IN 2006, THE GUARDIAN, UK, DID A PIECE TITLED "HELL ON EARTH".
MAYBE WE SHOULD REVISIT THAT?
MAYBE, IN THE LINES FROM THE STORY, WE CAN SEE HOW VERY DIFFERENTLY THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER WAS HANDLED THAN HOW JAPAN IS HANDLING THE FUKUSHIMA CATASTROPHE.
CHERNOBYL REQUIRED EXTREME SACRIFICE TO CONTAIN, AND EXPENSE...TWO THINGS JAPAN'S CURRENT OFFICIALS DO NOT OFFER THE WORLD.
THEY SEEM MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE 2020 OLYMPICS AND THEIR PUBLIC IMAGE, AND ABOUT THEIR PROFITS.
Tuesday 25 April 2006
Chernobyl was the world's worst environmental disaster.
Twenty years on, John Vidal reports on the clean-up, the false medical records, the communities that refused to leave and the continuing cost to people and planet
Twenty years ago today, Konstantin Tatuyan, a Ukrainian radio engineer, was horrified when Reactor No 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power complex exploded, caught fire, and for the next 10 days spewed the equivalent of 400 Hiroshima bombs' worth of radioactivity across 150,000 sq miles of Europe and beyond. He was just married, and he and his young family lived in the town of Chernobyl, just a few miles from the reactor.
Like 120,000 people, the family was evacuated, but Tatuyan volunteered to become a "liquidator", to help with the clean up, believing that his knowledge of radiation could save not just him but many of the 200,000 young soldiers and others who were rushed in from all over the Soviet Union. "We felt we had to do it," he says. "Who else, if not us, would do it?"
Tatuyan spent the next seven years in charge of 5,000 mostly young army reservists - drafted in from Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Chechnya, Kazakhstan and elsewhere in what was the Soviet Union - working 22 days on, eight days off, digging great holes, demolishing villages, dumping high-level waste, monitoring hot spots, testing the water, cleaning railway lines and roads, decontaminating ground and travelling throughout some of the most radioactive regions of Ukraine, Belarus and southern Russia.
He survived the worst environment disaster in history, he says, because he knew the danger and could monitor the radioactivity that varied from yard to yard and from village to village depending on where the plume descended to ground level, and on where the deadly bits of graphite from the core of the reactor were carried by the wind.
He took precautions but he also kept meticulous - albeit illegal - records of his own accumulating exposure. Every year the authorities told him he was "fit for duty", and when he left Chernobyl they gave him a letter saying he had received just under the safe lifetime dose of radiation. He knew he had received more than five times that amount.
What he saw in those years, he says, appalled him: young men dying for want of the simplest information about exposure to radiation; the wide-scale falsification of medical histories by the Soviet army and the disappearance of people's records so the state would not have to compensate them; the wholesale looting of evacuated houses and abandoned churches; the haste and carelessness with which the concrete "sarcophagus" was erected over the stricken reactor; and, above all, the horror of seeing land almost twice the size of Britain contaminated, with thousands of villages made uninhabitable.
[MY NOTE: Notice, please, he states that people were "dying for want of the simplest information about radiation exposure".
THAT is the point of acquiring knowledge.
THAT is why I say so often that "Knowledge is power", that we "Learn or perish".
We NEED the whole truth, the raw facts, the honest data so that we will NOT be like those young men Tatuyan speaks of, dying for lack of information.
It is NOT about FEAR...it is about gaining FULL knowledge that some of us point out the failings of our governments, our "protection agencies", the lies we're told. If we don't KNOW, we can become helpless victims. We need to be INFORMED, at all times, in every way possible. We need full disclosure so we can formulate not just a "Plan A", but Plans 'B', 'C', even a "Z" plan, if need be.
For me, the analogy comes to mind of a traveler who must navigate a mountain trail that clings precariously to the cliffs high, high above the valley below.
If that traveler is suddenly blinded, his/her chances to navigate such a trail decrease significantly.
ANYTHING he/she can do to regain sight would greatly improve the odds of survival.
NO ONE, no sane, rational person, would INTENTIONALLY BLIND THEMSELVES and THEN set out to navigate such a dangerous trail.
"Plan B", for the traveler, might be to hope that someone with sight and who knows this trail well will come to the rescue.
