalent to ten Hiroshima atomic bombs.[200 to 400 times see below].
The aftermath of these nuclear explosions is described by Carole Gallagher (1993, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press) in her bookAmerican Ground Zero. Carole Gallagher spent several years interviewing people who live in Nevada, Utah and Arizona, including Native Americans, farmers, ranchers, professors, housewives, soldiers and artists. What they had in common wereleukemia, brain tumors, birth defects, sterility, miscarriages, thyroid cancers ...
As stated in our letter of 24 March 2007 (attached), the Agreement (WHA 12-40 signed on 28 May 1959) between WHO and the IAEA, prohibits the international health authority from undertakingactivities prejudicial to the interests of the IAEA. WHO thereby loses its freedom and its authority to control and coordinate matters relating to radiation and health. The terms of this Agreement run counter to the constitutional obligations of WHO.
Early in 1990, WHO was invited by the Soviet Ministry of Health to set up an international aid
programme. According to the chronological memorandum issued by Dr Nakajima (Director-General of WHO at the time) during the conference that he convened in Geneva, 20 – 23 November 1995, the international project was undertaken and completed by the IAEA in May 1991. Hence, it was the IAEA, rather than WHO, that provided the information and other aspects of the assistance requested by the Ministry of Health of the USSR.
...the scientific case against the agreement is building up, most recently when the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) called for its abandonment at its conference earlier this month in Lesvos, Greece.
At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times – consistent with the ECRR's own 2003 model of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators' Edition). According to Chris Busby, the ECRR's scientific secretary and visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical sciences:
"The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima, the agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO's independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and publish its findings."
Levels of uranium in the air over the territory of the European Union
According to data published by the Atomic Weapons Establishment,(1) levels of uranium considerably higher than normal were detected in the air in Berkshire (UK) in March and April 2003 and were reported to the Environment Agency because they exceeded the 1 000 nBq/m3 threshold value for notification. According to Professor Chris Busby, these levels can be linked to the use in Iraq during the same period(2) of weapons containing uranium. It had already been shown, in an EU‑wide report in 1999 by the Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe, that wind-borne particles of uranium could travel hundreds of kilometres.
Can the Commission forward to Parliament all the data it possesses on uranium levels in the air over the entire territory of the European Union in the years 1998‑2005, and ask all the agencies and bodies responsible to supply corresponding data in their possession for the same period?
Did the Atomic Weapons Establishment, the Environment Agency, the Defence Procurement Agency or any other competent body alert it to the fact that warning levels had been exceeded in the UK and, if so, how did the Commission and the UK authorities act on the information?
Is the Commission minded to authorise a study on possible contamination of EU territory, and specifically airspace, resulting from the use of weapons containing uranium?
Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK’, C. Busby and S. Morgan, January 2006, European Biology and Bioelectromagnetics.
6 July 2009 E-3176/2009
Answer given by Mr Piebalgs on behalf of the Commission
The Commission notes that the data reported in the cited publication by the United Kingdom (UK) Atomic Weapons Establishment are referring to ‘total uranium’; they do not distinguish between the various isotopes. Thus, a distinction between depleted uranium (as used in the Iraq war) and natural uranium is not possible. Furthermore, the Commission is not aware of studies that would prove, with scientific evidence, significant dispersion of battlefield depleted uranium over several thousand kilometres (as would have to be the case for a transport from Iraq to the UK).
Data on uranium concentrations in air are available as part of the information submitted by Member States under Article 36 of the Euratom Treaty. However, such data are not relevant to the issue raised by the Honourable Member, since they either relate to uranium mining or milling sites or are below detection limits.
The Commission has not been notified by the UK authorities; indeed, exceeding a notification threshold established by a national authority does not constitute an alert in the sense of the Council decision of 14 December 1987 on Community arrangements for the early exchange of information in the event of a radiological emergency(1) — the ECURIE Decision.
The Commission is of the opinion that continuous monitoring of radioactivity in air as performed in the Union Member States is generally sufficient to detect any contamination significant from a radiological point of view.
(1)87/600/Euratom: Council decision of 14 December 1987 on Community arrangements for the early exchange of information in the event of a radiological emergency, OJ L 371, 30.12.1987.
BibliographyContamination radioactives: Atlas France et Europe, CRIIRAD and André Paris, Editions Yves Michel, 2002, ISBN 2913492150.
(1)Atlas of Caesium Deposition on Europe after the Chernobyl Accident, Eur 16733, Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1998, ISBN 92-828-3140-X (PDF) Full Version (English and Russian)
THE OTHER REPORT ON CHERNOBYL (TORCH), Ian Fairlie, PhD, UK. David Sumner, DPhil, UK, Prof. Angelina Nyagu, Ukraine Berlin, Brussels, Kiev, April 2006 COMMISSIONED BY Rebecca Harms, MEP, Greens/EFA in the European Parliament WITH THE SUPPORT OF The Altner Combecher Foundation
Radioprotection 2003, Vol. 38, No 4, pp. 529-542, ‘The Chernobyl fallout in France, critical review measurement-results obtained at that time and lessons learned for crisis management’, Ph. Renaud and D. Louvat (PDF)
2010 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, The Health Effects of Exposure to Low Doses of Ionising Radiation, Chris Busby, with Rosalie Bertell, Inge Schmitz Feuerhake Molly Scott Cato and Alexey Yablokov, Green Audit Press, Castle Cottage, Aberystwyth, SY23 1DZ, United Kingdom 2010 (PDF)
Introduction: Sorting out the Facts * Facts: * The accident was by far the most devastating in the history of nuclear power *
Emergency workers were exposed to high doses of radiation; the surrounding population to far less *
An increased number of radiation-related thyroid cancers is now evident *
Other than thyroid cancer, long term health impacts from radiation have not been detected *
Severe environmental impacts were short term *
Low-level radioactive contamination will persist for decades *
Chernobyl-type reactors have been upgraded for safety *
Few names around the world are better recognized than "CHERNOBYL." And few events have evoked greater controversy among scientists, government officials and the public. Over the decade since explosions destroyed the nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the accident and its aftermath have been studied extensively. Today, there is a common understanding among experts about what happened, why it happened and the major implications. But to much of the broader public around the world, the accident remains an enigma-a phenomenon that is feared, but little understood.
