22 Feb 2017
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Nuclear
“Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has launched a campaign to convince a skeptical world that dumping up to 800,000 tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean and is a safe and responsible thing to do.”
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(Awareness Act) Most people do not realize the repercussions that disasters like the Fukushima nuclear meltdown have on the world. When it happens the media is all over it, and then soon they trickle off and nobody ever thinks about it again.
But the fact is, even though nobody is talking about it, it does not mean that the trouble is gone. Quite the contrary actually, the Fukushima disaster is still affecting the world today. Almost one-third of the globe is thought to have been contaminated from the leak out from the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.
More than 80% of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific Ocean, far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Of this, a small fraction is currently on the seafloor, the rest was swept up by the Kuroshio Current, a Western Pacific version of the Gulf Stream, and carried out to sea where it mixed with the vast volume of the North Pacific.
These materials, primarily two isotopes of cesium, only recently began to appear in the Eastern Pacific. For example, in 2015 we detected signs of radioactive contamination from Fukushima along the coast near British Columbia and California. While these amounts are trace, the danger of radioactive material in any amount cannot be underestimated. Every possible exposure, in any small amount, adds up.
So what should we take from this? That it is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate that the leaks are ongoing. More than 1,000 tanks brimming with irradiated water stand inland from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Each day 300 tonnes of water are pumped through Fukushima’s ruined reactors to keep them cool.
The company that owns the plant, TEPCO, has deployed a filtration device that has stripped very dangerous isotopes of strontium and cesium from the flow. The water in the tanks still contains tritium and isotope of hydrogen with two neutrons. Tritium is a major by-product of nuclear reactions and is difficult and expensive to remove from the water.
Now, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has launched a campaign to convince a skeptical world that dumping up to 800,000 tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean and is a safe and responsible thing to do.
I say, that any further dumping is done, the IAEA and Tokyo Electric Power Co., need to consider the impact that it is having on the environment. Entire livelihoods could be affected as well as the long-tern health of the region and eventually the global community.
(Awareness Act) While the last six years have been horrific at Fukushima, recent weeks have proven to spiral into new depths of hell. Robots specifically intended to deal with radiation have failed to meet their mark and are only capable of handling the extensive amounts of radiation for two hours before disintegrating.
The latest findings at Fukushima have discovered the peak radiation levels observed since the triple core meltdown that occurred in 2011. Readings inside the containment vessel of reactor no.2 are as elevated as 530 Sieverts per hour. Such acute levels would be lethal one hundred times over to the average human being.
“The new record at Fukushima of 530 Sieverts per hour is 70% higher than that of Chernobyl. The 530 Sievert reading has recorded some distance from the melted fuel, so in reality, it could be 10 times higher than recorded,” said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center.
Even exposure to one Sievert of radiation could potentially lead to infertility, radiation sickness and loss of hair. Compared to exposure to five Sieverts, which would be dire to anyone within a month’s time.
The Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown disaster “is not over and will never end,” warns Dr. Helen Caldicott, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and holder of 21 honorary doctorate degrees.
The devastation of Fukushima will not vanish within our lifetimes or our grandchildren’s. It is ultimately the world’s radiation nightmare hemorrhaging toxic waste into the ocean and though we are advised not to panic; it causes critical concern for the future existence of our earth.
https://rumble.com/embed/v1tjs0/
Source: The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster by syngulate
Arrogant dunces.
OK that’s enough. This is not right. Perhaps the world should prepare a plan to sink Japan into the ocean. It has no right to poison the world by mishandling this catastrophe. And it is arrogant: Japan steadily declines any help from outside organizations.
Let’s just sink Japan into the Pacific before it causes any more harm to the rest of the planet! (I am being silly obviously and I don’t recommend sinking any nation just yet)
Source: Fukushima Plant Set to Dump 777,000 Tons of Nuclear Waste Into Ocean
Japan — More than three-quarters of a million tons of radioactive water is about to be dumped into the Pacific Ocean if the chairmen of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) have their way, Japanese media reported over the weekend. All they require now is final government approval.
“The decision has already been made,” TEPCO chairman Takashi Kawamura told the media, according to the Japan Times.
