"During the Cold War, they guarded America’s nuclear weapons facilities. Now they are dying of cancer, as the U.S. government looks the other way. "
Thus begins a Slate Magazine article from December 11, 2015.
Slate addresses genuine concerns for America's nuclear workers, but fails on addressing what's happening to those of us who live or lived near those facilities, we 'average citizens'.
More than 600,000 people worked throughout the [nuclear] weapons complex during the Cold War.
When sick employees filed for workers’ compensation with their state programs, the Energy Department directed its contractors to fight the claims. Millions of taxpayer dollars were, AND STILL ARE, spent on that effort.
SPREAD ACROSS AMERICA, AND SOME ISLANDS USED BY THE U.S., THOSE FACILITIES WERE RUN IN A VERY SHODDY WAY, THEIR 'MANAGERS' IGNORING SAFETY ISSUES, KNOWINGLY EXPOSING WORKERS TO MATERIALS KNOWN EVEN IN THE 1950s TO BE EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS, EVEN LETHAL, TO HUMAN HEALTH.
WHEN WORKERS BECAME ILL, EVEN TERMINALLY ILL, THOSE WHO HAD ALLOWED THEM TO WORK IN SUCH CONDITIONS AND THOSE WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR HEALTH DID EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO ,KEEP FROM PAYING CLAIMS, KEEP FROM PAYING FOR MEDICAL TREATMENTS THAT MAY HAVE SAVED NUMEROUS LIVES, AND TO KEEP FROM ACCEPTING ANY TYPE OF BLAME.
BOTH THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AND DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, NOT TO MENTION THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION, ARE GUILTY OF TRYING TO AVOID TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE SICKNESSES AND DEATHS OF WORKERS AND LOCAL RESIDENTS LIVING TOO NEAR THESE FACILITIES AND HAVE BEEN NEGLIGENT AND "GUILTY" SINCE AMERICA CREATED THE NUCLEAR MONSTER UNLEASHED IN WORLD WAR 2.
THAT NEGLIGENCE AND DENIAL CONTINUES TODAY, AS YOU WILL SEE.
THE UNDECLARED WAR WAGED BY FEDERAL "PROTECTION" AGENCIES, U.S. FEDERAL "DEPARTMENTS", AND BY THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY AS A WHOLE HAS BEEN AND IS TODAY A WAR AGAINST SICK AND DYING PEOPLE WHO TRUSTED THEM.
'AVERAGE CITIZENS', WORKERS, TRUSTED THEM AND FEW QUESTIONED WHAT WAS MAKING THEM SICK...SICK ENOUGH TO DIE.
FOR THE VERY LONG LIST OF DOE FACILITIES COVERED UNDER THIS ACT, SEE
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/04/08/2013-08075/department-of-energy-facilities-covered-under-the-energy-employees-occupational-illness-compensation#h-11
THE LIST INCLUDES ORE BUYING STATIONS, URANIUM MILLS, METAL FORGES, TOOL AND VALVE COMPANIES, AT LEAST ONE SAFE MANUFACTURING COMPANY, LABORATORIES, WAREHOUSES AND OTHER STORAGE FACILITIES, LANDFILLS, A SPECIALTY WIRE COMPANY, A GREEN SLUDGE PLANT, YUCCA MOUNTAIN, AMCHITKA ISLAND, 'PROJECT CHARIOT' AND 'PROJECT SHOAL' SITES, THE CANOGA AND DE SOTO COMPLEXES IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY, LAWRENCE BERKELEY AND LAWRENCE LIVERMORE LABS, SANDIA LABORATORY, NEW BRUNSWICK LAB, THE STANFORD LINEAR ACCELERATOR AREA, THE ROCKY FLATS FACILITY,YUCCA MOUNTAIN, KIRTLAND AFB OPERATIONS OFFICE, KIRTLAND'S LOVELACE RESPIRATORY RESEARCH INSTITUTE AND THEIR HANGAR 481, LOS ALAMOS, 'PROJECT GNOME' AND TRINITY EXPLOSION SITES, THE WIPP FACILITY IN NEW MEXICO, HANFORD SITE IN WASHINGTON STATE, BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LAB, THE LINDE CERAMICS PLANT, SAM LABORATORY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, THE SAVANNAH RIVER SITE, OAK RIDGE, CLARKSVILLE MODIFIATION CENTER AT FORT CAMPBELL....ON AND ON AND ON, PAGE AFTER PAGE...
PLEASE GO HAVE A LOOK, SEE WHERE THESE ARE LOCATED, SEE IF ANYONE YOU KNOW AND/OR CARE ABOUT WORKED AT THESE PLACES, AND LOOK FURTHER INTO HOW THEY STILL AFFECT PEOPLE NEAR THEM, WHAT LAWSUITS AND INVESTIGATIONS ARE BEING DONE, IF ANY.
