Canadian Medical Association Journal - FUKUSHIMA: Public health Fallout from Japanese Quake

“Culture of cover-up” and inadequate cleanup. Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks

By Canadian Medical Association Journal

Global Research, December 30, 2011

Canadian Medical Association Journal - 2011-12-21

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28401

A “culture of cover-up” and inadequate cleanup efforts have combined to leave Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks nine months after last year’s meltdown of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, health experts say.

Although the Japanese government has declared the plant virtually stable, some experts are calling for evacuation of people from a wider area, which they say is contaminated with radioactive fallout.

They’re also calling for the Japanese government to reinstate internationally-approved radiation exposure limits for members of the public and are slagging government officials for “extreme lack of transparent, timely and comprehensive communication.”

But temperatures inside the Fukushima power station's three melted cores have achieved a “cold shutdown condition,” while the release of radioactive materials is “under control,” according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/coldshutdown.html).

That means government may soon allow some of the more than 100 000 evacuees from the area around the plant to return to their homes. They were evacuated from the region after it was struck with an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami last March 11.

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CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON - Lone holdout's first nuclear winter looms in Tohoku

By CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON

Special to The Japan Times

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20111218x2.html

 

MIHARU VILLAGE, Fukushima Prefecture — As bitter winds blow around cesium and other radioactive particles spewed from the nearby Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's reactors, Naoto Matsumura lights a cigarette, which he considers relatively good for his health.

"I would get sick if I stopped smoking; I have a lot to worry about," says Matsumura, 52, who reckons he is the only person still living within a 20-km radius of the world's worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl.

According to reports from Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency published in August, following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, and subsequent explosions at three reactors about 13 km from Matsumura's door, the plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has released 168 times more radiation than the atomic bombs that razed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Living without electricity or enough money to fill his generators with gas, even as the mercury is already dipping below zero, Matsumura wonders if his neighbor's supply of charcoal will be enough to keep him warm through the frigid winter in his corner of the once-thriving town of Tomioka that used to be home to 16,000 people.

He's worried, too, that the hundreds of animals he's been feeding since the area's other residents were evacuated in haste on March 12 — some 400 cows, 60 pigs, 30 fowl, 10 dogs, more than 100 cats, and an ostrich — won't survive to see another spring.

"They need help from humans," he says while lighting another of the 20-odd cigarettes he admits to smoking a day. "My supplies to feed them will be gone by the end of December. They need food, and buildings for shelter from the winter. I'm the only one taking care of everything. The government should do it, but I'm doing it."

As we stand in a rice field outside the exclusion zone about 40 km due west of the ongoing meltdowns, Matsumura tells me that he comes from an ancestral line of samurai, and he was raised by a "spartan" father to work hard and think for himself.

A lifelong farmer, he's lived alone since separating from his wife 10 years ago. When his worried children, aged 23 and 21, called from their homes in distant Saitama Prefecture after the explosions in March, Matsumura says he told them: "Don't worry. If the whole world dies from this nuclear disaster, I'm still not going to die. I'm not going to leave here."

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Al-Jazeera-English - 'Facile': Greenpeace Penetrates French Nuclear Plant

Published on Monday, December 5, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2011/12/201112514312118302.html

Activists hang banner on reactor building in what they say was operation to expose weaknesses in national security.

Greenpeace activists secretly entered a French nuclear site before dawn and draped a banner reading "Coucou" and "Facile", (meaning "Hey" and "Easy") on its reactor containment building, to expose the vulnerability of atomic sites in the country.

Activists hung a banner reading 'Coucou' (Hey) and 'Facile' (Easy) on the reactor containment building. (AFP) Police, whom the environmental activist group immediately told of the publicity stunt, took several hours to round up nine intruders who had broken into the power plant in Nogent-sur-Seine, about 95km southeast of Paris, on Monday.

Greenpeace said the break-in aimed to show that an ongoing review of safety measures, ordered by French authorities after a tsunami ravaged Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant earlier this year, was focused too narrowly on possible natural disasters, and not human factors.

"With this nonviolent action, Greenpeace has shown how vulnerable French nuclear plants are," said Sophia Majnoni d'Intignano, a Greenpeace activist.

Activists who tried to enter three other French nuclear sites, in a co-ordinated action on the same day, were prevented from doing so, but Greenpeace said other invaders were still holed up inside other, unspecified, nuclear sites.

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Helen Caldicott - After Fukushima, Enough Is Enough

Dr. Helen Caldicott is on the Progressive Radio Network every Sunday at 3pm(ET) with "If You Love This Planet." Listen live at PRN.fm

Published on Friday, December 2, 2011 by the International Herald Tribune

by Helen Caldicott

The nuclear power industry has been resurrected over the past decade by a lobbying campaign that has left many people believing it to be a clean, green, emission-free alternative to fossil fuels. These beliefs pose an extraordinary threat to global public health and encourage a major financial drain on national economies and taxpayers. The commitment to nuclear power as an environmentally safe energy source has also stifled the mass development of alternative technologies that are far cheaper, safer and almost emission free — the future for global energy.

When the Fukushima Daiichi reactors suffered meltdowns in March, literally in the backyard of an unsuspecting public, the stark reality that the risks of nuclear power far outweigh any benefits should have become clear to the world. As the old quip states, “Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water.”

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The Accolade Award of Excellence Bestowed to Gary Null and Knocking on the Devils Door!

Gary Null is proud to announce that his feature-length documentary, Knocking on the Devil's Door, has been awarded by The Accolade! 