As of July 6, about 777,000 tons of tritium-tainted water is being stored in about 580 tanks at the Fukushima nuclear plant. The water, which is constantly injected into leaking reactor No. 1 to cool it since it was damaged by a tsunami in 2011, is then filtered to remove radioactive materials. The complex filtering system can eliminate everything but tritium.
This has left the Japanese government with a problem. They can’t go on filling up tanks forever. Something has to be done with the radioactive water. A government panel is currently coming to a decision on the issue, and simply dumping the water into the sea is an option on the table.
TEPCO chairman Kawamura is just waiting on the green light. “We cannot keep going if we do not have the support of the state,” he told the media.
Kawamura certainly has the support of NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka, who’s been urging the TEPCO boss to make the move. Tanaka has been critical of Kawamura in the past, saying he should be more proactive in his handling of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
“An operator lacking the will to take the initiative does not have the right to resume operation of nuclear reactors,” he said recently at a special meeting with TEPCO’s top management.
According to the Japan Times, Kawamura “feels emboldened to have the support of the NRA chairman.”
Tritium itself is said to be relatively harmless, and discharge of tritium-tainted water into the ocean is standard operating procedure at nuclear power plants. Oceanographer Simon Boxall spoke to The Guardian on the tritium issue last year, saying:
“In the broad scale of things, if they do end up putting the material in the Pacific, it will have minimal effect on an ocean basin scale.”
But local fishermen say the actual harmfulness of tritium isn’t the issue. What’s paramount is the perception people will have when they hear of hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive water being released into the ocean. In short, such a move would make customers question the safety of their catches, which would thereby affect their livelihoods.
“Releasing (tritium) into the sea will create a new wave of unfounded rumors, making our efforts all for naught,” Kanji Tachiya, who heads a fishermen cooperative, told the Japan Times.
And Aileen Mioko-Smith of Green Action Japan says there is even more to consider here. “They say that it will be safe because the ocean is large so it will be diluted,” she told The Telegraph, “but that sets a precedent that can be copied, essentially permitting anyone to dump nuclear waste into our seas.”
Furthermore, says Mioko-Smith, those in charge of managing the Fukushima nuclear crisis have had plenty of time to come up with solutions and that the “out of sight, out of mind” approach is unacceptable:
“This accident happened more than six years ago and the authorities should have been able to devise a way to remove the tritium instead of simply announcing that they are going to dump it into the ocean.”
Source: Bill and Hillary received $2.85M selling U.S. uranium to the Russians
With permission from
June 8, 2017
The Clintons actually did business with the Russians and the media is ignoring it
(INTELLIHUB) — At least $2.85 million dollars flowed to the Clinton Family through a series of five Russian-backed donations after a massive uranium deal was signed off by the State Department and other agencies during Hillary’s tenure.
Shockingly, between the years of 2009-2013 Russian-backed interests assumed control of one-fifth (20%) of the U.S. uranium supply along with several highly-lucrative mines in Kazakhstan through a secret backdoor deal with the Clintons, as reported by Joe Becker and Mike McIntire in April of 2015.
The report was groundbreaking. And if you think about it, the report should have triggered the real Russian narrative. You know, the one where the Clinton’s sold America’s most strategic asset (i.e. uranium: used to produce nuclear fuel and weapons of mass destruction). Of course, such a narrative never came to pass because to the contrary the fake Trump-Russia narrative was born, sidetracking the general public from what’s really going on.
According to Becker and McIntire: “Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.”
And if that’s not enough, Mr. Clinton received an additional $500,000 from a Russian investment bank with ties to Uranium One, bringing the grand total influx from Russia to $2,800,000. To top it off, the donations went unreported by the Clinton Foundation.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Clintons actually did shady business with the Russians against the best interest of the United States of America and personally benefited from doing so. They must be held accountable.
Please share this powerful report with everyone you know. Get the truth out!
Nuclear waste locations USA
Source: Nuclear Waste: Planning for the Next Million Years
With permission from
counterpunch.org
May 4, 2017
It’s been over 60 years since the first nuclear power plant was switched on in Russia and now 31 years (last week) since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Yet despite the decades-long history of nuclear power, most countries still haven’t agreed on a way to safely store nuclear waste.