WE MAY HAVE NEVER KNOWN....
But bit by bit, suppression stopped working.
Whistleblowers came forward.
The Government Accountability Project and other groups dug into the issue.
And elected officials were not happy to hear how the complex had treated the people who made it run.
"THE EXPENDABLE" WERE RECOGNIZED...
The legislation that launched the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program passed with bipartisan support, but the use of dose reconstruction to make determinations in radiation cases was included over the objections of some House leaders. Cindy Blackston, who served on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee from 1980 to 2007 and closely monitored the program, said the panel expressed concerns during negotiations and “continually thereafter.”
“This is a program to address the fact that we put these people in harm’s way,” she said. “Our position was that dose reconstruction and all that was really just a way to keep from paying people.”
The program has two ways in.
One, dubbed Part B, pays $150,000 for radiation-triggered cancers and two lung diseases. Part E, for toxic-exposure claims, pays workers for wage loss and impairment—up to $250,000—while eligible survivors can receive at least $125,000.
Both cover medical costs.
Congress, concerned about shoddy record-keeping and monitoring, did include a method to exempt certain Part B applicants from dose reconstruction.
HOWEVER, CONGRESS LEFT GIANT LOOPHOLES, WAYS FOR THE AGENCIES AND NUCLEAR INDUSTRY TO "INTERPRET AND REINTERPRET" THEIR PATHETIC LAWS, THEIR RULES.
In cases without enough exposure information, groups of workers can be added to the Special Exposure Cohort, their claims automatically accepted if they develop any of 22 cancers.
Portsmouth is among the four sites Congress put in that cohort—though that doesn’t help the ex-guards with prostate cancer, which is not one of the 22 cancers on the list.
Petitions and NIOSH’s own efforts have helped expand the special cohort since then.
Certain workers at 80 sites are now part of the group, though claimant advocates say the increase hasn’t resolved all the problems they’re seeing.
Problems, in fact, have been the program’s frequent companion. Congress had to amend it in 2004 to put the Labor Department in charge of all claims when the Energy Department—then overseeing the toxic-exposure arm—managed to process only 5 percent of its claims over those first four years.
Then-Rep. John Hostettler, a Republican from Indiana, held hearings in 2006 after the White House’s Office of Management and Budget wrote a memo listing ways to “contain the growth” in benefits paid out.
The outraged congressman reminded witnesses at one hearing that the government was to blame for putting the workforce at risk: “Pinching pennies never looked so inappropriate as it does when addressing the plight of these workers.”
What prompted the compensation program was a scandal decades in the making.
At nuclear-weapons sites run by contractors for the U.S. Department of Energy and its predecessors, home to some of the most dangerous substances on Earth, officials routinely risked their employees’ health.
Workers were exposed “without their knowledge and consent,” Congress would later determine, “driven by fears of adverse publicity, liability, and employee demands for hazardous duty pay.”
In February 1989, retired admiral and energy secretary designee James Watkins told a Senate committee that the Energy Department was a “mess” and that “problems relating to safety, health, and the environment have not only been backlogged to intolerable levels but, in effect, hidden from public view until recently. So we are now paying the price.”
IF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAD TO PAY TRILLIONS TIMES TRILLIONS, IT WILL NOT BRING ONE DEAD WORKER BACK TO LIFE!
Joy Stokes and Faye Stubbs, who worked as custodians and held other jobs at the Energy Department’s Mound plant near Dayton, Ohio, described episodes they say illustrate a cavalier attitude toward safety.
Stokes said she was ordered to clean a laboratory fume hood—which she later learned was “screaming hot” with radiation—without respiratory or skin protection.
As a truck driver, Stubbs hauled containers of solvents and barrels of radioactive dirt and was similarly unprotected, she said.
Both say managers played down their exposures and eventually took away their dosimeters—badges that measure personal radiation doses. “We were disposable, I guess,” Stokes said.
Both filed unsuccessful compensation claims.
NIOSH data show that through Sept. 23, 2015, nearly 97 percent of 4,975 claims nationwide relating to cancers of the “male genitalia,” mostly prostate, had been denied by the Labor Department.
97% DENIED!
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant—in Piketon, Ohio, about 25 miles north of the Ohio River city of Portsmouth—was built by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and began operation in 1954.
The 3,700-acre site included three process buildings “comparable in size to three Yankee Stadiums and a football field,” according to the Energy Department, an AEC successor.