Chernobyl was by far the most devastating accident in the history of nuclear power. Radioactive fallout was mainly concentrated in the three former Soviet Republics States closest to the plant, but it also came down at lower concentrations over much of the entire Northern Hemisphere. What do we now know about the health and environmental impacts of this massive discharge of radioactive material?
This booklet attempts briefly to bring to light what has been learned after ten years of examining the consequences of the accident, reviewing both its immediate and long-term human health and environmental impacts. It is based principally upon the results of an international conference, "One Decade After Chernobyl: Summing Up the Consequences of the Accident," which brought together more than 800 experts from 71 countries in Vienna in April 1996 under sponsorship of the European Commission (EC), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).1
Today, people in the countries most affected by the accident-Belarus, Russian Federation and Ukraine and Belarus-continue to live with the consequences. This booklet aims to help both them and the broader public to separate the facts from the fears, and the scientific evidence from the science fiction.
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1 This conference took into account the results of major projects performed over the last ten years, including the International Chernobyl Project carried out in 1990-91, a 1995-96 IAEA project on the prospects for the contaminated territories, the WHO IPHECA (International Programme on the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident), and the Research Projects sponsored by the European Commission in collaboration with scientists in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor was completely destroyed by explosions that blew the roof off the reactor building and released large amounts of uranium fuel and other radioactive material into the environment. The reactor's remains are currently contained within a larger structure known as the shield or "sarcophagus" built in the months following the accident. One of the four original reactors at the site is in operation.
Large amounts of radioactive material-12 trillion (1018) international units of radioactivity, termed "becquerels" - were released into the environment, particularly during the first ten days. The discharge included over a hundred, mostly short-lived radioactive elements, but iodines and caesiums were of main relevance from a human health and environmental standpoint. Radioactive material from the plant was detectable at very low levels over practically the entire Northern Hemisphere.
Compared with other nuclear events: The Chernobyl explosion put 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; atomic weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s all together are estimated to have put some 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Chernobyl accident.
An estimated 200,000 workers (known as "liquidators"), from the local police and fire services, the Army and volunteers, were initially involved in containing and cleaning up the accident in 1986 and 1987, either in the front lines or administratively. Later, the number of people who became registered as liquidators rose to between 600,000 and 800,000 although many so listed received only low doses of radiation.
An "exclusion zone" initially some 30 kilometers in radius was established around the site and about 116,000 people within it were evacuated to less contaminated areas in the months following the accident. The exclusion zone was later extended and now covers 4,300 square kilometers containing the areas with the highest amounts of radioactivity.
Potassium iodide or iodate tablets were reportedly provided for 5.3 million people, of whom 1.6 million were children, although the efficiency of this distribution has not been quantified. The first to receive this preventive treatment were reported to be those from within the 30-km zone.
The town of Pripyat (pop. 45,000), home to most of the plant personnel, was completely evacuated and a new town, Slavutich, was constructed outside the exclusion zone.
In the years following the accident, an additional 210,000 people in the Republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were evacuated from their homes under government orders and resettled in less contaminated areas.
A total of 237 occupationally exposed people were admitted to hospitals and 134 were diagnosed with "acute radiation syndrome." Of these, 28 died within the first three months, while at least 14 additional patients have died over the past ten years although these were not necessarily associated with radiation exposure. Two other people died in the explosion, and one more presumably of heart failure.
Some 200,000 people involved in the initial clean up of the plant received average total body radiation doses of the order of 100 millisieverts (mSv)-a millisievert is a unit of radiation dose equivalent to about 10 general chest X-rays. This dose is about five times the maximum annual dose limit currently permitted for workers in nuclear facilities (20 mSv per year). Average worldwide natural "background" radiation is about 2.4 mSv annually.
Some 20,000 liquidators received doses of the order of 250 mSv; a few per cent of them received doses of 500 mSv; and several dozen people received potentially lethal doses of a few thousands of millisieverts.
Fewer than 10 percent of the 116,000 people evacuated from the "exclusion zone" received doses greater than 50 mSv; fewer than 5 percent received more than 100 mSv.
More than 400,000 people lived in areas contaminated with more than 555 kBq/square meter2- classified by Soviet authorities as areas of strict control, requiring decontamination measures and restrictions on the use of locally produced foods.
In Belarus, where an estimated 70 percent of the radioactive releases were deposited, about 20 percent of the population (2.2 million people) continue to live in areas where contamination initially exceeded 37 kBq/square meter-a low level not requiring decontamination and other control measures.
For people outside the former USSR, the highest (national) average radiation dose during the first year after the accident was 0.8 mSv, that means an additional dose equal to about one third of the dose due to natural background radiation in that year.
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2 levels of radioactive contamination in this report are given in kBq per square meter. The Becquerel is equal to one atomic disintegration per second. 1 kBq = 1000 disintegrations per second.
The radioiodines released by the accident delivered radiation doses to the thyroid glands of people, especially children, in heavily contaminated areas. The short-lived iodines (particularly iodine-131 with a half-life of 8 days) were ingested in foodstuffs, mainly contaminated milk, and also inhaled from the initial radioactive cloud. Radioiodines accumulate in the thyroid, thus irradiating the gland from the inside.
A sharp increase in thyroid cancer among children from the affected areas is the only major public health impact from radiation exposure documented to date. At the end of 1995, about 800 cases in children under 15 years of age had been diagnosed, mainly in the northern part of Ukraine and in Belarus. Three children among the diagnosed cases are known to have died of the cancer by then-which generally can be successfully treated surgically and by medication.
Based upon the current epidemiological projections, an increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer in adults who received radiation doses as children could occur, with the total number of cases possibly in the order of a few thousands.
The incidence of thyroid cancer among children born more than six months after the accident has remained at the low levels expected in unexposed populations. This confirmed that the risk of thyroid cancer was only increased among those receiving high thyroid doses in 1986 and not among those exposed only to the continuing low levels of exposure since then.
There are numerous reports of increases in incidences of specific malignancies in people living in contaminated zones and among liquidators. These reports are inconclusive, and require further investigation.
No increase has been detected either in the rate of leukaemia or in the incidences of any malignancies other than thyroid carcinomas because of the accident. Only ten years have passed, however, and cancers other than leukaemia do not usually occur until several years after exposure. Cancer registries need to be monitored and careful studies carried out to determine ongoing public health impacts and confirm predictions.
