Samuel Epstein -- Japan Proceeding Without Nuclear Reactors

It has been almost 18 months since the disastrous meltdowns struck four nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant in northern Japan. While daily news footage of exploding reactor buildings, emergency workers dressed like spacemen, and officials sweeping radiation detectors over children's bodies have disappeared, the impact of Fukushima continues.

While the Fukushima story is no longer a page-one news story, people must still be aware of how incredibly devastating the meltdowns were. This was no minor leak, but one of the two worst atomic meltdowns in history (Chernobyl was the other). Earlier meltdowns involved damage to just one reactor core; Fukushima destroyed three. Previous meltdowns never affected nuclear waste pools, but the Fukushima unit 4 pool sustained extensive damage and huge leaks. Other meltdowns contaminated the reactor's water source, usually a river; Fukushima poured its toxic chemicals into the Pacific, the world's largest ocean.

The question of how much radioactivity escaped into the air and water is an elusive question; estimates range between 20% and 300% of the Chernobyl amount. Likewise, we're still finding out how much of the radioactive gases and particles entered the air, water, and food. Measurements documenting extremely high levels have been taken near the Fukushima plant, an area evacuated by residents. But elevated radiation levels have been found in other parts of Japan. Because it took about six days for the radioactive plume to reach the West Coast and 18 days to circle the Northern Hemisphere, above-normal levels were also found in the U.S. and other nations, months after the meltdowns.

Of course, the most critical Fukushima questions involve harm to humans. How many workers at the plant became sick? How many local residents? How many living further away in Japan? Did infants and young children suffer more than adults? What types of diseases did they suffer from? But the biggest questions have generated the biggest silence. Thus far, there have been no official reports or publicly-announced data from Japanese health authorities on changes in disease and death rates after the meltdowns.

Buried in the many documents the Japanese health ministry places on its website is the monthly estimate of deaths. During the 12 months following Fukushima, the number of deaths for all of Japan jumped 57,900 above than the prior year. About 19,200 were additional deaths from accidents, almost all from the immediate impact of the earthquake and tsunami, but that left 38,700 excess deaths from other causes -- with no immediate explanation. While all of these cannot automatically be attributed to radiation exposure, they should be taken seriously and become the subject of extensive health studies.

Aside from the changes in health, Fukushima has also had a major impact on public policy. Within days of the meltdowns, Germany shut some reactors, four of them permanently; the Merkel government then announced a plan to phase out all remaining reactors by 2022. Belgium and Switzerland soon followed with similar phase-out plans. Italy, which has no operating reactors, placed a moratorium on plans to build new ones. Newly-elected French president Hollande campaigned on a pledge to drop the percent of French electricity from nuclear power from 75% to 50% by 2030.

Read more.. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samuel-s-epstein/fukushima-nuclear-_b_1790423.html

Karl Grossman - Meltdown at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The resignation last week of the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is another demonstration of the bankrupt basis of the NRC. Gregory Jaczko repeatedly called for the NRC to apply "lessons learned" from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster in Japan. And, for that, the nuclear industry quite successfully went after him fiercely.

The New York Times in an editorial over the weekend said that President Obama’s choice to replace Jaczko, Allison Macfarlane, “will need to be as independent and aggressive as Dr. Jaczko.”

That misses the institutional point.

The NRC was created in 1974 when Congress abolished the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission after deciding that the AEC’s dual missions of promoting and at the same time regulating nuclear power were deemed a conflict of interest. The AEC was replaced by the NRC which was to regulate nuclear power, and a Department of Energy was later formed to advocate for it.

However, the same extreme pro-nuclear culture of the AEC continued on at the NRC. It has partnered with the DOE in promoting nuclear power.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/28-5

Severe Nuclear Reactor Accidents Likely Every 10 to 20 Years, European Study Suggests

Western Europe has the worldwide highest risk of radioactive contamination caused by major reactor accidents.

Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) -- some 200 times more often than estimated in the past. The researchers also determined that, in the event of such a major accident, half of the radioactive caesium-137 would be spread over an area of more than 1,000 kilometres away from the nuclear reactor. Their results show that Western Europe is likely to be contaminated about once in 50 years by more than 40 kilobecquerel of caesium-137 per square meter. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, an area is defined as being contaminated with radiation from this amount onwards. In view of their findings, the researchers call for an in-depth analysis and reassessment of the risks associated with nuclear power plants.

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120522134942.htm

The Fuel Pools of Fukushima: THE GREATEST SHORT-TERM THREAT TO HUMANITY

This detailed report by our Contributor Washington Blog must be read very carefully.

The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation. The crisis in Japan has been described as "a nuclear war without a war". 

Nuclear radiation --which threatens life on planet earth-- is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.  

The implications of this report must be understood. Public opinion worldwide must be informed so that meaningful actions can be taken without delay in support of the Japanese teams. 

Read More:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30207

Richard Schiffman - Obama’s plan for nuclear sanity

“Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon,” read the headline. This frontpage banner in the satirical weekly The Onion may not have gotten the number exactly right. The Obama administration reported in 2010 that the US possesses 5,113 warheads in the stockpile and an additional 4,500 retired, but not yet dismantled, making the grand total even higher than the spoofers had guessed.