The process itself went as follows:
Less than 1 percent of naturally occurring uranium contains the U-235 isotope needed to generate power or make bombs. Therefore, it had to be “enriched.” First at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky and later at Portsmouth, gaseous uranium hexafluoride was forced through a series of porous membranes to separate molecules containing U-235 from those containing U-238. By the time the product arrived in solid form at Portsmouth, its U-235 content, or assay, was less than 3 percent.
When it left Building 326 in cylinders, it was weapons-grade: up to 97 percent assay.
The plant, which ceased production in 2001, was operated by a series of contractors: Goodyear Atomic, Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin, and the United States Enrichment Corporation. In the early 1980s—as tensions escalated between the United States and what was then the Soviet Union—management at Portsmouth sought to professionalize the security force. It hired military veterans with law-enforcement experience and pitted them against the Navy SEALS and the Army’s Delta Force in training exercises.
Charles “Chick” Lawson, who’d been a K-9 officer in the Air Force, was hired in 1984. As Lawson settled into the job, he grew troubled by what he believed to be safety lapses.
When the 'Blue Goose', for example, would leave Building 326 carrying cylinders of highly enriched uranium—carefully spaced to keep them from triggering an uncontrolled chain reaction, known as a criticality accident—“every criticality alarm we passed we set off,” Lawson said. The alarms would go off again when the truck pulled into Building 345.
Managers claimed these were merely equipment malfunctions, Lawson said.
HOW THOSE IN CHARGE REACTED TO CONCERNS WAS CRIMINAL.
“When I was hired in ’84, they were telling people, ‘If there’s an outgassing [of radiation], don’t worry, you can eat this stuff. Go home and drink a beer and you can pee it out,’ ” he said. “After I became safety officer I began asking a lot of questions.”
His queries, combined with a chemical accident that sent a fellow guard, Jeff Walburn, to the hospital for 11 days in 1994, prompted NIOSH visits to the plant in 1996 and 1997. John Cardarelli, who held a master’s in health physics—the study of radiation’s effects on the human body—led the inquiry.
His task was to determine whether exposures to neutron radiation, a byproduct of highly enriched uranium considered more dangerous than other types of ionizing radiation, posed a risk to workers at Portsmouth.
Management had deemed such exposures so insignificant that employees weren’t required to wear neutron dosimeters during the plant’s first 38 years. (They did wear dosimeters that recorded alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.)
In his final report, Cardarelli concluded that “under certain conditions an acute exposure to neutron radiation can occur” at Portsmouth, creating a potential health hazard. He highlighted a phenomenon the industry called “slow cookers”—buildups of uranium within the cascade of gas centrifuges used in the enrichment process that gave off excess neutrons.
Archive tapes containing older dosimetry data were reused, the data overwritten and unrecoverable. Abnormally high radiation doses were dismissed as anomalies and blamed on “equipment failure.
In January, for example, the demolition and decommissioning contractor at Portsmouth, Fluor-BWXT, received a violation notice from the Energy Department accusing it of “improper alteration” of radiation-protection records.
“Although no individuals received a radiological dose as a result,” the notice said, Fluor-BWXT managers engaged in “willful falsification of documents,” an act that “posed an elevated risk of unplanned radiological exposures to [Portsmouth] workers and the public.”
In an email to the center, Fluor-BWXT spokesman Jeff Wagner wrote that the company paid a $243,750 fine and dismissed technicians and managers who failed to calibrate radiation monitoring equipment and then “compounded the issue by going back into the records and entering false data that would indicate the equipment was operating within parameters.”
Wagner called the acts “totally unacceptable.”
Radiation and chemical exposures remain a worry at the site, where workers are cutting into pipes that in some cases contain hazardous residue.
Faye Vlieger’s lungs were injured in a 2002 chemical-vapor incident at the Hanford site, a former plutonium production complex in Washington state where cleanup has been underway for 26 years.
The Labor Department OK’d her claim in 2009, but under current rules, she’s sure she would have a problem: Given her symptoms, her doctor suspected phosgene—a poisonous gas—but she said she could never get an official answer.
“If my claim was going to go through today, it wouldn’t be approved,” said Vlieger, who helps others with their cases.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson says cleanup workers at Hanford are exposed to noxious fumes and vapors even now.
He sued over the matter in September.
“Despite 20 years of study and multiple reports, the federal government has not implemented a lasting solution,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement, “and workers continue to get sick.”
[This story was published by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington.]
WE MUST ASK OURSELVES, "IF THEY DIDN'T TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN, SO TO SPEAK, DARE WE REMOTELY CONSIDER THEY WERE EVER LOOKING OUT FOR THE HEALTH AND RISK TO THE REST OF US?"
WAY BACK IN 1999, OUR OWN GOVERNMENT WAS FIGHTING AGAINST US, AND STILL IS.