The Accolade is unique; it is an awards competition, not a traditional film festival. Awards go to those filmmakers, television producers, videographers and new media creators who produce fresh, standout productions. It is a showcase for cinematic gems and unique voices.

The Accolade recognizes producers, established and emerging, who demonstrate exceptional achievement in craft and creativity. Undiscovered and first-time producers are often recognized.

The Accolade has recognized productions from all over the world including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Guam, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, Martinique, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States and Venezuela. 

Awards of Excellence

Gary Null & Associates, Knocking on the Devil's Door, feature documentary

Award of Merit

Gary Null & Associates, Knocking on the Devil's Door, feature documentary  contemporary issues/awareness raising

Justin McCurry - Fukushima Fuel Rods May Have Completely Melted

Published on Friday, December 2, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/02/fukushima-fuel-rods-completely-melted

One of the plant's nuclear reactors was close to being breached as fuel rods bore through its concrete floor, says Tepco

by Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Fuel rods inside one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have completely melted and bored most of the way through a concrete floor, the reactor's last line of defence before its steel outer casing, the plant's operator said.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said in a report that fuel inside reactor No 1 appeared to have dropped through its inner pressure vessel and into the outer containment vessel, indicating that the accident was more severe than first thought.

The revelation that the plant may have narrowly averted a disastrous "China syndrome" scenario comes days after reports that the company had dismissed a 2008 warning that the plant was inadequately prepared to resist a tsunami.

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NRDC - Limerick Nuclear Plant’s Re-Licensing Application Circumvents Safety Analysis Requirements

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

November 28, 2011

NRDC Files Petitions to Intervene in the Limerick Nuclear Plant Operating License Renewal Application, Citing Obsolete Accident Mitigation Study

WASHINGTON - November 28 - Exelon Generation, the owner of the Limerick nuclear power plant outside of Philadelphia, is seeking federal re-licensing of its plant without updating a 1980s-era accident mitigation study, due to an inappropriate exemption received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), according to petitions filed last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“The tragedy in Japan has resulted in a hard look at the safety of nuclear plants worldwide and is providing critical new information that can help prevent future disasters. We need to learn from that failure, not ignore it,” said Christopher Paine, director of the nuclear program at NRDC. “The Limerick nuclear power plant’s safety analysis for mitigating unlikely but severe accidents is decades out-of-date. Re-licensing it now without a fresh analysis of potential safety upgrades would be a reckless decision, especially given that the current operating licenses for these twin units don’t expire until 2024 and 2029. There is ample time to take a fresh look at safety improvements.”

The NRDC petitions contend that Exelon’s license renewal application is deficient because it relies on outdated and insufficient safety and risk information and fails to fully consider the alternatives to re-licensing Limerick as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

All U.S. nuclear plants are required to conduct a critical safety review known as a Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives, or “SAMA,” analysis to determine potentially cost-beneficial operational safety upgrades at nuclear plants. The last analysis for Limerick, completed in 1989, relied upon population data from 1980 and therefore didn’t take into account evacuation planning and the health risk from radiation exposure for up to 1.4 million additional people now living downwind in the Philadelphia-Wilmington-Newark metropolitan area.

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Washington's Blog - Fukushima: “China Syndrome Is Inevitable” … “Huge Steam Explosions”

“Massive Hydrovolcanic Explosion” or a “Nuclear Bomb-Type Explosion” May Occur

By Washington's Blog 

Global Research, November 22, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27804

Fukushima May Blow

I’ve repeatedly noted that we may experience a “China syndrome” type of accident at Fukushima.

For example, I pointed out in September:

Mainichi Dailly News notes:

As a radiation meteorology and nuclear safety expert at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, Hiroaki Koide [says]:

The nuclear disaster is ongoing.

***

At present, I believe that there is a possibility that massive amounts of radioactive materials will be released into the environment again.

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Suvendrini Kakuchi - Women Fight to Save Fukushima's Children

Published on Monday, November 7, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/07-2

by Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO - Hundreds of Japanese women have been converging on the Japanese capital demanding better relief for some 30,000 children exposed to nuclear radiation by the Fukushima meltdown.

"Official recovery policy focuses on decontamination rather than protecting the health of those most vulnerable - children and pregnant women," activist Aileen Mioko Smith told IPS.

"Our meetings with officials to force faster evacuation programmes for high-risk groups are only met with promises to clear radioactive waste. This is totally irresponsible," said Smith, who leads the non-government organisation (NGO) Green Action Japan.

Smith criticised the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, for focusing energies on defusing public tension by promising to reduce exposure in affected areas to below one millisieverts (a measure of radiation) per year.

On Wednesday, TEPCO admitted that one of the Fukushima reactors showed presence of radioactive material from a burst of nuclear fission, indicating fresh leakage.

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BBC News - Belgium plans to phase out nuclear power

BBC NEWS, 31 October 2011 Last updated at 08:31 ET 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15521865

Belgium's main political parties have agreed on a plan to shut down the country's two nuclear power stations, but they have not yet set a firm date.

A new coalition government is being set up and the nuclear shutdown will be on its agenda, officials say.

If alternative energy sources are found to fill the gap then the three oldest reactors will be shut down in 2015.

Germany is the biggest industrial power to renounce nuclear energy since Japan's Fukushima disaster in March.

Belgium has seven reactors at two nuclear power stations, at Doel in the north and Tihange in the south. They are operated by Electrabel, which is part of GDF-Suez.

The agreement reached on Sunday night confirms a decision taken in 2003, which was shelved during Belgium's political deadlock following the last government's collapse in April 2010.

Belgium will need to replace 5,860 megawatts of power if it is to go ahead with the nuclear phase-out.