Leading the way is Finland with the world’s first permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. High-level radioactive waste is to be buried 400 metres deep in the granite bedrock of Olkiluoto Island off the Finnish coast, where its operators claim it will be secure for the next 100,000 years.
Governments, on the whole, aren’t good at long term planning though. And this is a major problem for the nuclear industry where eventualities must be planned for in terms of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years.
Teams of artists and philosophers are even debating how to mark repository sites to warn off future generations who may be as removed from us as we are from the first homo sapiens to arrive in Europe.
Even the more easily grasped timescales involved in nuclear waste disposal pose huge technical, economic and social challenges. Finland is to start loading the Olkiluoto repository in 2020 and the process is expected to take 100 years. That may seem like a long time, and it is considering that the first observed nuclear reaction was made less than 100 years ago in 1919.
Sweden, which is pushing forward with the same technology as Finland, is the only other European country close to such an advanced stage of planning. Favourable geological conditions and relatively small quantities of just one type of waste – spent fuel, without the additional problems of reprocessed waste – mean both countries have advantages over other nuclear nations.
For the most part,says Stephen Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy at Greenwich University, high-level radioactive waste is lying around waiting for a solution.
“Around the world, everybody is extending the spent fuel storage and reactors. Find me a reactor that’s been in operation for 20 years and I’ll find you a plant which has had its spent fuel facility increased. Every one. There’s nowhere to put it”, says Thomas.
Public resistance
In 2011, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a full phase out nuclear power by 2022, making Europe’s largest economy a trailblazer in renewable energy.
Back in 1977, Germany was seen as a pioneer of disposal solutions when it began exploring a former salt mine at Gorleben as a possible repository. From the start, locals protested vehemently. A decades-long battle ensued with intense debate over whether the site was geologically suitable.
Some experts claimed that with its location in a sparsely populated area close to the then border with East Germany, the site was selected more for political than scientific reasons. In 2000 the government put a moratorium on the investigation.
A bill passed this year will see Gorleben back on the agenda as a possible waste site, in a search that views the country as a ‘blank map’, with salt, granite and clay sites all to be considered.
Officially, a site is to be identified by 2031 and built by 2050. But the state of Saxony is already pushing to be excluded from the process and some experts say this bid looks highly optimistic.
In the UK, exploration of a potential site conveniently close to the Sellafield decommissioning and reprocessing site – home to by far the country’s worst nuclear waste problem – stalled and was cancelled following a public and scientific consultation process.
In France, the plan for a clay repository near the village of Bure is more advanced than most. French nuclear agency ANDRA plans to have it ready by 2035. But observers say there has been a lack of public consultation and public protests are heating up ahead of an upcoming parliamentary vote over the site’s future.
Unknown costs
Besides the technical and political issues surrounding final disposal there are also massive economic challenges.
In the UK, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority forecast that the current cost of clean-up is somewhere between £95 billion (840 billion yuan) and £219 billion (2 trillion yuan), based on the data available. The total planned expenditure for 2017/2018 is £3.24 billion (20 billion yuan), of which £2.36 billion (20 billion yuan) will be funded by the government and the taxpayer; £0.88 billion by income from commercial operations.
In Germany, nuclear power plant operators are largely responsible for decommissioning reactors once they are switched off – this is where spent fuel is removed and sites dismantled – a process that takes decades in itself.
Under an agreement reached last year, waste disposal is now the responsibility of the state. Utilities are to pay 23.6 billion euros (177 billion yuan) into a state-administered fund to cover this. But experts worry that ultimately, taxpayers will be left footing the bill.
“For all the waste management and disposal of waste there is no technical concept and so you cannot estimate costs“, says Wolfgang Irrek, professor for energy management at Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Instead, the calculation is based on 20-year-old estimates for the Gorleben site.
Long-term intermediate storage
Some experts say final disposal is a bit of a red herring in any case. As appealing as the idea of settling the matter once and for all might be, questions have been raised about the long-term security of even the Finnish project.
“It’s very arrogant, scientifically, to say today we have safe disposal for tens of thousands of years”, says Mycle Schneider, an independent nuclear policy analyst and lead author of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. “I am not convinced geological storage is good forever – I have not seen the argument made conclusively. It’s too early to say.”