PADUCAH, KENTUCKY
SEPT. 1, 1999
The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, operated for years by the nuclear weapons manufacturing companies Martin-Marietta and Lockheed Martin, produced enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, Navy submarines and commercial power plants for 47 years.
The plant is owned by the Department of Energy, which subcontracted it to Martin Marietta in 1984, and then to Lockheed-Martin in 1995 when Martin-Marietta and Lockheed merged.
The chance discovery of the ooze by plant workers in July led to the uncovering of a burial ground for radioactive debris just north of the plant.
The waste was barely hidden under a thin layer of soil in a grassy lot, and was found by the workers when they noticed a tar-like substance in the tracks left by the truck.
The findings appear to confirm serious allegations already made against Lockheed-Martin and Martin-Marietta in a lawsuit filed by the workers and by the Natural Resources Defense Council this past June.
The suit accuses the companies of making false statements and claims to the Department of Energy about the plant’s health, safety and environmental record.
It says that contaminated waste streamed out of the plant for years, exposing workers to dangerous levels of radiation.
Some was allegedly dumped in woods and abandoned buildings in a nearby state wildlife area.
In the latest scare, a couple living about three miles from the plant last week [REMEMBER, THIS WAS IN 1999] discovered three barrels buried in their back yard.
A Department of Emergency Services worker tested the barrels with a Geiger counter and found high levels of contamination on the drums and on the hands and shoes of Jim Hutto, owner of the house.
The barrels are now being tested further."
U.S. shrugs on nuclear worker safety.
*Workers are still being exposed to radiation.
*Taxpayers have spent $12 billion in compensation.
*Contractors cut health benefits in push to reduce costs.
*Taxpayers have spent $12 billion in compensation.
*Contractors cut health benefits in push to reduce costs.
FAILURE TO PROTECT CONTINUES....
"Stronger safety standards and greater awareness are failing to protect today’s workers, even as the U.S. embarks on a $1 trillion, 30-year modernization of its nuclear arsenal.
(The goal is to reduce the number while sharpening the accuracy of our bombs. Whether the U.S. should pay so much to risk another nuclear arms race is a serious question for another day.)
The cost of compensating sick nuclear workers is also high, even though awards are relatively modest and workers and their families often must battle bureaucracy for years to qualify, according to McClatchy’s reporting.
Taxpayers have spent $12 billion so far to compensate nuclear workers whose sickness or deaths were linked to their occupations.
It’s significant that the government underestimated how sick its nuclear workforce would become. Original predictions were that the compensation program would serve 3,000 people. Instead, 53,000 sick workers have been compensated, while 107,394 have been diagnosed with cancer and other work-related diseases, and workers still are getting sick.
Some of the sick are Kentuckians who worked in Paducah, where uranium was enriched for weapons and military reactors and where environmental contamination is also a costly Cold War legacy. (Owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, the nation’s last remaining gaseous diffusion plant now produces nuclear fuel and is leased to a private corporation.)
As McClatchy reported from the Texas Panhandle, 1,100 union employees at the Pantex plant, where B61 gravity bombs are being modernized, went out on strike earlier this year to protest benefits cuts.
[SEE ALSO "TEXAS REACTOR LEAKS SHAKES NUCLEAR INDUSTRY"]
A partnership led by Bechtel and Lockheed Martin known as Consolidated Nuclear Security won the contract to run the Pantex plant and the Y-12 complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. by promising to save the government $3.27 billion over 10 years.
Bechtel and Lockheed Martin brought to the assignment a less than stellar record: a combined 11 complaints of retaliation against whistle blowers who raised safety concerns; and $70 million in violations, including falsifying test records and insufficient radiation controls, reports McClatchy.
Pretending that nuclear workers no longer face serious health risks or that the government and its contractors are doing all they can to protect them is a brutal false economy.
This country should do better."
AS ONE PERSON COMMENTED ON THAT ARTICLE:
"It takes anywhere from 30-100 years to decommission a nuclear power plant, and all the waste that has been generated over the decades will be toxic for millennia."
LEST WE FORGET, IN 2011,
AND IN FEBRUARY THIS YEAR, 2016,
AS FORTUNE MAGAZINE REPORTED FEB. 28, 2016:
"New York could be the next Fukushima as world governments roll back nuclear power.
"New York could be the next Fukushima as world governments roll back nuclear power.
Nuclear plants represent huge threats to nearby areas, though the risk
of a disaster at any one plant is small.