There are significant psychological health disorders and symptoms among the populations affected by the accident including anxiety, depression, fatalistic attitudes and psychosomatic disorders caused by mental distress. However, it is very difficult to separate these effects from those caused by the economic decline and the dissolution of the former USSR. What is clear is that these effects are not caused by radiation exposure.
Lethal doses of radiation were received by some animals and plants, especially coniferous trees and some small mammals, living within 10 km of the reactor site in the first few weeks after the accident. Because of rapid radioactive decay, however, dose rates around the plant had already declined by a factor of 100 by the Autumn of 1986. Moreover, the natural environment in even these localities had begun to recover visibly by 1989, and no sustained impacts on populations or ecosystems have been observed.
Direct radiation injury to plants and animals was reported only in local areas within the 30-km exclusion zone. In some cases, chronic dose rates may have reduced the fertility of some animal species inside the zone. But in most instances, long-term effects on plants or animals could not be demonstrated.
There have been some reports of birth defects among farm animals; but other evidence supports general recovery from radiation damage. The possibility of long term genetic effects remains to be studied.
Short-lived radioiodines were the greatest radiological concern during the first few weeks after the accident. But almost 30,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine were also contaminated with relatively high levels of Caesium 137 (in excess of 185 kBq per square meter), a nuclide with a half-life of some 30 years.
Radioactive caesium was deposited on the ground, including in agricultural and forested areas. Thus, initially many crops and forest products were heavily contaminated. Subsequently, as radiocaesium was absorbed into the soil and the roots of plants, low levels of contamination could still be found in new crops.
Drinking water supplies from some rivers and reservoirs near the plant were contaminated with caesium and strontium radionuclides during the month immediately following the accident, but levels fell rapidly. Regular monitoring since 1986 shows that there has been a steady decline in the radionuclide contents in these water bodies. Bottom deposits and banks of the Pripyat and Dnieper Rivers contain caesium, strontium, plutonium and other radioactive elements. During spring flooding, concentrations of radioactive materials increase by up to four times in these rivers, whose main drainage basins are in the most contaminated areas. Current contamination levels in reservoirs are well below the criteria that indicate degraded water quality.
Forest occupies 30-40 percent of the most contaminated area, and has played the role of filter in intercepting the fallout. Up to 90 percent of the fallout is concentrated in leaf litter. Caesium continues to be concentrated in wood, but concentrations in disbarked wood from most territories affected by the Chernobyl accident do not exceed admissible levels. Wood from the exclusion zone may require special treatment to meet these levels, and may for decades to come.
Game animals that graze in natural zones, and wild foods consumed by people, such as berries and mushrooms, continue to show elevated caesium levels that may surpass nationally adopted standards in the affected Republics. This is also the case in parts of the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom.
After 10 years of detailed analysis by Belarussian, Russian, Ukrainian and international experts, the principal causes of the Chernobyl accident are well understood. The accident occurred because of severe deficiencies in the design of the reactor compounded by the violation of operating procedures.
The lack of a "safety culture" in the responsible organizations of the former Soviet Union resulted in an inability to remedy such design weaknesses, even though they had been known before the accident.
The most serious deficiencies in other operating RBMK reactors are being addressed through safety upgrades. Between 1987 and 1991, a first stage of upgrading was performed on all RBMK units to eliminate the design deficiencies which contributed to the Chernobyl accident, to improve shutdown mechanisms and heighten general safety awareness among staff. There are plans for further safety improvements.
The "sarcophagus" that was constructed over the destroyed reactor has met the protection objective over the past 10 years. In the long term, however, its stability and the quality of its confinement are in doubt. A collapse of the structure could lead to a release of radioactive dust and radiation exposure to workers at the site, but widespread effects would not be expected.
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Fukushima Daiichi: From Nuclear Power Plant to Nuclear Weapon #1
revised with a new photograph of the imperiled Unit 4, 6 July “Our world is faced with a crisis that has never before been envisaged in its whole existence… The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.”
Albert Einstein, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 1946
Albert Einstein’s Warning and the Ominous Fate of Fukushima Daiichi
As the bad news gradually spreads that the debacle at Fukushima nuclear power plant #1 is becoming more perilous rather than less so, the words of Albert Einstein come to mind. Recall that the legendary physicist, Einstein, helped to set in motion the Manhattan Project whose personnel designed and built the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In his letter to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939 Einstein warned that if the United States did not enter and win the race to harness the destructive potential of atomic weaponry, Germany would almost certainly do so.
The Manhattan Project became a primary prototype for the Research and Development–R and D– partnerships linking the US government and for-profit corporations in what a Dwight D. Eisenhower would later describe as “the military-industrial complex.” Einstein himself did not directly participate in this huge initiative aimed at defeating the Axis powers linking Japan with Germany and Italy. One of the twentieth century’s most iconographic thinkers watched from the sidelines as other physicists and technologists applied many of Einstein’s theories to the building of atomic weaponry.
After Japan lay in ruins, not only from the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also from the massive carpet bombing of Tokyo and several other urban centers, Einstein went public with his fears and anxieties. In famous passages that have been subject to various translations and paraphrasing Einstein observed, “Our world is faced with a crisis that has never before been envisaged in its whole existence… The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.”
Albert Einstein worried that human ways of thinking could not be made to adapt to the changes brought to the world by the tapping the enormous energy sources emanating from the molecular constitution of inner space.
Japan as Laboratory
There have been many previews of the catastrophe anticipated by Einstein in the period after 1945 and before the March 3, 2011, 3/3/11, the day an earthquake and tsunami set in motion a chain reaction of interconnected crises that ruined Japan’s oldest operating nuclear power plant. The evidence grows every day that this local incident extends to national, regional and global chain reactions that one way or another will end Japan as we have known it and will transform our world in ways that are difficult even to imagine at this early stage of the crisis.
The direction and quality of this transformation depends very much on whether we can transform our way of thinking to adapt to the transformations brought about by our explorers of science and the innovators of technology that travel in their wake. By charting a course heading deep into inner space and tapping the volatile energy sources emanating from matter’s molecular constitution our civilization has been altered in ways that put us face to face with Einstein’s prophecy.
