Fukushima: Level-8 Now?

Nuclear Nightmare Worsens

By JOE GIOMBRONE

 

It’s worse, a lot worse. The lies told by TEPCO and the Japanese government are but the tip of the iceberg. More than 80% of the Japanese people distrust anything their government says about Fukushima. Shinbun news reports on the propaganda:

“The government has been trying to stress at home and abroad the safety of nuclear power plants ahead of an International Atomic Energy Agency ministerial meeting scheduled to start Monday.”

It seems the new (and quite laughable) message of safety is designed to get all those shut down reactors back on-line in Japan, except for the destroyed plants obviously. The cryptic reference to the IAEA is curious. Why anyone cares what the IAEA wants is beyond me.

For those interested in following the horror show enenews.com reposts articles, many of them translated from the original Japanese.

Tokyo now features “hot spots” of significant radiation. Sewage slag containing “170,000 Bequerels/kilogram” radioactivity has been detected and recycled into building materials! Soil in Koto Ward of Tokyo measured “2,300 Bq/kg.”

A report by Bloomberg tells of soil samples about 25 kilometers to the northwest of the Fukushima plant, “with radiation from Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter.” Other test sites 30km from the plant, “showed radiation exceeding 1.48 million becquerels per square meter.”

At greater distance, 75 miles from the plant Professor Iwata Takahiro detected “500,000 becquerels per kg” in the roof drains at Yamagata University.

The radiation has already spread out over great distances. Japanese green tea containing “1,000 Bq/kg” radiation was found and seized by customs in Paris, France. The French went from “oui” to “no, no, no…” The tea was shipped from Shizuoka Prefecture in central Japan, which should raise even more concern, being quite a bit southwest of Tokyo.

The tea story should also raise even more concern for Europeans, seeing how the permissible radiation level for tea was 500Bq/kg. Does that sound like a desirable amount of radiation to ingest? I’m more disposed to say zero Bq/kg in my tea.

Tea farmers in Kanagawa, 300km south of the plant have found cesium contamination above legal limits. Many have been forced to destroy their crops. But, as with any widespread contamination how does the buyer know that his purchase is free of radiation, absent a geiger counter at the supermarket? Is that the future?

The Fukushima catastrophe is on track to out-disaster Chernobyl. The Fukushima region is much more highly populated than the Russian region. Some scientists have seriously considered creating a new “level 8” to categorize what’s happening to Japan and the Pacific ocean since March 11th.

Send in the Clowns

The United Nations has already ramped up its UNSCEAR ostrich team. Its chairman Wolfgang Weiss was asked what health effects Japan would suffer, after the numerous Terabequerels discharged. Weiss replied, “From what I know now, nothing, because levels are so low.”

Weiss and UNSCEAR have discredited themselves before they even got started. Their goal is to collect reams of data in the first two years, long before the cancers begin to metastasize, then claim victory for the atom and move on.

Weiss openly lied when he said, “The only proven effect after Chernobyl was thyroid cancer in children.” Anyone who’s even glanced at the Chernobyl disaster knows numerous people died, including thousands of “liquidators” the Soviet conscripts who cleaned up the mess. Independent research flies in the face of the UN cover-ups and places mortality at approximately one million casualties (Yablokov, 2009).

Weiss, the current UNSCEAR head, claimed: “In Fukushima, the people were evacuated before any [radioactive] release took place…” (Reuters)

What? Another lie. What nonsense is this man floating as trial balloons? Nothing of the sort happened. Hundreds of thousands are still there, now, living in contaminated regions blanketed with Cesium 137.

Have no illusions about UNSCEAR and the IAEA. It is their job to make this go away, pretend all is fine. Cancers can take decades to form, and cancers are not counted by UNSCEAR, excepting the glaringly undeniable childhood thyroid variety. Here’s an aside: If UNSCEAR admits that radiation releases cause thyroid cancers, is it not at least conceivable to them that the absorbed radiation is also causing other illnesses as well?

Numerous other maladies: birth defects, stillbirths, heart, lung, brain, organ diseases will certainly not be counted, and their victims will be ignored by the UN agencies. That means they never happened, right?

UNSCEAR and IAEA have turned science on its head with a logical fallacy that seems to pass unnoticed in the media. They claim that because there are “no biomarkers specific to radiation, it is not possible to state scientifically that radiation caused a particular cancer in an individual.” (UNSCEAR, 2008) And they use this as some kind of insane proof that the cancers were not caused by radiation.

The UN then prepares faulty, fraudulent “death toll” counts that omit cancers when there is no scientific basis for omitting them. The “no biomarkers” logic cannot be used to rule out that radiation caused cancers: it’s then an unknown. Radiation doesn’t just magically lose its carcinogenic properties because of a faulty screening condition that disqualifies people from being counted. These are gradeschool shenanigans gone global.

This June the president of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology, Carmelo Iacono spoke in Chicago at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting:

“Nuclear radiation is the most carcinogenic thing that exists, and it cannot be kept under control, as the Fukushima tragedy proved.”

The “most carcinogenic thing that exists” says a world-renowned cancer specialist.

In other nuclear disaster news…

The NY Times reports another plutonium reactor in Monju is involved in a “precarious struggle” 300km southwest of Fukushima, and nearer Kyoto. It seems that a “3.3-ton device crashed into the reactor’s inner vessel, cutting off access to the plutonium and uranium fuel rods.”

Of course the plant operator tried to cover it up, because that’s the modus operandi at nuclear plants: “…the operator had tampered with video images of the fire to hide the scale of the disaster.” (NY Times)

But that’s not all. A US reactor in Nebraska is set to go scuba diving. That’s right. The Fort Calhoun nuclear plant is now an island. Earlier last week a fire ignited at a spent fuel pool and knocked out the cooling system!

If the pool or reactor cooling systems are disabled, Nebraska can expect the Fukushima scenario. After all, these ticking time bombs require constant cooling. That’s what makes atomic reactors so inherently dangerous and unstable over the long haul. It wouldn’t be an easy job restoring electrical equipment — underwater.

But it’s a two-fer! A second Nebraska nuke plant declared an “unusual event” as floodwaters approach. At the Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, NE:

“Personnel have been proactive in preparing the station for flood conditions by filling sandbags, constructing barricades, procuring materials and supplies, and reinforcing the access road…”(ncnewspress.com)

Can we talk about putting that $36Bn toward safe, clean energy technologies now, Mr. Obama?

Or perhaps we need to lose, say, half of Nebraska before obvious realities come to bear? Or perhaps there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

Joe Giambrone is a filmmaker and author of Hell of a Deal: a Supernatural Satire. He edits the Political Film Blog. He be reached at: polfilmblog at gmail.

 

Courtesy: http://www.counterpunch.org/giambrone06202011.html

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