In this Guardian article, Tatuyan is, to me, such a hoped-for rescuer. He knows the trail.
Also, for me, Japan's government and those in charge of stopping the leaks and repairing Fukushima's crippled facility are blinding themselves, trying to blind us as well, and then leading us all over that cliff's edge.
I am not EVER going to agree to be so led!]
He [Tatuyan] had people beg him to leave their homes or villages contaminated because that would guarantee them a pension; he recalls how several carriages of radioactive animal carcasses travelled for five years around the Soviet Union being rejected by every state, returning to Chernobyl to be buried - train and all.
He helped fill a 4 sq mile dump with radioactive lorries, cement mixers, trains and helicopters.
He knows where the Chernobyl bodies are buried, he says, because he was the grave digger.
"We made up the response as we went along," he says. "It was hell."
Tatuyan has now retired, an invalid.
He says he surely saved many lives and made great parts of the Ukraine semi-habitable, but the price is a heart condition, an enlarged thyroid, diabetes, pains in the right side of his body, breathing difficulties and headaches.
But he is optimistic and, like several million people across Ukraine, Belarus and southern Russia, says he now looks at his life in terms of the time before and after Chernobyl.
Most of his team of liquidators are dead; the rest, like him, are ill.
Tatuyan is now 56, and his children and country are proud of him.
For him, the effect of the radiation on the environment was shocking.
"The first thing we noticed was that many miles of trees in the forest turned red," he says. "They had to be cut down and buried. All the animals left. The birds did not come back for four years. It was strange not hearing them.
"In the winter of 1986/87, there was an infestation of mice because the crops had not been harvested. So the population of foxes increased. Most of them had rabies, and hunters were called to come and kill them. The wild pigs came back first. Then the wolves. Because people were evacuated, thinking they would be gone for only a few days, they left their dogs. But the dogs then crossed with the wolves and were not afraid of humans. It was very dangerous."
Today, the forest is moving in on the modernistic town of Pripyat, built for the reactor workers just a few miles from the plant.
According to ecologists, weathering, decay and the migration of radionuclides down the soil have already led to a significant reduction of the contamination of plants and animals.
Some scientists are upbeat.
Biodiversity, says the Institute of Ecology in the Ukraine, has increased due to the removal of human influence.
Moose, wild boar, roe and red deer, beavers, wolves, badgers, otters and lynx have all been reported in the area, and species associated with humans - rats, house mice, sparrows and pigeons - have all declined. Indeed, of 270 species of birds in the area, 180 are breeding.
But it is not as simple as that.
Other scientists report mammals experiencing heavy doses from internally deposited Caesium-137 and Strontium-90 radioactive fallout.
One study has found mutations in 18 generations of birds; another that radioactivity levels in trees are still rising.
Contamination has been found migrating into underground aquifers.
Levels of Caesium-137 are expected to remain high all over Europe for decades, says the United Nations.
In parts of Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Poland, levels in wild game, mushrooms, berries and fish from some lakes are well over a safe dose, as they are in all the most affected regions of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.
In Britain, there are still restrictions on milk on 375 hill farms, mainly in Snowdonia and the Lake District.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of square miles of agricultural land still cannot be used for farming until the soil has been remediated.
Humans have fared badly.
In the past few weeks four major scientific reports have challenged the World Health Organisation (WHO), which believes that only 50 people have died and 9,000 may over the coming years.
The reports widely accuse WHO of ignoring the evidence and dismissing illnesses that many doctors in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus say are worsening, especially in children of liquidators.
The charge is led by the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, which last week declared that 212,000 people have now died as a direct consequence of Chernobyl.
Meanwhile, a major report commissioned by Greenpeace considers the evidence of 52 scientists and estimates the deaths and illnesses to be 93,000 terminal cancers already and perhaps 100,000 deaths in time.
A further report for European parliamentarians suggested 60,000 deaths.
In truth no one knows.
[MY NOTE: SOMEONE KNOWS, or someone COULD know, but politics, the desire to dominate, fear of all that is different from our notion of what's best, what's right, and greed often control even knowledge, as we have seen throughout history, time and time again.
How many wars has propaganda alone started?
How many lives have been lost due to lies, or simply withholding facts?
How many times have entire populations been manipulated to believe something that was not true?