The four-decades-old installation on Japan’s eastern coast was at the moment of Fukushima #1’s destruction a virtual museum of nuclear technology. The design of the six GE Mark I reactors had been lifted from that of the power plant developed in the early 1950s for the US Navy’s first nuclear submarine.
As the tsunami hit, one of these antique GE reactors, number 3, was filled with the newest generation of plutonium-laced Aveda MOX fuel rods. A basic ingredient of nuclear bombs, plutonium isotypes are sprinkled among the 500 or so radionuclides currently being spread into air, ocean and groundwater from the massive explosions that transformed the Fukushima Daiichi power plant into the world’s largest and most menacing nuclear weapon.
In Japanese daiichi means number one. Fukushimi nuclear power plant #2, Fukushima Daini, is also situated on the Pacific coast about seven miles closer to Tokyo than Fukushima #1. Fukushima #2 also incurred major damage on 3/3/11. Presently all 54 nuclear power plants in Japan save one are completely shut down.
There is every reason to suspect that the vital information about the full extent of the nuclear disaster in Japan is still being kept from the public; that the life-threatening damage to Japan’s nuclear infrastructure does not end with Fukushima #1. The lack of public trust in an industry notorious for its lies, secrecy, military underpinnings, and lack of credible regulation is infusing resolve into the growing movement within Japan and around the world demanding that the nuclear power grid in one of the world’s most unstable geological regions should never be switched back on.
The growing evidence of increased frequency and severity of earthquakes in Japan with attending tsunami dangers adds urgency to the argument for the permanent decommissioning of nuclear installations that should never have been built in the first place. Some fundamental shift seems to taken place in the tectonic plates underlying this unstable region.
The Fukushima Debacle is Only in Its Infantcy
The growing realization that the worst of the Fukushima debacle lies in the future rather than in the past puts in sharp relief the pertinence of Einstein’s observation. Indeed, the prophetic nature of Einstein’s warning is starkly reflected in the failure of so many in government, in the media, in the academy, and especially in the richly-funded inner sanctums of the nuclear industry to respond appropriately to the terrifying implications of what is going so terribly wrong at Japan’s spewing Fukushima #1 power plant.
Rooted in old and outmoded motifs of perception, officialdom’s failure to identify the proliferating menaces in this unprecedented convergence of circumstances has extremely grave implications. What is being done and, more importantly, what is not being done at Fukushima nuclear plant #1 tragically illustrates Albert Einstein’s pivotal observation that the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our old ways of thinking.
A major obstacle blocking proper perception of the Fukushima debacle’s true nature has its origins in a propaganda meme going back to the 1950s. Initiated by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower with his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations in late 1953, this propaganda meme seeks to disassociate entirely the dual compartments within the nuclear industry.
While the global public has been fooled into thinking that the supposedly civilian branch of the nuclear industry is totally separate from its dominant military branch, this distinction is really a phantom.From its inception the deployment of nuclear energy to generate electricity was designed to give PR cover to the hugely lucrative and totally immoral business of building nuclear weapons. Indeed, to this day the bomb builders draw some of their ingredients such as tritium for their weapons of mass destruction for the operation of nuclear power plants.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/feb/03/sequoyah-to-produce-bomb-grade-material/
The façade of duality makes it difficult to see what is really transpiring at Fukushima. At Fukushima we are witnessing an installation built for the seemingly benign purpose of generating electric power suddenly transformed into a stationary weapon piled high with fissionable material with far more potential for mass destruction than a vast arsenal of large nuclear bombs.
Radioactivity as a Slow But Sure Weapon of Mass Destruction
In order to face squarely the hard truths of what is transpiring at Fukushima, it is necessary to possess some understanding of the powerful effects that many different forms of nuclear radioactivity have on life’s cyclical renewal. While radiation itself is as old as the universe, the capacity of human beings to generate this force of nature through the power of nuclear technology is something new under the sun.
Humanity’s new means of unleashing energies with godlike agency to alter life’s genetic blueprints, the very DNA of existence, forms by far the most consequential of the changes that Einstein warned us about. The stunning failure of Japanese and international responses so far to Fukushima’s radioactive emissions—emissions that could skyrocket at any moment beyond the wallop of what would be emitted from a full-fledged nuclear war — constitutes a tragic confirmation of Einstein’s worst fears. More than any other crisis to date, the nuclear debacle at Fukushima illustrates the failure of our species, but especially those who put themselves forward as our leaders, to adapt old ways of thinking to the changes ushered in by the splitting of the atom.
The science of measuring and understanding the effects of radioactivity on biological transformations is still in its infancy. Nevertheless since 1945 the tendency has been for promoters of applied nuclear power to deny, negate, or downplay the effects of radioactivity on life’s natural patterns of renewal. This culture of denial has its origins in the official response of US government officials to the radioactive contamination of all people, plants and animals that survived the first wave of destruction from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This unwillingness to contend with the effects of radioactivity on the public health of large population groups was captured in a headline in The New York Times on September 13, 1945. That headline proclaimed, “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin.” http://japanfocus.org/-Gayle-Greene/3672
Through the decades that followed the inception of the Nuclear Age in the A-bombing by the US government of Japanese civilians, the formal position of officialdom has hardly shifted at all. Again and again we have been reassured that the public health effects of industrially-generated radioactivity are negligible no matter what the source. Again and again public funding has been directed to convincing us that there is no need to fear, for instance, nuclear testing in the atmosphere; the mining, processing and manufacturing of nuclear products including nuclear weapons; the deployment of nuclear energy for the generation of electricity and for the propulsion of ships and submarines.
Not surprisingly this same pattern of disinformation is being tragically repeated in the failure to depict the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe as the true monstrosity of an emergency it really is. The system of professional malfeasance originated in 1945 is being extended to the Fukushima cover-up by nuclear industry officials as well as those in government, media and the academy who have allowed themselves to become their criminal accomplices. What are the legal implications of withholding from the public the information we need to do the best we can to protect ourselves, our families and our communities from potentially lethal assaults on our health?
This ongoing propensity of officialdom to downplay the effects of nuclear contamination is similar to the decades-long history of the tobacco industry’s stonewalling. Who can any longer be blind to the tobacco industry’s efforts to deny the mountains of evidence proving that smoking has major deleterious effects on human health?