Instead, Schneider advocates a focus on ensuring that interim storage is up to the job, which, for the most part, it isn’t.
“We have got into problems with waste because it has been packaged on the assumption that it would go in the ground at a certain time, and it hasn’t, and the packaging has degraded”, Thomas says.
The UK and France have used wet storage for spent nuclear fuel, meaning the waste is kept in pools for long periods of time. Schneider says if there is anything to be learned from the European experience with nuclear waste it’s to take the German route of getting the cooled waste out of the water and into dry storage as quickly as possible.
“There is absolutely no doubt that dry storage is much safer and much more secure than pool storage”, says Schneider. “If you lose the water you are in trouble because the fuel will heat up. Depending on the age of the fuel, you might get fuel fires that will dwarf the nuclear accidents we have seen so far.”
He points to the Fukushima disaster, where it was initially unclear if a spent fuel fire was on the cards; a scenario which would have called for the evacuation of at least 10 million people.
In the UK, Andrew Blowers of independent expert group Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates says the locations of planned reactors pose their own set of problems.
“A lot of dangerous spent fuel is going to be stored on new-build sites which are in vulnerable coastal locations, which stacks up to a huge problem for the next century with climate change”, says Blowers.
Tip of the iceberg
And all this concerns only a tiny fraction of the overall radioactive waste problem. “High-level waste represents the smallest volume”, says Schneider. “The biggest volumes are [found] the lower you go in the contamination levels. A single uranium mine, like the German Wismut, can generate hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste.”
Decommissioning generates huge volumes of contaminated material. Intermediate-level waste storage repositories in Germany have also been fraught with technical and public acceptance problems, while decommissioning in the UK has seen costs spiral out of control.
“Britain is an example of how to make provisions for decommissioning wrong – we have made every mistake it is possible to make and have ended up with a nuclear authority that has no money”, Thomas says.
Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power altogether. Having defined volumes of material to deal with should give it some advantage, but Thomas says there is still too little experience of decommissioning to really know what the country is in for.
“The amount of decommissioning that has gone on in the world is negligible. I think there are six plants that have been fully decommissioned that operated for a decent amount of time.”
Still, Blowers says Germany’s got one thing right. “What we don’t want is more nuclear waste created when we are not at all sure what we are going to do with what we’ve already got.”
Ruby Russell is a Berlin-based journalist whose work has been published by Deutsche Welle, Clean Energy Wire, the Guardian and the Ecologist, among others
Fukushima explosions from air,
“Ms Katz worked inside the WHO for 18 years. She insists that WHO, in cahoots with IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), dangerously misrepresents the inherent dangers of ionizing radiation, an insinuation that smacks in the face with egregiousness galore.”
Source: Hidden Radiation Secrets of the World Health Organization
With permission from
counterpunch.org
May 2, 2017
Imagine the following hypothetical: The World Health Organization (“WHO”) is deeply involved in a high level cover up of the human impact and dangers of ionizing radiation, intentionally hiding the facts from the public, a chilling storyline!
After all, the world community depends upon WHO as an independent org t0 forewarn the general public of health dangers and to help in times of crises, not hide pivotal health facts from public eye.
As it happens, that nightmarish hypothetical comes to life in an interview with Alison Katz, who claims: “We are absolutely convinced that if the consequences of nuclear radiation were known to the public, the debate about nuclear power would end tomorrow. In fact, if the public knew, it would probably be excluded immediately as an energy option.”
Alison Katz heads a NGO known as Independent WHO, and she spends a lot of time arranging sandwich boards with messages like: “Complicity in Scientific Crime” or “Crime of Chernobyl – WHO Accomplice” in front of WHO headquarters/Geneva. For 10 years now on a daily vigil from 8:00-to-6:00 she and/or other protestors expose alleged misbehavior committed by WHO, right outside of the headquarters building. Imagine this: Ten years on the same street corner every working day. It’s commitment and determination sans pareil.
“The aim of the silent vigil is to remind the World Health Organisation of its duties. It was Hippocrates who formulated the ethical rules for health practitioners. The World Health Organisation ignores these rules, when it comes to protecting the health of the victims of the consequences of the nuclear industry”.