All we have to do is look back in time, let history show us how people NOT KNOWING proved beneficial to political and military agendas.
In this instance, number of deaths caused by a specific release of radiation, NOT knowing the real numbers would benefit whom?
Those who might be seen as responsible for those deaths?
Those who are heavily involved with the proliferation of nuclear energy and don't want such facts revealed, facts that would surely make nuclear energy look a hell of a lot less attractive to people all over the world?
THIS is what we face, this FACT-FINDING that would show us a perhaps ugly truth.
Just as Oppenheimer said, just as the old Atomic Energy Commission said, just as nuclear "experts" have said since the Manhattan Project, "{We} have become death."
Radiation kills, period.
How many?
How many MORE?
In how many ways, how easily?
What can we do to lessen OUR chances of being a fatality?
We have a need to know.]
More than 500km from Chernobyl, the peasant farmers of the village of Boudimca, one of the most affected in Ukraine, refuse to leave, despite the fact that many of their children are suffering from acute radiation diseases.
Every child in Boudimca has a thyroid problem - known as the "Chernobyl necklace".
The villagers are attached to the land. "We would prefer to die in our own land rather than go somewhere else and not survive," says Valentina Molchanovich, one of whose daughters is in hospital in Vilne with radiation sickness.
"We understand the paradox, but we prefer to stay."
Though they live simple lives - each family has a cow, ducks and a few chickens - they suffer all the ailments of stressed out western executives: high blood pressure, headaches, diabetes and respiratory problems.
They know that the berries and the mushrooms they have always lived on are contaminated.
"We are just so used to living here," says Molchanovich. "My parents lived here. We build our houses together. We are a very tight community."
But others are, literally, dying to leave the village.
Mikola Molchanovich, a distant relation, is the father of Sasha, a 12- year-old girl who this month was also being treated for constant stomach aches in a children's hospital in Rivne.
He says: "My wife is in hospital giving birth, my son is in another hospital being treated for radiation sickness. My sister has 30,000 becquerels [units of radioactivity] in her body. Some people have 80,000, or more.
This is our community; my parents lived and died here.
We used to be able to collect 100kg of mushrooms a day - the whole village would collect them. Some of our cows have leukaemia. The people who moved away from the village are healthier and better. I would go if I had the chance. But I am trapped. I cannot sell my house because it is contaminated. People are becoming weaker. We cannot feel it, we cannot see it, yet we are not afraid of it."
Situation worsening
"Everyone who helped on the clean up is now ill," says Tatiana, a senior doctor at the Dispensary for Radiological Protection at Rivne.
"The situation is worsening. In 1985, we had four lymph cancers a year. Now we have seven times that many. We have between five and eight people a year with rare bone cancers, when we never had any. We expect more cancers, and ill health.
One in three pregnancies here are malformed. We are overwhelmed."
A doctor in the local region's children's hospital says:
"The children born to the people who cleaned up Chernobyl are dying very young. We are finding Caesium and Strontium in breast milk and the placenta.
More children now have leukaemias, and there has been a quadrupling of spina bifida cases.
There are more clusters of cancers.
Children are being born with stunted growth and dwarf torsos, without thighs.
I would expect more of this over the years."
Tatuyan is now an environmentalist, convinced that nuclear power is no answer.
"I go to the forest with friends to care for the deer," he says.
Tonight, he and the other liquidators will meet and celebrate the 20 years.
"When we meet we make the same toast.
We say: 'Let's meet again alive.'"
[From the Tea Room, many thanks for all you have done and continued doing, dear sir.]
FACTS APPEAR, REJOICE!
PEER REVIEWED STUDIES, WHAT MANY DEMAND.Two years have passed since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which followed the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
One of the world’s foremost experts on the consequences of Fukushima as well as 1986’s Chernobyl disaster is biologist Tim Mousseau of the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences.
He began scientific expeditions to the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 2000, and with collaborators including Anders Møller of the CNRS (France) established the Chernobyl Research Initiative, which has now published more than 40 research papers.
He has organized multiple scientific expeditions to investigate the consequences of the radioactivity release from Fukushima, first traveling to the site in July 2011 and since publishing several research papers based on studies of the area surrounding the epicenter of the meltdowns.