A more recent equivalent is the campaign of the old, entrenched and sumptuously-funded lobby of Big Oil to deny that the massive burning of its main product over generations is affecting the global atmosphere. The other side of this same coin involves the suspicion that some of the big backers of the nuclear industry have covertly contributed to overinflating the political balloon of global warming in order to make nuclear power plants look like the green alternative to the fossil fuel industry.
It is suspected that this deformed tomato harvested 280 kilometres away from Fukushima #1 was affected by radiation contamination. It is almost certain that this baby was deformed by the radioactive effects of the extensive firing of depleted uranium shells in Iraq by US Armed Forces.
Who Are the Credible Sources?
Although the mainstream media has been largely AWOL on the Fukushima story, a number of conscientious authorities in the field of nuclear energy have come forward to explain the emergency in venues like Russia Today. These learned experts include Arnold Gundersen, Christopher Busby, Helen Caldicott, and Michio Kaku. Other officials, including at least two Japanese ambassadors and the Japanese emperor himself, have added their voices to point out the severity and unremedied character of the ongoing Fukushima crisis. For instance Akio Matsumuru, who regularly represents Japan at UN-sponsored conferences, issued a report dated June 11, 2012. Among the many alarm bells he rings, Matsumuru calls attention to the possibility that the phenomenon known colloquially as the China Syndrome is close at hand if it is not already occurring. Matsumuru observes,
1. In reactors 1, 2 and 3, complete core meltdowns have occurred. Japanese authorities have admitted the possibility that the fuel may have melted through the bottom of the reactor core vessels. It is speculated that this might lead to unintended criticality (resumption of the chain reaction) or a powerful steam explosion – either event could lead to major new releases of radioactivity into the environment. 2. Reactors 1 and 3 are sites of particularly intense penetrating radiation, making those areas unapproachable. As a result, reinforcement repairs have not yet been done since the Fukushima accident. The ability of these structures to withstand a strong aftershock earthquake is uncertain.
This Number 3 hulk at Fukushima #1 has been the site of both a nuclear meltdown and a hydrogen explosion. It is also the installation that was loaded with plutonium-laced nuclear fuel rods on 3/3/11.
While more and more very serious crises are identified every day, the chorus of voices keeps growing pointing to the catastrophe of catastrophes poised to happen at reactor number 4. Mitsuhei Murata, the former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland, minced no words in pointing out what he considers to be the main impending danger to the UN General Secretary. Murata asserted “It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor
The four images above are all of structure number 4, the ruin containing one of the 7 damaged cooling pool holding over 4,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima #1. This hulk of a structure is not expected to survive another significant earthquake. If the shock of another earthquake results in the spilling of this already-decimated structure’s radioactive cargo into the open air, it is predicted by a number of experts in the field that a radioactive bonfire will ensue that will be the slow-motion equivalent of a major nuclear war. Notice the large round bright yellow structure that appears in all four photographs, including the first one taken of the cooling pool above reactor number 4 before 3/3/11. Consider the obvious design stupidity that situates the cooling pool for spent nuclear fuel rods 100 feet in the air.
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The diplomat was commenting on the precarious state of the spent waste pool held 100 feet in the air by a blown-out structure that quite likely would collapse along with many tons of nuclear waste if another earthquake was to occur. The further break up of the already severely damaged “cooling pool” would lead to a huge radioactive fire that would burn for perhaps a century releasing dozens of the most toxic radionuclides known to science into air, ocean and groundwater.
Ron Wyden, a Senator representing the US state of Oregon, echoed similar sentiments after having himself inspected the Fukushima site. He observed,
The scope of damage to the plants and to the surrounding area was far beyond what I expected and the scope of the challenges to the utility owner, the government of Japan, and to the people of the region are daunting. The precarious status of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear units and the risk presented by the enormous inventory of radioactive materials and spent fuel in the event of further earthquake threats should be of concern to all and a focus of greater international support and assistance.
Since the first days of the crisis Alexander Higgins has been one of the most persistent, precise, and attentive bloggers regularly reporting on and interpreting the growing body of evidence that something truly terrible is going on at Fukushima #1. One of his headlines reports that the Fukushima catastrophe has already released into air, ocean and groundwater 4023 times the amount of deadly radioactive cesium than the fallout from the Hiroshima attack. Another headline reads, “Fukushima is Continually Blasting All of Us With High Levels of Cesium, Strontium and Plutonium and Will Slowly Kill Millions for Years to Come.”
The assault of radionuclides on human beings includes air-born, alpha-ray emitting nuclear particles that can find their way into our lungs, bones, muscles, and blood. The same forces of nuclear contamination assaulting us is are concurrently attacking our plant and animal relatives, some of whom we eat. The process of bigger creatures eating smaller creatures tends to increase the concentration of toxic contamination, including nuclear contamination, the higher one gets up in the food chain all the way to the lordly place inhabited by human omnivores.
The massive nuclear contamination of the Pacific Ocean is perhaps the wildest of the wild cards being dealt to us by the Fukushima debacle . The aquatic life in the Pacific Ocean has been an especially huge and prolific source of food for some of the most densely-populated zones of human habitation on the planet including Japan, China, Indochina, Australasia, and the Western Hemisphere. The discovery of radioactive tuna and radioactive kelp in California, not to mention weird sickness showing up among seals and walruses in Alaska, is without doubt but a small signal of bigger and badder things to come.
Like so much of the front line work of necessary investigation these days, most of the discovery of the awkward truths on the frontiers of Fukushima’s creeping effects on the ecology of life are being made private citizens rather than government officials. By and large the response to the Fukushima debacle of most governments, including my own Canadian government, has been to shut down monitoring programs and to lower the bar of minimal standards so a false patina of normalcy can be maintained.
The contamination in the oceans is matched by discoveries of traces of radionuclides in milk, eggs, meat, vegetables and fruit products. Even the fall of sweet rains have been contaminated. What happens to our inner sources of spiritual renewal when we can no longer seek without worry the healing forces of cleansing walks in the spring rains or the dawn mists?
Higgins tends to be especially quick to draw attention to those many instances when the Toyko Electric Power Corporation, TEPCO, revises data released in its own previous reports. Almost always these revisions reveal that TEPCO was initially lowballing its assessment of the extent of the interconnected catastrophes.