While media pundits in the U.S. warn darkly of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, America itself is regarded as the main nuclear threat in much of the world today. The United States argues that it needs these weapons to deter attacks on itself and its allies, and that it would only use them to prevent or respond to such an attack. But people in other countries wonder why Americans need so many of them — secreted away in missile silos, on submarines and in bombers, computer-targeted to obliterate their cities at the turn of a key.

Read More:

http://mondediplo.com/blogs/obama-s-plan-for-nuclear-sanity

Robert Scheer - The Ayatollah Is Right About One Thing: Nuclear Weapons Are Sinful

Given my own deep prejudice toward religious zealotry, it has not been difficult for me to accept the conventional American view that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme theocratic ruler of Iran, is a dangerous madman never to be trusted with a nuclear weapon. How then to explain his recent seemingly logical and humane religious proclamations on the immorality of nuclear weapons? His statement challenges the acceptance of nuclear war-fighting as an option by every U.S. president since Harry Truman, who, in 1945, ordered the deaths of 185,000 mostly innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“We do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons—quite the opposite,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Tuesday in summarizing the ayatollah’s views. Salehi added, “The production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin.”

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_ayatollah_is_right_about_one_thing_nuclear_weapons_are_sinful_20120229/

Renee Parsons - Israel's Nuclear History as US Troops Deploy to Drill

As the Obama Administration coordinates a global PR campaign of scare tactics for the upcoming attack on Iran, eerily reminiscent of the Bush Administration’s lies of WMD’s to justify its invasion of Iraq, it comes as no surprise that the US Congress has added its voice, enfeebled and corrupt as it is, in repayment for the Israel lobby’s $3 M during the 2010 election cycle, to ban any communication between US and Iran government officials. 
   
Intensifying the drums of war with over-the-top statements that Iran, with an inferior set of missiles and a vastly inadequate Navy, represents ‘the greatest threat to world peace” and that ‘the actions and policies of Iran threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States” ignore the inconvenient reality that US intelligence has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons capacity in Iran.Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who needs to cut back on the coffee, recently told 60 Minutes that Iran has “reached a point where they can assemble a nuclear bomb in a year or less’ only to have Pentagon press secretary George Little set the record straight “we have no indication that Iran has made a decision to develop a nuclear weapon.”   

Read More:

http://trueblueprogressivereport.blogspot.com/2012/01/israels-nuclear-history-as-us-troops.html

Eric Margolis - Iran's Nukes: Old Lies in New Bottles

Published on Saturday, November 12, 2011 by Eric Margolis

http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/old-lies-in-new-bottles.aspx

by Eric Margolis

NEW YORK – The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) long awaited, much ballyhooed report on Iran’s nuclear activities has been thunderously greeted here as conclusive evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

Both Tehran and a 2007 US combined intelligence assessment deny such claims.

There’s little new in this report, and a lot of déjà vu. We read the old story floating around since 2002 about a mysterious laptop stolen from Iran and passed to US intelligence. It allegedly contains scientific material about explosive compression methods to trigger a nuclear explosion, and designs to shrink nuclear warheads to fit in missile nosecones.

The UN and western powers say this stolen computer’s contents conclusively proves Iran has violated the UN’s non-proliferation treaty, to which Tehran is a signatory. Israel and its American partisans are raising a hue and cry about an impending nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran’s “crazy” leaders. Republicans are baying for war against Iran.

The US and UN also claim a Russian scientist who supposedly worked on Iranian nuclear weapons explosive technology defected and revealed all to western intelligence.

Click to read more ...

NC WARN - Nuclear Expert Cites New Concerns about Westinghouse Reactor Design Based on Fukushima Disaster

November 10, 2011

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/11/10-0

CONTACT: NC WARN, Friends of the Earth and AP1000 Oversight Group

Groups say design approval can’t legally be finalized until Fukushima lessons are incorporated, and that NRC plans to shove costly design corrections onto Georgia, South Carolina customers

DURHAM, N.C. - November 10 - Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen has documented at least six areas of unreviewed safety concern involving the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear plant design based on the ongoing Fukushima disaster, and he says these problems require full technical review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission before the plant design can be “certified.”  Today public interest groups filed his report – which expands on problems identified by a federal task force – with NRC commissioners who are considering a final vote on the plant design without responding to a long list of problems raised earlier by experts within and outside the industry.

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Harvey Wasserman - Where Occupy and No Nukes Merge and Win!!!

Published on Monday, October 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/24-5

by Harvey Wasserman

The global upheaval that is the Occupy Movement is hopefully in the process of changing---and saving---the world. 

Through the astonishing power of creative non-violence, it has the magic and moxie to defeat the failing forces of corporate greed. 

A long-term agenda seems to be emerging: social justice, racial and gender equality, ecological survival, true democracy, an end to war, and so much more. "When the power of love overcomes the love of power," said Jimi Hendrix, "the world will know peace." 

Such a moment must come now in the nick of time, as the corporate ways of greed and violence pitch us to the precipice of self-extinction. 

At that edge sits a sinister technology, a poisoned cancerous power that continues to harm us all even as 3 of its cores melt and spew at Fukushima. 

Atomic energy, the so-called "Peaceful Atom", has failed on all fronts. 

Click to read more ...