Here are some of Mousseau’s thoughts and findings from his extensive research in the Fukushima and Chernobyl regions:
“The most important thing we’ve learned so far is just how little we understand about the role played by low-level, low-dose radiation in natural environments,” Mousseau said.
“What we’ve learned over the last seven or eight years – in Chernobyl in particular – is that the impacts of radiation under natural conditions, in the field, are much greater than what people had seen in the laboratory setting, and they’re much greater than people had seen for the so-called ‘pure’ external-dose radiation, such as much of the work that has been done with atomic bomb survivors.
“It’s very clear, based on recent studies by other folks in addition to us, that the effects of radiation on natural populations – those that experience the full range of natural stress, in addition to the radiation – are much larger than the effects in the other settings.”
Mousseau’s work also challenges the widely held notion that low-level radiation, below a certain threshold, is in fact harmless.
“We see no threshold,” Mousseau said.
“We see consequences – such as in terms of mutation rates, or lowered fertilities and other population consequences – all the way down to very low levels, levels that are much lower than what people previously had thought could be measurable in the wild.
“This is mainly because we’ve put a lot of effort into very carefully designed experimental studies. We have repeated our studies at many different locations in order to be able to factor out other contributing variables to variation in natural populations.
This approach has allowed us to use sophisticated statistical procedures to control for many of the other environmental sources of variation so we can analyze the radiation effects independently of these other factors than can obscure the influences of the radiation effects.
And when we do this, in a careful way, we find no threshold below which there aren’t effects.”
“There was a really wonderful study done by a group of Japanese scientists at Okinawa University. They demonstrated that the butterflies living in Fukushima were experiencing dramatically elevated rates of genetic mutations, and this was being reflected in all sorts of developmental abnormalities – deformities in the wing structure and in their legs and antennae that were clearly impacting their ability to survive and reproduce.”
Research support remains a significant problem, though.
“The truth is that there is minimal funding available for independent scientists to conduct research in either place,” Mousseau said.
“Among the scientific community that is not associated with the nuclear industry or the nuclear agencies, there is virtually no funding for this kind of work.
In our case, though, we are particularly grateful for continuing support from the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, which has been a friend to the University of South Carolina for a long time.”
“The response of most of the U.S. agencies has been that this is a problem for Japan, and that the Japanese should be funding this research.
Another response has been that this is not the sort of science that we typically fund because it’s not consistent with the mission of the given agency. Clearly, both responses are short-sighted given the urgent need for basic research in this area.”
This week Mousseau is participating in a symposium, “The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident” on March 11- 12 at The New York Academy of Medicine. The event is being live-streamed (link here).
More information concerning Mousseau’s research in Chernobyl, Fukushima and other “hot” places can be found on his website: http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/chernobyl/
ANOTHER
[ODD SPELLING OF CHERNOBYL, BUT "STET"]
15 May 2000 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
A new British scientific study shows that radioactive contamination from the Chornobyl nuclear accident is affecting the environment in the United Kingdom more severely than previously thought.
RFE/RL correspondent Askold Krushelnycky examines the implications for areas closer to the accident site.
Prague, 15 May 2000 (RFE/RL) -- British scientists have found that radioactive fallout from the 1986 Chornobyl disaster is lingering far longer in the environment and at much higher levels than was initially thought.
A study published in this month's Nature, a prestigious British science magazine, concluded that the environment is taking 100 times longer to rid itself of pollution than previously predicted.
The study by six British scientists tracked the level of the radioactive element cesium 137, one of the contaminants produced by the Chornobyl accident, in lakes in the U.K. and Norway. The team tested water, vegetation, and fish. Team leader James Smith from Britain's Center for Ecology and Hydrology tells RFE/RL of his findings.
"What we found was that the radiocesium in foodstuffs after Chornobyl declined relatively rapidly. The concentration of cesium declined in the first few years after Chornobyl by roughly two times every two years.
But in recent years, we have found that this decline has slowed, so that the concentration of radioactivity in foodstuffs is only declining by half every 10 or 15 years."
Britain was relatively little affected by the fallout, although nearly 400 farms have restrictions on the sale and slaughter of sheep. The researchers say such restrictions will have to continue for a total of 30 years after the accident.
Smith says the environment is not cleaning itself of the pollution at the rate scientists previously thought.
