Linda Pentz Gunter - The Radioactive Waste Crisis

Before the month of January is out, the US Department of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future will unveil the result of its two year-long investigation into what to do with the accumulated radioactive waste at the country’s nuclear power plants. By this year’s end, that waste will constitute a mountain 70 years high, with the first cupful generated on December 2, 1942 at the Fermi lab not far from Chicago when scientists first created a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

There remains no viable solution for either the management or certainly the “disposal” of nuclear waste. Yet, the one recommendation that will not be contained in the DOE report is to stop making any more of it.  While a child would never be allowed to continue piling up toys in his or her room indefinitely, failing to tidy up the mess, the nuclear industry continues to be permitted to manufacture some of the world’s most toxic detritus without a cleanup plan.

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/20/the-radioactive-waste-crisis/

Karl Grossman - Russia's Radioactive Phobos-Grunt Space Probe Fell to Earth Sunday

Russia’s Phobos-Grunt space probe, with 22 pounds of radioactive Cobalt-57 on board, fell to Earth Sunday. The probe was launched in November to go to Phobos, a moon of Mars, but its rocket system failed to fire it onward from low Earth orbit.

There is some confusion as to where pieces of the 14.9-ton probe fell. The Associated Press reported Sunday that “pieces…landed in water 2,350 kilometers west of Wellington Island in Chile’s south, the Russian military Air and Space Defense Forces said in a statement.” The AP dispatch, datelined Moscow, quoted a spokesman, Colonel Alexei Zolotukhin, as saying that this “deserted ocean area is where Russia guides its discarded space cargo ships serving the International Space Station.”

But, the article went on: “RIA Novosti news agency, however, cited Russian ballistic experts who said the fragments fell over a broader patch of Earth’s surface, spreading from the Atlantic and including the territory of Brazil. It said the midpoint of the crash zone was located in the Brazilian state of Goias.”

“The $170 million craft was one of the heaviest and most toxic pieces of space junk ever to crash to Earth, but space officials and experts said the risks posed by its crash were minimal because the toxic rocket fuel on board and most of the craft’s structure would burn up in the atmosphere high above the Earth anyway,” said the article by Vladimir Isachenkov.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/15-7

John LaForge - Fukushima's Owner Adds Insult to Injury - Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn't Theirs

In the amoral milieu of the corporate bottom line, you can't blame Tokyo Electric Power Co. for trying.

Tepco owns the six-reactor Fukushima complex that was wrecked by Japan's March 11 earthquake and smashed by the resulting tsunami. It faces more than $350 billion in compensation and clean-up costs, as well as likely prosecution for withholding crucial information that may have prevented some radiation exposures and for operating the giant station after being warned about the inadequacy of its protections against disasters.

So, when the company was hauled into Tokyo District Court October 31 by the Sunfield Golf Club, which was demanding decontamination of the golf course, Tepco lawyers tried something novel. They claimed the company isn't liable because it no longer "owned" the radioactive poisons that were spewed from its destroyed reactors.

Read More:

http://www.truth-out.org/fukushimas-owner-adds-insult-injury/1325868945

Joseph J. Mangano and Janette D. Sherman - An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima: Is There A Correlation

The multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima plants beginning on

March 11, 2011, are releasing large amounts of airborne radioactivity that has

spread throughout Japan and to other nations; thus, studies of contamination

and health hazards are merited. In the United States, Fukushima fallout

arrived just six days after the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns. Some

samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the

U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal; however,

the small number of samples prohibits any credible analysis of temporal

trends and spatial comparisons. U.S. health officials report weekly deaths by

age in 122 cities, about 25 to 35 percent of the national total. Deaths rose

4.46 percent from 2010 to 2011 in the 14 weeks after the arrival of Japanese

fallout, compared with a 2.34 percent increase in the prior 14 weeks. The

number of infant deaths after Fukushima rose 1.80 percent, compared

with a previous 8.37 percent decrease. Projecting these figures for the entire

United States yields 13,983 total deaths and 822 infant deaths in excess of

the expected. These preliminary data need to be followed up, especially in the

light of similar preliminary U.S. mortality findings for the four months after

Chernobyl fallout arrived in 1986, which approximated final figures.

Read More:

http://www.radiation.org/reading/pubs/HS42_1F.pdf

John LaForge - CT Scans as a Leading Cause of Breast Cancer?

December 26, 2011

by JOHN LaFORGE

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/26/the-leading-cause-of-breast-cancer/

Profiteers in the medical CT scan business took a big hit last week from a major new government report on the causes of breast cancer.

Published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhaustive analysis found that medical radiation, particularly the large radiation dose delivered by CT scans, is the foremost identifiable cause of breast cancer.[1]

Almost 230,480 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed this year in the United States, and about 40,000 women will die of the disease, roughly one out of every 3,875 women.