TEPCO was Fukushima #1’s “owner” prior to the 3/3/11 catastrophe. In spite of all the many well-documented instances of fraud and malfeasance in the lead-up to the Fukushima disaster, TEPCO inexplicably remains in charge of the supposed remedial operations at the devastated facility. So far TEPCO continues to prohibit third-party scientific observers from monitoring on site what is or is not being done. The company will not allow such observers to conduct their own independent studies of the true state of conditions at Fukushima #1.
Significantly Bloomberg News reported shortly after 3/3/11 that TEPCO’s level of liability to citizens and companies effected by the disaster goes only as high as $2.1 billion, a pittance under these horrific circumstances. As it now stands this amount could be reduced to zero if TEPCO can convince a Japanese judge that the debacle arises from an act of God.
As is so often the case when it comes to socializing the risk of dangerous industrial and military activities even as profits are privatized, the unwillingness of insurance companies to cover the corporate operators of nuclear power plants makes the governments and people of the host countries the real carriers of the huge risks accompanying the generation of electricity through nuclear fission.
Scientific Rationality Meets Insane-Asylum Irrationality
In one of Higgins’ early corrections he points out that TEPCO’s estimate that there is 1,760 tons of fresh and spent nuclear fuel at Fukushima is off the mark by over 200%. The subsequent figure released by TEPCO indicates that Fukushima #1 holds 4,277 tons of nuclear fuel rods, most of it nuclear waste stored in 7 cooling pools. All these cooling pools are now damaged and crippled to greater or lesser extents. After the earthquake and tsunami the whole industrial catastrophe at Fukushima #1 started with the breakdown of the systems to pump flows of cooling water through pools of spent fuel rods. Without this procedure these highly radioactive rods overheat, catch on fire, and blow up in a chain reactions of nuclear criticality. These chain reactions are already far advanced and taking place, at least for those of us who are attentive, right before our eyes.. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/03/19/the-amount-of-radioactive-fuel-at-fukushima-dwarfs-chernobyl-9281/
It is the magnitude of the vast pools of nuclear waste stored at Fukushima #1 and at many other nuclear power plants that give these installations the potential to become far more destructive than nuclear weapons. The so-called “pay loads “ of nuclear bombs are tiny compared with the thousands of tons of fissionable material stored not only at Fukushima but at most of the 500 or so nuclear power plants throughout the world. An awareness of the threat to public health– indeed to the health of all living creatures– posed by the release of even miniscule specks of this nuclear waste into air or water requires a genre of understanding that Einstein rightfully predicted would be in tragically short supply in a world where the stuff of human consciousness continues to fall far behind leaps in scientific discovery and technological transformation.
The tight juxtaposition at Fukushima #1 of so many separate facilities for burning nuclear fuel, processing nuclear waste, and storing nuclear waste embodies the weird marriage of scientific rationality and insane-asylum irrationality that is the hallmark of an industry founded in the military drive to expand the industrial frontiers of mass murder.
This convoluted traffic jam of the most dangerous industrial procedures known to humankind is a formula for projecting chain reactions through thresholds of nuclear holocaust. The creation at Fukushima #1 of an environment tailor made for the transformation of small problems into huge problems through chain reactions reflects perhaps the core phenomena on which the nuclear industry is ultimately based. The key to releasing nuclear energy in both bombs or nuclear power plants is to start the proliferation of chain reactions at the molecular level of inner space.
In the the case of the six GE Mark I reactors at Fukushima #1 and at the 23 similar installations in the United States, this insanity extends to putting the devices for burning nuclear fuel literally underneath elevated cooling pools for storing the nuclear waste.
This design concept might make some limited sense in the context of the tight confines of nuclear submarines. In retrospect GE’s decision simply to inflate the basic prototype of the power plant developed in the 1950s for the Nautilus nuclear submarine, and to use this design in land-based stations for the transformation of nuclear power into electrical power, must surely rank as one of the most dubious cost-cutting measures of all time.
The heritage of the Fukushima catastrophe in the technology of nuclear submarines speaks to the constitution of much larger phenomena. So much of what passes for the so-called civilian economy is based on mere industrial spin-offs from the military political economy whose preeminence was entrenched in the course of the Cold War and is now accelerating in the further militarization of society in the name of fighting the all-purpose boogeyman of “terrorism.”
Sadly the thoroughly preventable catastrophe at Fukushima helps clarify the real sources of the most devastating terrors presently facing humankind. The transformation of Fukushima #1 into nuclear weapon #1 does not require a delivery system. The natural currents of the winds and the oceans are disseminating the radioactive toxicity more effectively that any missile, submarine, or secret Star Wars device.
The startling images of the holding pools for nuclear waste at Fukushima #1 lethally exposed to the open atmosphere in the upper levels of the blasted-out hulks of wrecked nuclear containment sheds puts in clear public view the intellectual, technological and ethical poverty of an industry that has become a maniac of unnecessary risk taking. These images can be viewed as a terrifying caricatures of the outlandish extremes of deregulation combined with the privatization of society’s core public utilities. Here is stark evidence to suggest that Einstein may have not gone far enough in anticipating the madness of what would transpire after the genie of nuclear power was released from the lantern.
Nuclear Waste: The “Back End” of the Nuclear Cycle
Spent nuclear fuel rods emerge from the process of generating nuclear power in nuclear reactors. These rods contain thousands of pellets that contain many varieties of radioactive isotypes, some of which continue to be highly radioactive for millions or even billions of years. Among the most toxic and long-lived are some of the isotypes of cesium, strontium, uranium, americium, curium, and neptunium. Clearly there are vast technical problems entailed in isolating such varieties of nuclear waste from life’s fragile ecologies of interaction with earth, air, and water for periods of far longer than all of recorded human history. These problems have combined in ways that have long been recognized as the so-called Achilles heal of the nuclear energy industry.
There are no valid reasons for using the sites where nuclear power is generated for the long-term storage of nuclear waste, the most dangerous genre of which is spent nuclear fuel rods. Indeed, the terrible catastrophe at Fukushima #1 demonstrates graphically the compelling reasons for not mixing these functions. This practice of combining the different stages in the industrial cycle of nuclear fuel developed not as a result of any properly conceived plan. It evolved, rather, as an ad hoc political expedient derived from the near-inevitable propensity of local inhabitants to mobilize public opinion against the building of facilities for permanent storage of nuclear waste in their regions, communities, and neighborhoods. This pattern gave rise to the development of a short-form term acronym used frequently and with disdain by some officials in the nuclear industry. That term is NIMBY—Not In My Backyard.