He says that closer to the accident site, precautions will have to continue for longer. "It looks like in Ukraine and Belarus the monitoring will need to be continued for maybe up to 50 years or more."
The disaster killed 31 people in Ukraine almost immediately, but both Belarus and Ukraine have said that millions of their citizens have been affected in subsequent years and predict the accident will continue to take a heavy toll in lives for decades to come. Last month, Ukraine said some 3.5 million people, over a third of them children, had suffered illness as a result of the contamination.
The incidence of some cancers has risen to 10 times what it was. The researchers emphasize that the cancer risk from consumption of contaminated food is small, but they add that precautions must still be taken.
Smith says the danger of contamination to the human food chain comes not from farm produce but from food gathered outside of farms in affected regions.
"The foodstuffs which are most susceptible, it's quite well known, are so-called wild foodstuffs.
It's not the agricultural products necessarily, it's the products coming from the forest eco-systems and the freshwater lakes.
We find that the highest concentrations of radiocesium are found in freshwater fish in lakes, mushrooms from the forest, berries from the forest, and forest animals."
Ukrainian and Belarusian authorities have for years tried to prevent such produce coming to sale at markets.
In Ukraine, inspectors and even some shoppers regularly check mushrooms and other foodstuffs with Geiger counters (radioactivity detectors). As the latest study shows, they will have to continue doing that for a long time to come.
[MY NOTE: THIS IS THE SAME THING MOUSSEAU, ET AL, HAVE FOUND IN NEWER STUDIES. RADIATION IN THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT DOES NOT PRODUCE THE SAME RESULTS AS RADIATION STUDIES IN CONTROLLED LABORATORY TESTS. RADIATION IN THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT IS HIGHER, ONCE IT'S PROPERLY STUDIED AND PROPERLY MEASURED, SOMETHING JAPAN NOR AMERICA IS PRONE TO DO.]
FROM CNN, "STUDY: 1950s NUCLEAR FALLOUT WORSE THAN THOUGHT"
THE CDC's ADMISSION
March 1, 2002
TAKOMA PARK, Maryland (CNN) -- Radioactive fallout from 1950s above-ground nuclear weapons testing spread farther than researchers previously realized and most increased cancer rates in the United States, according to a scientific report.
"Any person living in the contiguous United States since 1951 has been exposed to radioactive fallout, and all organs and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute said in a progress report prepared for Congress.
The report was reviewed by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
The preliminary report -- the actual study is not yet complete -- has alarmed some members of Congress, including Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
"What we know is maybe the tip of the iceberg here," Harkin said.
"We know that there's been upwards of perhaps 15,000 deaths that are attributable to these nuclear tests." Congress received the preliminary report last August.
[MY NOTE: WRONG, SENATOR! GO TO THE PEOPLE, TO THE ACTUAL PEOPLE WHO LIVED NEAR THOSE "TESTS"! GO TO THE CEMETERIES THERE, SEE HOW MANY DIED IN "CERTAIN" PERIODS OF TIME, BABIES INCLUDED.
GO TO THE CEMETERIES DOWNWIND, DOWNSTREAM FROM HANFORD!
SIMPLY LOOK AT THE DATES, AND TALK, TALK FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE PEOPLE, WITH THEIR PHYSICIANS, WITH THOSE WHO ACTUALLY LIVED THROUGH THAT, BUT LOST MANY WHO DID NOT LIVE THROUGH IT!
GO TO THE SOURCE, DAMN IT! THEY ALONE KNOW.]
More than 2,000 nuclear tests have been conducted worldwide since the first nuclear bomb was built in the Manhattan Project in World War II, but the CDC/NCI study considered only those above-ground tests that took place between 1951 and 1962.
The United States and the Soviet Union agreed in 1963 to restrict nuclear tests to underground sites.
"What is surprising and very new is that it has created intense hot spots in the continental United States all the way from California and Washington to Vermont, New Hampshire and North Carolina," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the IEER.
But the government has yet to formulate a public health response, according to IEER outreach director Lisa Ledwidge, a biologist.
She noted that officials in the 1950s notified suppliers of photographic film of expected fallout patterns so they could protect their film, but did not share the information with milk producers, for example.
A 1997 report by the National Cancer Institute, which dealt with only one radionuclide -- iodine-131 -- indicated that "farm children ... who drank goat's milk in the 1950s in high fallout areas were as severely exposed as the worst exposed children after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident," Makhijani said.