The new Institute of Medicine report probably doesn’t sit well with the industry, hospitals and clinics that make so many millions of dollars selling and over-using CT machines. The authors suggest that women avoid “unnecessary” or “inappropriate” medical radiation, a thinly veiled criticism of the industry that will give you a CT scan for a tooth ache if you don’t object to it.

In 1980, there were 3 million CT scans performed in this country. The number rose to 62 million in 2006,[2] to about 70 million by 2007,[3] and, according to NBC, to 72 million this year.[4] It’s a growth industry that doesn’t care if it promotes tumor growth.

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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

Christopher Ketcham - Radiation From Cell Phones and WiFi Are Making People Sick -- Are We All at Risk?

By Christopher Ketcham, Earth Island Journal

Posted on December 2, 2011, Printed on December 3, 2011
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/warning_high_frequency/

Consider this story: It's January 1990, during the pioneer build-out of mobile phone service. A cell tower goes up 800 feet from the house of Alison Rall, in Mansfield, Ohio, where she and her husband run a 160-acre dairy farm. The first thing the Rall family notices is that the ducks on their land lay eggs that don't hatch. That spring there are no ducklings.

By the fall of 1990, the cattle herd that pastures near the tower is sick. The animals are thin, their ribs are showing, their coats growing rough, and their behavior is weird -- they're agitated, nervous. Soon the cows are miscarrying, and so are the goats. Many of the animals that gestate are born deformed. There are goats with webbed necks, goats with front legs shorter than their rear legs. One calf in the womb has a tumor the size of a basketball, another carries a tumor three feet in diameter, big enough that he won't pass through the birth canal. Rall and the local veterinarian finally cut open the mother to get the creature out alive. The vet records the nightmare in her log: "I've never seen anything like this in my entire practice... All of [this] I feel was a result of the cellular tower."

Within six months, Rall's three young children begin suffering bizarre skin rashes, raised red "hot spots." The kids are hit with waves of hyperactivity; the youngest child sometimes spins in circles, whirling madly. The girls lose hair. Rall is soon pregnant with a fourth child, but she can't gain weight. Her son is born with birth defects -- brittle bones, neurological problems -- that fit no specific syndrome. Her other children, conceived prior to the arrival of the tower, had been born healthy.

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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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Jon Herskovitz - Drinking the Radioactive Kool-Aid: Countries Switching From Coal to Nuclear

Published on Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/

by Jon Herskovitz

DURBAN - South Africa, the host of U.N. global climate talks, is faced with a conundrum -- it wants to wean itself off of coal-powered plants seen as primate culprits of greenhouse gas emissions and find a cleaner energy source.

It is turning to nuclear power, despite the catastrophic environmental degradation the world witnessed after Japan's Fukushima plant disaster this year.

The global climate talks that opened earlier this week in Durban are seeing a widening division on nuclear power, with many advanced economies moving away from it after Fukushima and emerging states heavily reliant on fossil fuels embracing it as a cleaner way to power their development.

"If you want to be part of the climate change race and mitigation you basically have renewables and nuclear. Renewables are intermittent and you need a firm and reliable baseload technology. Renewables are not in a position to provide this yet," said H. Holger Rogner, section head of the International Atomic Energy Agency's planning and economic studies section.

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Panorientnews - Fukushima Radiation Risks "Severely Underestimated": Greenpeace

Published on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 by PanOrient News

http://www.panorientnews.com/en/news.php

TOKYO -- Greenpeace today renewed its demand for the Japanese government to keep its nuclear reactors offline as simulation maps of potential accidents at Japan’s nuclear plants - used in the development of nuclear emergency response efforts - "are completely inadequate, and have not been updated since the Fukushima disaster."

Following a Greenpeace freedom of information request on November 25, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) released SPEEDI simulations of the radioactive contamination spread from all nuclear plants in Japan. Greenpeace said these maps show only extremely low releases of radioactivity over a 10km area around the plants in the event of meltdown, making any emergency response plan based on them totally insufficient should another severe disaster like the Fukushima Daiichi crisis occur.

The simulations released under FOI to Greenpeace were made to support emergency preparedness drills of local and central government authorities. They calculate the concentration of radioactivity in the air, contamination on the ground and dose to the population within a range of 10km. Based on these maps, drills on evacuation or sheltering of the population, or distribution of iodine pills are organized.

“The simulation of radioactive releases from the Ohi reactor for example, is scandalously inadequate. It foresees a radiation release in the order of 10,000 times less severe than what could happen during a major incident,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International Nuclear Campaigner. “Similar over-optimistic scenarios have been used for reactors all over Japan. Hoping for the best is absolutely the wrong way to devise an emergency response plan.”

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