Which brings forth: Ten years of hard work combating a difficult and challenging issue warrants public adulation beyond carrying posters back and forth, come rain or shine, trudging away in the heat of the sun or the freezing cold and snow in front of WHO Hdqs. Hopefully, this article serves that purpose for Alison Katz.
The mission of Independent WHO is to expose WHO’s failings whilst calling for WHO independence away from influence by the worldwide nuclear syndicate: According to WHO Independence’s Web Site: “The World Health Organization (WHO) is failing in its duty to protect those populations who are victims of radioactive contamination.”
Ms Katz worked inside the WHO for 18 years. She insists that WHO, in cahoots with IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), dangerously misrepresents the inherent dangers of ionizing radiation, an insinuation that smacks in the face with egregiousness galore.
Ms Katz’s April 2017 interview, which this article is based upon, can be heard in its entirety.
This article condenses and summarizes her one-hour interview. As such, according to Ms Katz: “The health consequences of nuclear activity, whether they are civil or military, are not known to the public… There has been a very high level cover up… including the WHO.”
For over 50 years WHO provided “a clean bill of health for nuclear power.” However, according to Ms Katz, that clean bill of health is not based upon independent science. It’s based upon “pseudo science” manipulated and largely controlled by the nuclear lobby and International Atomic Energy Agency, the Queen Bee of the pro-nuke Hive.
Furthermore, within the “United Nations family hierarchy,” WHO is entirely subservient to IAEA. In turn, IAEA reports to the Security Council of the UN or the very top echelon of the power hierarchy of the world, including France, China, UK, U.S., and the Russian Federation. Far and away, these are the world’s biggest nuke heads.
Connecting the dots leaves one breathless within a telling trail of pro-nuke advocacy of the highest order… hm-m-m, thus raising the question: How is it humanly possible for WHO to objectively, impartially, squarely and soberly analyze and recommend ionizing radiation issues on behalf of the general public?
Is it at all possible, even a little bit?
As it goes, the IAEA has two mandates, which sound innocent enough: (1) to prevent proliferation of nuclear power and (2) promotion of the use of the atom on a peaceful basis, ah-ah-ah… oh well, never mind. In reality, IAEA is a commercial lobbying org promoting use of the atom, yet at the same time, it dictates WHO procedures, standards, and published articles on the matter of nuclear radiation, prompting a very pregnant question: Is this a conflict of interest for WHO? Answer: Yes, it is! WHO is a creature of the dictates of IAEA, which is the world’s largest promoter of the atom. Whereas, WHO is supposed to “independently serve the public interest,” not kowtow to a nuclear advocacy powerhouse that reports to nuclear powerhouse countries that have a deepening love affair with nuclear power, warts and all.
For example, sixty (60) reactors are currently under construction in fifteen countries. In all, one hundred sixty (160) power reactors are in the planning stage and three hundred (300) more have been proposed. That’s a love affaire.
Meanwhile, as for WHO’s mandate: It serves as the leading authority of standards for public health, coordinating research, advising member states, and formulating ionizing radioactivity health policies. However, IAEA has been usurping WHO’s mandate for the past 50 years. In fact, a 1959 Agreement (WHA 12-40) between the two says WHO needs prior approval of IAEA before taking any action or publishing material dealing with nuclear, period!
As a result of this 50-year conflict of interest, which is deeply embedded by now, Ms Katz claims WHO must, absolutely must, become independent, thus breaking the stranglehold of numero uno promoter of nuclear power over WHO, which is mandated to serve the public, not IAEA.
Not only is there a serious conflict of interest, Katz claims WHO fails, time and again, to meet its mandate to the public, as for example:
1) WHO remained absent from Chernobyl for five years even though the WHO mandate requires it to be present the “day after a catastrophe” to evaluate and provide assistance. But, WHO was MIA for 5 years.
2) WHO does not issue independent reports on radiation issues. All nuclear-related reports are written by IAEA but published “in the name of the WHO.”
3) Following Chernobyl, there were two international conferences held to analyze the implications of the catastrophe; one held in Geneva in 1995 and the second in Kiev in 2001. The “Proceedings of the Conferences” were never published by WHO; thus, never made public even though WHO claims the proceedings are publicly available. Confusing? Yes! To this day, the relevant question remains: What did “the analyses” show?