While Stanford researchers have found that Fukushima’s fallout may directly cause only about 300 deaths worldwide [THIS HAD BEEN REVISED UPWARD IN 2012 BY STANFORD STUDIES, "They found that the number of deaths would likely range between 15 and 1,300, while the number of people acquiring cancer as a result would range between 24 and 2,500.", AND SUGGESTIONS FROM OTHER MORE RECENT STUDIES ARE THAT THOUSANDS OF TIMES THIS MANY, MOSTLY CHILDREN, MAY DIE. SEE BELOW AT TRIPLE ASTERISKS ***], estimates of economic losses range from $250-$500 billion, stemming largely from the removal of 159,128 people from a zone the size of Connecticut—land which will be uninhabitable for centuries.
While Stanford researchers have found that Fukushima’s fallout may directly cause only about 300 deaths worldwide [THIS HAD BEEN REVISED UPWARD IN 2012 BY STANFORD STUDIES, "They found that the number of deaths would likely range between 15 and 1,300, while the number of people acquiring cancer as a result would range between 24 and 2,500.", AND SUGGESTIONS FROM OTHER MORE RECENT STUDIES ARE THAT THOUSANDS OF TIMES THIS MANY, MOSTLY CHILDREN, MAY DIE. SEE BELOW AT TRIPLE ASTERISKS ***], estimates of economic losses range from $250-$500 billion, stemming largely from the removal of 159,128 people from a zone the size of Connecticut—land which will be uninhabitable for centuries.
[NO, THE ABE GOVERNMENT IS ALMOST FORCING RESIDENTS BACK INTO CONTAMINATED, HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE AREAS.
FOR ABE, HOSTING THE OLYMPICS MEANS PUTTING ON A SHOW OF "ALL IS WELL IN JAPAN", AND RISKING KILLING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT CITIZENS IS, OBVIOUSLY, ACCEPTABLE. ]
Fukushima prefecture had a population just short of two million at
the time of the disaster. FOR ABE, HOSTING THE OLYMPICS MEANS PUTTING ON A SHOW OF "ALL IS WELL IN JAPAN", AND RISKING KILLING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT CITIZENS IS, OBVIOUSLY, ACCEPTABLE. ]
Indian Point sits just 25 miles north of New York City’s 8.5 million inhabitants, as well as real estate many times more valuable than that in northern Japan.
During the Fukushima meltdown, the Japanese government established a 20 kilometer (12 mile) evacuation zone around the reactor—but the U.S. embassy recommended that Americans leave areas within 50 miles.
That suggests that a meltdown at Indian Point could lead to the evacuation of New York City.
In addition to profound human costs, the immediate economic damage would run into many trillions of dollars. And it is no exaggeration to say that a threat to New York City is a threat to the entire U.S. economy."
ECONOMY BE HANGED!
WHAT ABOUT HUMAN LIVES?
NO ONE CAN SAY ONLY A FEW HUNDRED WILL DIE FROM FUKUSHIMA'S MULTIPLE MELTDOWNS, EXPLOSIONS, FIRES, INCESSANT, UNENDING WATER LEAKS, BURNING RADIOACTIVE RUBBISH, PILES OF DETERIORATING PLASTIC BAGS FULL OF RADIOACTIVE SOIL, "STEAM VENTING", UNTRAINED WORKERS' ERRORS AND POOR MONITORING OF THEIR LEVELS OF RADIATION THAT CONTAMINATES OTHERS THEY COME IN CONTACT WITH...THE LEAKING DOESN'T STOP, SO NO ONE CAN STOP RECALCULATING EVERY DAY THE VERY ELEVATED RISKS TO HUMAN HEALTH BECAUSE IT NEVER ENDS.
The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), A RATHER SLANTED "FACTS PAGE" CAN BE READ FOR HOURS ON END AT http://eecap.org/Basic_Questions.htm?gclid=CMKmq9mxo8sCFVFlfgodhX4Ihw.
The 2013 Office of the EEOICPA Ombudsman's Report to Congress .
The Report details problems reported to the Ombudsman over the year. Remember to contact the Ombudsman's Office whenever you experience a problem with EEOICPA.
EEOICPA STATISTICS CAN BE VIEWED AT SEVERAL ONLINE SITES SUCH AS
SEE ALSO:
- Black Lung Benefits Act (BLBA) Keywords: Black Lung, Coal Mine Worker Compensation, Disabled Coal Miners
- Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA) Keywords: employment injury, work injury, on the job injury, injury compensation, worker compensation benefit
The Department of Labor (DOL) administers and enforces more than 180 federal laws. These mandates and the regulations that implement them cover many workplace activities for about 10 million employers and 125 million workers.
READ MORE THAN YOU MAY WANT TO READ {AND PERHAPS GAG AT MOST OF IT?} AT http://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/majorlaws
Notice Of 2013 Revision Of Listing Of Covered Department Of Energy Facilities.
WE KNOW HOWEVER MUCH WE CARE TO KNOW, FOLKS, HOWEVER MUCH WE ARE WILLING TO DIG TO FIND OUT.