In my view there are deeper dimensions to the virtual abandonment by the nuclear industry (except, perhaps, in China) of initiatives to design, locate and build facilities specifically devoted to the task of permanently storing nuclear waste. Almost invariably any mobilization of citizens that starts with a NIMBY approach expands to provide a focus of public education and popular organization aimed at addressing the broader set of dangers connected to virtually every facet of the industry the produces both nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.
One of the strategies for avoiding the problem of having to deal with an organized opposition of informed citizens has been for the embattled nuclear industry to try to keep a low profile by letting nuclear waste accumulate out of sight and out of the public’s collective mind at nuclear power plants. The lack of enthusiasm within the nuclear industry to find viable and safe ways to dispose of nuclear waste goes back to the origins of the nuclear energy industry as a spin-off of military R and D. As Carol L. Wilson, the first General Manager of the US Atomic Energy Commission observed when he looked back at the beginnings of the industry from the perspective of 1979,
Chemists and chemical engineers were not interested in nuclear waste. It was not glamorous; there were no careers; it was messy; nobody got brownie points for caring about nuclear waste… There was no real interest or profit for dealing with the back end of the fuel cycle.
(Carrol L. Wilson, “Nuclear Energy: What Went Wrong?” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Vol. 35, June, 1979, 15)
Extending the Frontiers of Nuclear Energy
This multiplication and compounding of dangers by making the sites of operating nuclear reactors double as storage facilities for nuclear waste, including spent nuclear fuel rods that require constant cooling, finds its epicenter in the United States and particularly in the earthquake/tsunami zone of California. The spewing mess of simmering criticality at Fukushima #1 draws attention to other highly nuclearized jurisdictions like France and Ontario where nuclear power plants also double as storage facilities for the most dangerous varieties of nuclear waste.
The Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant is even older and more antique than the Fukushima #1. Almost 20,000,000 New Yorkers live within a 50 mile radius of the installation. The nuclear waste stored on the site has been the subject of litigation with significant ramification for the US nuclear industry .
Officials admit to the storage of over 70,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods spread among the 104 “civilian” nuclear power plants in the United States. The continuation of this pattern of storing nuclear waste indefinitely at nuclear power plants has been called into question by a recent court ruling in New York. This court case arose from growing public antagonism to the operation of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in the midst of the urban megopolis of surrounding New York City. Almost 20 million people live within a 50-mile radius of this antique nuclear installation that is even older than Fukushima #1.
In the United States especially the military context of the so-called civilian branch of the nuclear industry is very clear. One of the biggest known accumulations of nuclear waste in the world is at the Hanover military reserve in Washington state where the assembly took place of the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Hanford reservation is the site of the storage facility for at least 53 million gallons of high-level nuclear waste.
The ongoing experimentation with nuclear energy continues by the US Armed Forces and its favoured stable of military contractors. This experimentation and the sometimes secret applications of its outcomes no doubt has large, if largely unacknowledged, consequences for the public health of many populations throughout the world but especially those in Eurasia. Elevated rates of cancer and human deformities imposed on humanity by the incursions of the military branch of the nuclear energy industry are most evident among the victims of depleted uranium attacks in Iraq. The tragedy inflicted on people there and in other afflicted populations will soon be showing up with more regularity as the short and long-term health effects of the Fukushima catastrophe begin to appear with more regularity in Japan, East Asia, North America, throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and across the world.
Some believe that the huge dark budgets directed towards the most covert branches of the national security state have given rise to the discovery of new scientific principles that have not yet been made public. Some of these discoveries may involve new ways of deploying nuclear energy in more targeted and covert ways. These new principles and the applied technologies flowing from them may, for instance, have been a factor in the near-instant transformation of the steel-framed Twin Towers into vapor and fine dust particles on 9/11. The obviously specious official cover story of the events of 9/11 has been instrumental in helping to infuse new life into old alignments of privilege and power that coalesced in the course of the Cold War.
Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the Dissolution of Empires
The nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986 was without doubt was a contributing factor to the end of the Cold War. The disaster was one of several factors that contributed significantly to the implosion of public confidence within the Soviet Union to the pretensions of its governors. This loss of confidence and prestige translated into the tarnishing of USSR’s reputation and viability in the international community as well. Moreover, the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl undermined the self-justifying mythology of the Soviet state as a bastion of scientific reason expressing the dialectical materialism that Hegel and Karl Marx had characterized as the principal animating force of human history. The nuclear accident was perceived even within the Soviet government as a telling indictment of the Soviet system.
From the perspective of those who styled themselves as leaders of the “free world” the demise of the Soviet state entailed the sudden disappearance of enemy #1 with its accompanying justifications for the huge power, influence, and affluence of those overseeing the activities of the national security state and its attending military-industrial complex. The official 9/11 cover story quickly returned to old elites all the advantages of a global enemy to manufacture and fight even as it gave new elites the means of transforming local enemies into generic enemies of the so-called “West.”
It is instructive to compare the responses to the destruction of the nuclear power plants at Chernobyl and Fukushima. The mobilization of 800,000 Soviet citizens inside and outside the Armed Forces to put quite literally a lid on the massive devastation done in the heartland the the Ukrainian bread basket stands as one of the Soviet Union’s finest hours. A huge sarcophagus was constructed on the site of maximum radioactivity to put some obstacles in the way of a terrible plague of nuclear sickness, death, and intergenerational deformities that has probably extended to millions even as it is. How many more millions or tens of millions would have been contaminated if the sarcophagus had not been built?
The Soviet reaction to the sudden explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 was monumental. The Soviet state mobilized 800,000 workers inside and outside the Armed Forces to respond to the crisis. Part of the response was to cover the maimed toxic structure with a massive sarcophagus shown here. The huge effort to contain the unprecedented menace to the public health of hundreds of millions of potential victims contrasts eerily with the tepid response to the nuclear catastrophe in Japan.