The IEER called for the government to expand its compensation program for test site "downwinders" to include hot spots thousands of miles from the test sites themselves, and to formulate and implement a comprehensive response to the public health threat posed by the fallout. Harkin agreed.
"People have a right to know if they were exposed where the big areas of fallout were and they need to be screened and told what to do to protect their health," the senator said.
[MY NOTE: REJECTED!
THAT WAS REJECTED LONG AGO AND THERE WILL BE NO "EXPENSIVE AND FEAR-INDUCING TESTING" FOR EXPOSED AMERICANS!
THERE WILL BE NO MASSIVE EFFORT TO LOCATE VICTIMS BECAUSE THEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THOSE VICTIMS' ILLNESSES AND/OR DEATHS.
THE CRY MIGHT GO UP TO END NUKES FOREVER.
WE MUST HAVE NUCLEAR ENERGY, RIGHT?
WRONG!]
"Fukushima: the first cancers"
"HIGHER THAN CHERNOBYL"
"MORE RADIATION RELEASED THAN PREVIOUSLY BELIEVED"
October 23, 2015
[SAME STORY, MORE THAN BELIEVED...BECAUSE THE WAY THEY MEASURE IS FLAWED.]
"A recent scientific study found a 30-fold excess of thyroid cancer among over 400,000 young people below the age of 18 at the Fukushima Prefecture.
“The highest incidence rate ratio, using a latency period of 4 years, was observed in the central middle district of the prefecture compared with the Japanese annual incidence,” said the researchers
In the first screening among 298,577 young people four years after the disaster, thyroid cancer occurred 50 times more among those who lived in irradiated regions than those who didn’t.
In the second screening conducted in April 2014, 106,068 young people living in less irradiated regions were assessed.
Results show that cancer was twelve times more common than the general population.
The authors of the paper went on to note that thyroid cancer rates at the Fukushima Prefecture are higher than at the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and that many more cancer cases will likely develop.
[SEE: Thyroid Cancer Detection by Ultrasound Among Residents Ages 18 Years and Younger in Fukushima, Japan: 2011 to 2014. Tsuda, Toshihide; Tokinobu, Akiko; Yamamoto, Eiji; Suzuki, Etsuji, PDF <HERE>]
“In conclusion, among those ages 18 years and younger in 2011 in Fukushima Prefecture, approximately 30-fold excesses in external comparisons and variability in internal comparisons on thyroid cancer detection were observed in Fukushima Prefecture within as few as 4 years after the Fukushima power plant accident. The result was unlikely to be fully explained by the screening effect.
“In Chernobyl, excesses of thyroid cancer became more remarkable 4 or 5 years after the accident in Belarus and Ukraine, so the observed excess alerts us to prepare for more potential cases within a few years.”
Studies of the Chernobyl disaster have found that thyroid cancer rates don’t decrease over time.
There is no noteworthy decrease in thyroid cancer rates for people exposed to certain radioactive isotopes.
Given the recent spike in cancer thyroid rates, however, the researchers believe radiation released from the Fukushima site may have been greater than previously believed.
“Furthermore, we could infer a possibility that exposure doses for residents were higher than the official report or the dose estimation by the World Health Organization, because the number of thyroid cancer cases grew faster than predicted in the World Health Organization’s health assessment report,” the researchers wrote."
[MY NOTE: W.H.O. was wrong: An excess of thyroid cancer has been detected by ultrasound among children and adolescents in Fukushima Prefecture within 4 years of the release, and is unlikely to be explained by a screening surge."]
"Scientific studies of Chernobyl victims have also found that the risk of developing thyroid cancer has a long, fat tail – in other words, there is no significant fall in risk over time among people exposed to iodine-131.
According the the US’s National Cancer Institute, summarising the findings in 2011,
“The researchers found no evidence, during the study time period, to indicate that the increased cancer risk to those who lived in the area at the time of the accident is decreasing over time.
“However, a separate, previous analysis of atomic bomb survivors and medically irradiated individuals found cancer risk began to decline about 30 years after exposure, but was still elevated 40 years later. The researchers believe that continued follow-up of the participants in the current study will be necessary to determine when an eventual decline in risk is likely to occur.”Did WHO underestimate the Fukushima radiation release?