As a result of WHO’s egregious conflicts, the world community has no independent arms-length source on nuclear radiation. That is a situation fraught with conflict and extremely difficult to accept, sans grimacing with a lot of teeth grinding.
Once again, with emphasis: There is no independent international authority reporting to the public on nuclear radiation…. none whatsoever. All information about nuclear radiation ultimately comes from the primary users/promoters of nuclear power even though they have a very big heavy axe to grind.
Of course, there are independent scientists, but they face enormous obstacles in coming forward with the truth, thereby risking monetary grants and risking personal positions, as well as family livelihood.
Not only that, but over the years all departments within WHO that dealt with nuclear radiation have been highly compromised. Even worse, according to Ms Katz, no senior radiation scientists work for WHO, none… nada.
What constitutes the “nuclear establishment” is a fair question; it consists of the major governments of the world like France and the U.S but led by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the top dog, establishing standards for the world. Strangely enough, there are no health experts at ICRP, prompting a logical question: Why not?
There is more to be concerned about, e.g., another shocking fact regarding ICRP, as if there are not already enough shockers with the thread that runs throughout nuclear power’s closely-knit network: Even though “ionizing radiation is mutagenic and always causes mutations, causing damage at the cellular level, there are no molecular biologists working in the ICRP” (Katz). Thus, the world’s largest institution for determination of radiation standards for the public has no molecular biologists on staff. That fact is beyond belief, an eye-opener beyond all other eye-openers.
It’s almost as if the regulators don’t give a damn about the effects of radiation on the general public. Do they?
Fukushima
Just after Fukushima in 2011, Ms Katz met with the Director General and five of the highest-ranking officials of WHO. The mayor of Geneva also attended the meeting; curiously, the City of Geneva, where WHO is headquartered, has an anti-nuclear provision in its city code.
The outcome of that meeting clearly demonstrated to Katz, and to the mayor of Geneva, that WHO abdicated its responsibilities for Fukushima.
However, a small victory ensued during the meetings as some solace was found when the Director General did admit, “there is no safe threshold of radiation.” And, she admitted to differences between internal and external radiation, which was a change of heart.
Remarkably, the Director General also confessed a shocking level of incredulity that only 50 people died from Chernobyl, widely claimed by the Director General’s own organization, WHO. That is the final number (50) of deaths that WHO attributes to Chernobyl. Howbeit, it’s a fabricated number w/o any meaning whatsoever and not supported by observational data.
Consequences of Chernobyl
WHO held a Chernobyl Forum in 2004 designed to “end the debate about the impact of Chernobyl radiation” whilst WHO maintains that 50 people died.
Here’s the final conclusion of that Chernobyl Forum ‘04: The mental health of those who live in the area is the most serious aftereffect, leading to strong negative attitudes and exaggerated sense of dangers to health and of exposure to radiation. Mental health was thus identified as the biggest negative aftereffect.
Because that conclusion is so brazenly bizarre, the Chernobyl Forum ‘04 must’ve been part of an alternative universe, way out there beyond the wild blue yonder, maybe the Twilight Zone or maybe like entering a scene in Jan Švankmajer’s Alice, a dark fantasy film loose adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
Here’s reality: Chernobyl Liquidators fought the Chernobyl disaster. Eight hundred thousand (800,000) Liquidators from the former USSR, largely recruits from the army, with average age of 33, fought the Chernobyl disaster.
According to an interview (2016) with a Liquidator, “We were tasked with the deactivation of the third and fourth reactors, but we also helped build the containment sarcophagus. We worked in three shifts, but only for five to seven minutes at a time because of the danger. After finishing, we’d throw our clothes in the garbage” (Source: Return to Chernobyl With Ukraine’s Liquidators, Aljazeera, April 25, 2016).
“Estimates of the number of liquidators who died or became ill as a result of their work vary substantially, but the men of the 633rd say that out of the 259 from their group, 71 have died. Melnik says that 68 have been designated as invalids by a state committee, which investigates their health and determines whether or not their diseases are attributable to Chernobyl… Dr Dimitry Bazyka, the current director-general of the National Research Centre for Radiation Medicine in Kiev, says that approximately 20,000 liquidators die each year,” Ibid.