LEARNING BEATS HELL OUT OF MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL OR PLAYING 'WORLD OF WARCRAFT' OR BEING MINDLESSLY 'ENTERTAINED'... AT LEAST SOME THINK SO.
AS WE SEE ABOVE, ALL THAT TIME, THOSE WORKERS AND THOSE LIVING TOO CLOSE TO THOSE FACILITIES DID NOT KNOW AND ONLY LEARNED TOO LATE THE TRUTHS THAT COULD HAVE SAVED THE ONES WHO HAVE NOW DIED, OR ARE DYING AS I TYPE.
PERHAPS, QUESTIONING EVERYTHING, AS MY DAD TOLD US TO DO, IS THE BEST "DEFENSE"?
BUT, "KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE"...THEN WE HAVE TO GET OFF OUR BEHINDS AND ACT ON WHAT WE LEARN.
IT'S WORTH THE EFFORT, YES?
_______________________________
*** MORE ON THE MANY FLAWS IN LOW-NUMBERS STUDIES AT FUKUSHIMA (AND IN THE U.S.)
_______________________________
*** MORE ON THE MANY FLAWS IN LOW-NUMBERS STUDIES AT FUKUSHIMA (AND IN THE U.S.)
"The content of a new report defies what are chronically underestimated radiation exposure levels and effects produced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, TEPCO, and the Japanese government.
As we have reported previously, the present day radiation risk model is based on outdated science and a dataset extracted from Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors.
As we have reported previously, the present day radiation risk model is based on outdated science and a dataset extracted from Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors.
[It] was
arrived at before the discovery of DNA, and knowledge of up to six orders of magnitude higher genotoxicity
caused by what is known as photoelectron induction associated with
low-dose radioisotope exposure, i.e. the incorporation into our tissue
of extremely low doses of radionuclides such as plutonium-239, uranium-238, and over one hundred others produced as a byproduct of the nuclear reactions that produce nuclear power.
For those unafraid of confronting the truth, I highly recommend reading the 2001 paper published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry titled, "Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant alpha particle decay,"
produced by the Army's own Radiobiology Research Institute, in order to
fully comprehend the implications of photoelectron induction.
In a
nutshell, it implies that the adverse health effects associated
with nuclear fallout may be tens of thousands times worse than present radiation risk models used by the nuclear industry, medical establishment, and government presently project.
The nuclear radiation risk models used by the nuclear
industry and the medical establishment and harped upon by the mainstream
media and world governments, were created largely by nuclear physicists
in the 1950's, before the discovery of DNA, and are based upon the type
of high energy external radiation exposures associated with the atomic
bomb blast in Hiroshima.
This "old world" risk model,
which underpins the policies and recommendations of would-be authorities
on radiation safety such as the International Commission on
Radiological Protection (ICRP), though relevant in the case of external
radiation exposure, severely misrepresents both the type and degree of
radiotoxicity associated with the internalization of radioisotopes like
Radioiodine 131, Cesium 137 and Uranium 238, and subsequent "non-linear"
adverse effects in the human body.
The ICRP not only conditions the world's perception on the relative safety of nuclear energy, but is also responsible for underwriting the risk associated with the use of munitions containing depleted uranium (DU) in places like Iraq, and now Libya.
The genotoxic Uranium-238 residues left behind will likely cause pain, suffering, birth defects, miscarriages and premature deaths for countless generations to come.
The ICRP not only conditions the world's perception on the relative safety of nuclear energy, but is also responsible for underwriting the risk associated with the use of munitions containing depleted uranium (DU) in places like Iraq, and now Libya.
The genotoxic Uranium-238 residues left behind will likely cause pain, suffering, birth defects, miscarriages and premature deaths for countless generations to come.
Although radioisotopes
like Uranium-238 give off relatively low doses of ionizing radiation
when compared to "high dose" external radiation exposure (such that may
occur in a nuclear blast), following inhalation or ingestion these alpha
particle emitters remain in affected tissues and cells for days,
months, years and in some cases, a (subsequently shortened) lifetime,
e.g. Strontium-90.
Once a DNA-Uranium complex is formed it is capable of amplifying the genotoxicity of natural background gamma radiation (or medical radiation) to the affected DNA though a phenomenon called "photoelectric enhancement" by up to 55,000 TIMES HIGHER than normally occurs."
NO AUTOPSIES, SO ARE WE SEEING SUICIDES OR NOT?
According to data collected by the Fukushima Prefecture, 2014 saw 1,232 nuclear-related deaths.
The two towns with the greatest number of deaths were both near the Fukushima plant: Namie, with 359 dead; and Tomioka, with 291 dead.