The authors of the Fukushima study also suggest that the amount of radiation released may, in fact, have been more that the World Health Organisation’s and other official estimates:
“Furthermore, we could infer a possibility that exposure doses for residents were higher than the official report or the dose estimation by the World Health Organization, because the number of thyroid cancer cases grew faster than predicted in the World Health Organization’s health assessment report.”Another consideration – which the authors do not enter into – is the effect of the other radioactive species emitted in the accident including 17.5% Caesium-137 and 38.5% Caesium 134. These longer-lived beta-emitters (30 years and two years respectively) present a major long term hazard as the element is closely related to potassium and readily absorbed into biomass and food crops.
Yet another radiation hazard arises from long lived alpha emitters like plutonium 239 (half life 24,100 years) which is hard to detect. Even tiny nano-scale specks of inhaled plutonium entering the lungs and lymphatic system can cause cancer decades after the event by continuously ‘burning’ surrounding tissues and cells."
SLOWLY, SO SLOWLY, ADMISSIONS OFFER NEW KNOWLEDGE, BETTER WAYS TO DETECT AND MEASURE AND PROJECT LONG-TERM EFFECTS.
IT'S A START.
BUT BACK AT FUKUSHIMA...THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT WILL STOP LABELING NUCLEAR WASTE!
ARE THEY INSANE!?
December 28th, 2015
"Japan set to remove ‘designated waste’ label from the Fukushima catastrophe"
"When lower entities like the local government apply to remove the designated waste, and the waste stored in those areas is accepted as meeting the requirements for the removal of designation, the material can be delisted.
Afterwards, the material can be disposed of in accordance with rules set for normal waste. This leads to a reduction in the overall amount of waste currently harbored at temporary sites across the nation.
Although designation standards are set by the Law on Special Measures Concerning the Handling of Radioactive Pollution, which came into effect August 2011, there are no rules that dictate the removal of the designation.
At the end of September, there were approximately 166,329 tons of waste stored in Tokyo, Tochigi, Chiba, Miyagi, Fukushima and seven other prefectures.
The Fukushima prefecture harbored the most waste of any prefecture, storing an estimated 138,000 tons.
With the exception of the Fukushima Prefecture, which has accepted a central government plan to orchestrate a landfill, local governments are uncertain about where to dispose of the waste once and for all.
The central government will decide about the specifics of the disposal measures after taking into consideration the demands of local governments. They are also considering taking on some of the financial burden tied to the removal of the designation. A foremost request from local governments is that they will be responsible for the waste after the designation is removed."
[Sources include:
(1) ChicagoTribune.com
(2) Japan-News.com ]
FINANCIAL BURDEN?
DEMANDS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS?
AS COMPARED TO HUMAN LIVES, HUMAN HEALTH?
DECONSTRUCTING NUCLEAR "EXPERTS"
March 28, 2011
What these people have in common is ignorance. You may think a professor at a university must actually know something about their subject. But this is not so. Nearly all of these experts who appear and pontificate have not actually done any research on the issue of radiation and health.
EXAMPLES:
~ Professor Richard Wakeford, University of Manchester.
Incidentally, Wakeford is a physicist, his PhD was in particle physics at Liverpool.
But he was not presented as ex- Principle Scientist, British Nuclear Fuels, Sellafield.
That might have given the viewers the wrong idea.
[WAKEFORD WAS CLOSELY ATTACHED TO THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY.
HE WAS AN "INDUSTRY MAN".]
~ Malcolm Grimston, talking about radiation and health, described as Professor, Imperial College.
Grimston is a psychologist, not a nuclear scientist, and his 'expertise' was in examining why the public was frightened of radiation, and how their (emotional) views could be changed.
But his lack of scientific training didn’t stop him explaining on TV and radio how the Fukushima accident was nothing to worry about.
~ George Monbiot?
George Joshua Richard Monbiot is a British writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian.
Hardly a nuclear expert!
He knows nothing about radiation and health, writing in 'The Guardian' how this accident has actually changed his mind about nuclear power since he now understands (and reproduces a criminally misleading graphic to back up his new understanding) that radiation is actually OK and we shoudn’t worry about it.
[George is known to have asked Chris Busby] a few years ago to explain why internal and external radiation exposure cannot be considered to have the same health outcomes.