As for total deaths, the Chief Medical Officer of the Russian Federation reported that 10% of its Chernobyl Liquidators were dead by 2001. The disaster occurred in 1986 with 80,000 dead within 16 years. Authorities out of Ukraine and Belarus confirmed Russian death numbers. Yet, WHO claims 50 died.
Eighty-thousand (80,000) Liquidators, as of 16 years ago, dead from Chernobyl, and that body count, according to Ms Katz, leaves out the people most contaminated by Chernobyl, meaning evacuees and also 57% of the fallout for Chernobyl came down outside of the USSR, Belarus, and Ukraine, and in 13 European countries 50% of the countryside was dangerously contaminated.
As for studies of the radiation impact of Chernobyl: “Thousands of independent studies in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian Federation and in many other countries, that were contaminated to varying degrees by radionuclides, have established that there has been significant increase in all types of cancer, in diseases of the respiratory, gastrointestinal, urogenital, endocrine immune, lymph node nervous systems, prenatal, perinatal, infant child mortality, spontaneous abortions, deformities and genetic anomalies….” (Katz)
Hence, WHO’s handling and analysis and work on Chernobyl leaves the curious-minded speechless, open-mouthed, agape, and confounded.
WHO’s Flawed Fukushima Report
WHO issued two reports on Fukushima:
1) Evaluation of exposure
2) Likely health effects
Alex Rosen of Int’l Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War critiqued the two WHO Fukushima reports, found to be extremely problematic, and once again, similar to Chernobyl, shoddy work that sweeps way too much dirt under the carpet.
Here’s the problem: WHO’s estimates of Fukushima radioactive exposure are at least 50% less than any other estimates, including estimates provided by TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant operator) itself. But, WHO is supposed to be the guardian of public health concerns, not TEPCO.
Also, two critical population studies are ignored in the WHO reports, i.e., all of the residents within the 20 km exclusion zone are eliminated, even though their radiation exposure would be very high, actually highest. The second group ignored is workers on site… ahem!
Additionally, WHO cavalierly approved the Japanese government’s drastic change in annual maximum radiation exposure allowed for the general population up to 20 mSv per year.
Effects of Radiation
The genetic effects of radiation likely exceed anything understood by the general public, as WHO and other health orgs do not properly educate the public about radiation’s risks: “The genetic effects, far from diminishing with time, increase” (Katz), which is extra bad.
Years of research around Chernobyl show that the genetic impact of radiation to the human body becomes much, much worse as time passes. Thus, “radiation is both a continuing and a worsening catastrophe as time passes” (Katz). Radiation’s impact gets worse over time; it does not heal, does not dissipate, does not go away; it grows progressively worse, like the film sequels to Godzilla, which was conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons in the early 1950s.
Indisputably, all organ systems of the human body are affected by radioactive contamination. Cancer is not the only nasty result of radiation exposure. Radioactive contamination affects the entire human immune system from head to toe, thus impacting every organ system in the body, e.g. musculoskeletal, etc. This damage to organs is in addition to the various cancer risks.
After all, consider this, 30 years after the fact, horribly deformed Chernobyl Children are found in over 300 asylums in the Belarus backwoods deep in the countryside.
Equally as bad but maybe more odious, as of today, Chernobyl radiation, since 1986, is already affecting 2nd generation kids.
According to a USA Today article, Chernobyl’s Legacy: Kids With Bodies Ravaged by Disaster, April 17, 2016: “There are 2,397,863 people registered with Ukraine’s health ministry to receive ongoing Chernobyl-related health care. Of these, 453,391 are children — none born at the time of the accident. Their parents were children in 1986. These children have a range of illnesses: respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, eye diseases, blood diseases, cancer, congenital malformations, genetic abnormalities, trauma.”
It’s taken 30 years for the world, via an article in USA Today, to begin to understand how devastating, over decades, not over a few years, radiation exposure is to the human body. It is a silent killer that cumulates in the body over time and passes from generation to generation to generation, endless destruction that cannot be stopped.
Where is WHO is kinda like Where is Waldo, but sadly the effects of ionizing radiation are not part of a game. It is deadly serious, forevermore. In the meanwhile, Fukushima irradiates and irradiates, limitlessly and so far, unstoppable. Where does its radiation go?