According to data collected by the Fukushima Prefecture, 2014 saw 1,232 nuclear-related deaths.
The two towns with the greatest number of deaths were both near the Fukushima plant: Namie, with 359 dead; and Tomioka, with 291 dead.
One of the diseases particularly expected to show an uptick after the
Fukushima disaster is thyroid cancer, because radioactive iodine from
nuclear disasters tends to concentrate in the thyroid gland.
An estimated 6,000 children contracted thyroid cancer following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
[EVEN THOUGH THEY EVACUATED PEOPLE FROM A MUCH LARGER AREA THAN JAPAN DID, AND CHERNOBYL WAS NOT ALLOWED TO SIT THERE AND LEAK LIKE DAIICHI HAS LEAKED FOR 5 YEARS NOW.
STILL, 6,000 KIDS SUFFERED THYROID CANCER.
BIRTH DEFECTS ARE STILL COMMON THERE, AS ARE SPONTANEOUS ABORTIONS, ETC.]
An estimated 6,000 children contracted thyroid cancer following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
[EVEN THOUGH THEY EVACUATED PEOPLE FROM A MUCH LARGER AREA THAN JAPAN DID, AND CHERNOBYL WAS NOT ALLOWED TO SIT THERE AND LEAK LIKE DAIICHI HAS LEAKED FOR 5 YEARS NOW.
STILL, 6,000 KIDS SUFFERED THYROID CANCER.
BIRTH DEFECTS ARE STILL COMMON THERE, AS ARE SPONTANEOUS ABORTIONS, ETC.]
One parent concerned about her child’s thyroid cancer risk is Megumi
Muto. Muto’s daughter, Nana, has been diagnosed with lumps in her
thyroid gland, and the lumps are growing. Muto is certain that the
tumors were caused by Nana’s exposure to Fukushima radiation.
The health of both of Muto’s children has deteriorated after being exposed to the radioactive fallout, she said.
“They had rashes on their bodies then nose bleeds. My son’s white cells have decreased and they both have incredible fatigue,” she said. “They may not have cancer now but they both have multiple nodules around their thyroids. I’m really worried.”
Sumio Konno has worked as a engineer at nuclear plants for 29 years and said the levels needed to be investigated.
"They're still not decontaminating areas where children live or near schools, even after four years."
The Fukushima government has recorded more than 1,800 stress-related deaths to the March 11 disaster of 2011. "They're still not decontaminating areas where children live or near schools, even after four years."
Ms. Muto wanted to move her family out of Fukushima city but she said she could not afford to.
WHAT THE EXPERTS LEAVE OUT, HOW THEY'VE MANIPULATED DATA AND SKEWED "STUDIES" IS ABSOLUTELY CRIMINAL.
The combination of not testing certain foods and over testing others creates a skewed understanding of overall food contamination.
Sea testing near the plant does NOT include testing at varying depths.
It is well known that a significant current exists offshore of the plant that may serve to carry contaminated water away from the plant.
There have also been NO recent tests of water at lower depths or of the silt and sand in the impacted areas.
Offshore findings [SUCH AS THERE ARE.] have seen low but consistent levels of beta
radiation.
This may be an indicator of contamination but may not give a FULL picture of contamination and leaks at the plant.
Newer admissions that contaminated water has been known to leak from open drainage ditches at the plant yet nearby sea monitoring did not catch it shows that current monitoring is insufficient to detect changes at the plant.
This may be an indicator of contamination but may not give a FULL picture of contamination and leaks at the plant.
Newer admissions that contaminated water has been known to leak from open drainage ditches at the plant yet nearby sea monitoring did not catch it shows that current monitoring is insufficient to detect changes at the plant.
DECEIT, MANIPULATION, LIES AT EVERY LEVEL
Air releases were also found to not be sufficiently detected at the plant.
During demolition work on unit 3,
large volumes of contaminated dust blew off site.
Only one detection
meter on site went off for a brief time.
That was not immediately
connected to the demolition work and was initially assumed to have been
contaminated water in a worker cooling station.
Months later TEPCO
admitted the extent of the dust release after a research crew found
increases in contaminated dust in Miyagi prefecture.
The incident caused the NRA to put further restrictions on
similar work at unit 1 to try to prevent the same thing from happening
again.
A recently published study in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity confirms that the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster reached Europe (Lithuania), and included plutonium, the most deadly manmade element (nanogram for nanogram) in existence.
What this means is that every region under the jet stream -- which includes half of the planet north of its equator -- could have been exposed to some degree of plutonium fall-out; a fact that is all the more disturbing when we consider there is no such thing as a safe level, and that the harm (on the human scale of time) does not dissipate: the half life of plutonium-239 is 24,200 years, and that of uranium-238 is 4,460,000,000 years, which is older than our planet.