So far the response to the Fukushima debacle has been entirely different. In the days following 3/3/11 the instant diagnosis of the nuclear industry’s spin doctors was that the accident was “more than Three Mile Island but less than Chernobyl.” Another spin was that some “partial meltdowns” might be taking place. I remember thinking that the idea of a partial meltdown made about as much sense as the idea of a partial pregnancy. Mostly the mainstream media swept the Fukushima story to the margins of coverage with many venues parroting the Japanese government’s disinformation that the Fukushima #1 had been put into “cold storage” sometime around December of 2011.
As already noted, in some branches of the alternative media the coverage has been quite solid and quite equal to the magnitude of the Fukushima
catastrophe. There the assertions have gradually become more certain and confident that Fukushima’s potential for cataclysmic destruction vastly exceeds the extent of the Chernobyl debacle. Part of what makes the Fukushima crisis so menacing is the puny, incompetent, and frightened approach of those who keep TEPCO in the forefront, at least publically, of the official response to the worsening crisis. This is not to say that there has not been some heroic displays of courage, intelligence, innovation and self-sacrifice on the part of some individuals who tried to hold back the deluge of disaster. It is difficult to even imagine what it would mean to be in the their shoes.
But this ode to the best of the best of the first responders at Fukushima #1 does not in any substantial way mitigate my larger thesis that TEPCO’s corporate response to the crisis manifests the same malfeasance that created the conditions of the disaster in the first place. This unparalleled crisis, however, is about much more than TEPCO’s corporate inadequacies.
Ultimately I am saving my most concerted and targeted criticisms for those at the very top of the US-based nuclear industry, including officials in the US executive branch. These government and corporate officials cynically manoeuvred America’s most obedient formal and then informal colony to accept the nuclear energy spin-offs of American military technology when the Japanese people on their idyllic but earthquake-prone islands should never have been pressured to do so. It is in those circles of imperial power where real responsibility for the cataclysm resides even as it is in these same centres of authority from whence the major initiatives to contain the disaster should emanate.
The contrast between the Soviet response to Chernobly crisis and the corporatist response to the Fukushima crisis is therefore huge, telling and, ultimately, tremendously menacing for the future of human civilization let alone for the future of all life on earth. A small consolation is the lessons one can learn about the extent of the abandonment of any commitment to the public interest and the common good on the part of those who claim to be our leaders.
Does the worsening mess of mayhem and meltdown at Fukushima #1 embody the ailing American Empire’s Chernobyl moment?
Einstein versus Rickover
A major controversy is brewing inside and outside Japan about the decision of the government to transport radioactive debris from the Fukushima area for incineration in all parts of the country. There are several theories about why this is happening. One is that the government sees a great mass of law suits heading its way and is acting now to confound future scientific studies comparing the rates of cancer and the many other diseases in the most effected regions to the rates in less effected regions.
My view is that this irrational decision can be attributed to the entire Japanese society breaking down under the weight of one huge collapse after the next. The people of Japan have been traumatized by natural disasters of great magnitude. We must continually remind ourselves outside Japan of the stresses and strain that the natural disasters have imposed on the entire population. The grave failures of the Japanese government to respond appropriately to the Fukushima catastrophe need to considered through the lens of this consideration.
A big part of the problem is that the response to the Fukushima debacle should be international in scope. Alternatively, the crisis should not be treated as a matter primarily for Japan’s domestic politics. This domestication of control over nuclear power plants, when the effects of what happens in them is so obviously transnational in nature, goes back to Albert Einstein’s fear that most human beings would not be able to adapt proactively to the vast transformations that would come from splitting of the atom.
Like Robert Oppenheimer and many of the other scientists employed by the Manhattan Project, Einstein was of the view that there were too many vast and unknown factors in the unleashing of atomic energy to allow this field of study to take place within the sovereign jurisdiction of individual countries. Einstein envisaged the need for the formation of a new kind of international entity that would closely guard nuclear secrets as well as closely oversee and regulate advances in nuclear science. The Einstein faction was especially adamant that the application of the principles of nuclear science to technological change was especially fraught. Such applications should be strictly prohibited until the the full consequences of every innovation was fully studied and properly understood.
The catastrophe at Fukushima and the lack of any concerted international response is a marker of the preemption of the Einstein faction by its detractors. Admiral Hymen G. Rickover, the US naval engineer who was put in charge of developing a nuclear submarine shortly after the Second World War, was the leader of the anti-Einstein faction. Once he developed the nuclear power plant for the Nautilus submarine Rickover turned his hand to developing land-based nuclear power plants for the generation of electricity.
Between 1954 and 1957 Rickover developed a model “civilian” nuclear energy plant in Shippingport Pennsylvania. He used that site as a teaching platform in a process of what he considered the democratization of knowledge and expertise in tapping the power of the atom. He efforts converged with a propaganda campaign mounted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In promoting “Atoms for Peace” Eisenhower sought to ease growing public trepidation on both sides of the Cold War that the escalating process of testing bigger and bigger nuclear weapons in the atmosphere seemed pointed towards nuclear holocaust through nuclear war.
The Atoms for Peace initiative was promoted particularly aggressively in Japan, a country whose people had and still have ample cause to reject anything associated with the atomic power given the attacks they have endured at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These obstacles were overcome by the frontiersman of both the formal and informal empire of the United States.The US promotion of nuclear energy as a way of generating electricity became deeply integrated into the anti-communism that preoccupied US policy makers and their corporate clients like GE in that era. As planned, Japan was shaped into a bastion of containment to fend of the influences of Chinese Maoism. The presidency of former GE media spokesperson Ronald Reagan and the six GE nuclear reactors at Fukushima #1 were outgrowths of this saga.
Years later Admiral Rickover radically revised his view that nuclear power plants were benign instruments of peace and progress. When asked about the subject at the end of his career the engineer responded
Every Time you produce radiation you produce something that has a certain half-life, in some cases billions of years. I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important to try to get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it.. I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation.
Currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada.His been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen's University Press entitled "The Bowl with One Spoon"
Part II was selected recently by The Independent in the UK as one of the best books of 2010. The journal of the American Library Association called Earth into Property "a scholarly tour de force."
One of the book's features is to set 9/11 and the 9/11 Wars in the context of global history since 1492.
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Ten years after Chernobyl :What do we really know?
Compared with other nuclear events: The Chernobyl explosion put 400 times more radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; atomic weapons tests conducted in the 1950s and 1960s all together are estimated to have put some 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Chernobyl accident.