~ Wade Allison?
Wade is a medical physics person and a professor at Oxford.
I have chosen to pitch into him since he epitomises and crystallises for us the arguments of the 'stupid' physicist. In this he has done us a favour, since he is really easy to shoot down. All the arguments are in one place.
[He exhibits] breathtaking ignorance of the scientific literature.
He has stated no one died from the Three Mile Island accident.
Prof. Steve Wing in the USA has carried out epidemiological studies of the effects of 3-Mile Island, with results published in the peer-review literature.
Court cases are regularly settled on the basis of cancers produced by the 3-Mile Island contamination, [but Wade doesn't know this?]
TWO Chernobyl studies in the west falsify Wade Allison’s assertions that Chernobyl was nonlethal.
Phony experts like Wade Allison and George Monbiot are criminally irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths."
THE TEA ROOM WOULD LIKE TO ADD...
~ KEN BUESSELER
"Education:
B.A. University of California, San Diego, 1981, Biochemistry/ Cell Biology Ph.D. MIT/WHOI Joint Program, 1986, Marine Chemistry
Research Interests:
Upper-ocean biogeochemical cycles and POC export fluxes; studies of scavenging and particle cycling processes using anthropogenic and naturally occurring radionuclides; geochemical studies of the Black Sea using Chernobyl radio tracers; plutonium isotopes and the behavior of fallout Pu in seawater and groundwater; use of radium isotopes and other tracers of submarine groundwater discharge."
MY "RESEARCH INTERESTS" HAVE VARIED FROM ARCHAEOLOGY TO ZOOLOGICAL ANOMALIES, BUT I DO NOT DECLARE MYSELF "EXPERT" IN THOSE FIELDS.
I DARE NOT DECLARE MYSELF "EXPERT" IN EVEN MY CHOSEN FIELDS, EVEN AFTER 14 YEARS OF INTENSIVE 'HIGHER' EDUCATION, YEARS AS "INTERN" AND HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS OF IN-DEPTH "CLINICAL STUDIES".
BUT KENNY IS TROTTED OUT QUITE FREQUENTLY AS THE PRIME "EXPERT" ON HOW RADIOACTIVE THE PACIFIC OCEAN IS, (HARDLY AT ALL, HE SAYS) AND HOW WE NEED NOT BOTHER OUR PRETTY LTTLE HEADS ABOUT THAT BAD OLD FUKUSHIMA RADIATION.
ALL IS WELL, ALL IS SAFE, SLEEP, SLEEEEEEP...NO WORRIES, EVEN IF NO UNEDITED, COMPLETE INFO, NO INDEPENDENT TESTING IS OFFERED...
NOAA AND WOODS HOLE LOVES YOU.
IT'S ALL OK, SAYS "K.B."
CHECK ALL CREDENTIALS, AND EVEN AFTER THAT, QUESTION EVERYTHING.
IT'S OUR LIVES, OUR HEALTH, SO WE NEED TO BE DILIGENT, AND MORE DEMANDING OF FACTUAL AND COMPLETE INFORMATION.
THE PROBLEM SEEMS TO BE...WE HAVE A NEED TO KNOW, BUT DAMN FEW WHO CAN (OR WILL?) HONESTLY AND WITH VALID KNOWLEDGE, INFORM US.
AS WE ARE TOLD THAT THINGS HAVE CHANGED BECAUSE OF NEW DISCLOSURES, NEW "FINDINGS", WHEN WE ARE TOLD THAT THE ACTUAL MEASUREMENTS OF RADIATION HAVE ALL BEEN FLAWED, ARE GREATER THAN WE THOUGHT, LET US DEMAND FULL DISCLOSURE, A FRESH LOOK AT THESE "RECENT FINDINGS".
AND LET'S BRING ON SOME REAL EXPERTS...NOT INDUSTRY AND GOVERNMENT PUPPETS.
LET'S FIND SOMEONE WHO CAN TELL US HOW TO FIX ALL THIS.
-___________________________________-
FURTHER READING ABOUT CHERNOBYL:
~ THE LONG SHADOW OF CHERNOBYL
~ Voices from Chernobyl, extracts
~ Chernobyl's Legacy: No Return...
~ Chernobyl's Generations of Suffering
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