This might point to higher rates of early spontaneous abortions.
He also observed a (statistically significant) 20% increase in the infant mortality rate in 2012, relative to the long-term trend in Fukushima Prefecture plus six surrounding prefectures, which he attributes to the consumption of radioactive food:
The fact that infant mortality peaks in May 2012, more than one year after the Fukushima accident, suggests that the increase is an effect of internal rather than external radiation exposure.These are indicative rather than definitive findings and need to be verified by further studies. Unfortunately, such studies are notable by their absence.
In Germany [after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster] perinatal mortality peaks followed peaks of cesium burden in pregnant women with a time-lag of seven months. May 2012 minus seven months is October 2011, the end of the harvesting season. Thus, consumption of contaminated foodstuff during autumn 2011 could be an explanation for the excess of infant mortality in the Fukushima region in 2012.
The official widely-observed policy is that small amounts of radiation are harmless: scientifically speaking this is untenable.
For example, the Japanese Government is attempting to increase the public limit for radiation in Japan from 1 mSv to 20 mSv per year. Its scientists are trying to force the ICRP to accept this large increase.
This is not only unscientific, it is also unconscionable.
Part of the reason for this policy is that radiation scientists in Japan (in the US, as well) appear unable or unwilling to accept the stochastic nature of low-level radiation effects.
‘Stochastic’ means an all-or-nothing response: you either get cancer etc or you don’t.
As you decrease the dose, the effects become less likely: your chance of cancer declines all the way down to zero dose.
The corollary is that tiny doses, even well below background, still carry a small chance of cancer: there is never a safe dose, except zero dose
UNSCEAR studies repeatedly calculated exposures by including those who
were exposed among those who were not.
By taking residents of Fukushima prefecture and mixing them into the entire population of Japan, they were able to present insignificant cancer risk projections.
The international press dutifully repeated this fallacy.
By taking residents of Fukushima prefecture and mixing them into the entire population of Japan, they were able to present insignificant cancer risk projections.
The international press dutifully repeated this fallacy.
.
The 2020 Olympics have also proven to be a PR
tool.
The games set to be held in Tokyo were won by some disingenuous
promises of PM Abe that Fukushima Daiichi would be a contained problem
by then.
This was quickly proven to be false as new problems at the
disaster site came to light then and again in early 2015.
With the
Olympics secured, the government has pushed to move portions of the
games to Fukushima prefecture, something that would have likely ruined
any chances of securing the games if it had been disclosed during the
decision making process.
Efforts are now underway to move soccer events
to J Village, just down the road from Fukushima Daiichi and baseball to
Fukushima City where hot spots remain a problem for the city.
These PR efforts have clearly been the priority of the government while actually helping people has been almost non existent.
Four years since the disaster have shown many things yet two stand out. The disaster itself is a massive challenge that has impacted every facet of life in the region and the global impact is still being understood and that Japan’s government has chosen the interests of old entrenched industries as their priority."
CHEATING THE FACTS
"Another incidence in which the government tried to make the radiation effects appear less than the reality was uncovered recently. The government has set up quite a few radiation monitoring facilities in Fukushima prefecture. A civilian team for verification of their accuracy has been measuring the monitors exhaustively. More than 120 monitors were checked to date.
What they unraveled are:
(1) The vicinities of the monitors are typically cleaned and decontaminated, and hence would show relatively low radiation values.
The citizens measured radiation at several points 10-15 m away from each monitor. The monitor values turned out to be lower by 50-70 % than those at places un-decontaminated nearby. Thus the true exposure the people would subject to is approximately double of the value shown on the monitor.
(2) The monitors typically indicate about 90 % of the true values determined by other measuring devices.
There have been some reports that the government (Ministry of Science and Education) officials demanded to the manufactures that their instruments should under-evaluate the radiation.
This deception is only one recent example, and indicates that the government is attempting to convince the Japanese citizens that the nuclear accident and the resulting radiation release would not be so harmful: “don’t worry about it”. The spirit of it is that they are placing the economic values of the nuclear facilities above the basic human rights to safe and healthy life."
From Japan, by a Japanese news agency and Japanese citizens :
Fukushima’s appalling death toll
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/03/01/editorials/fukushimas-appalling-death-toll/#.VPdZAvnF_Cs
Fukushima Daiichi Exposures Found To Be Worse Than Claimed
Since 3.11, 2011, the Japanese government has been untruthful in every aspect of the disasters at the Fukushima Dai-ich Nuclear Power Plant.http://www.acsir.org/yagasaki.php
Fukushima Residents Exposure Results Only Tells Fraction Of The Story
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=4979
No comments:
Post a Comment