Endless Fukushima catastrophe:
Many generations’ health at stake
by Dr
Helen Caldicott, one
of the most articulate and passionate advocates of citizen action to remedy the
nuclear and environmental crises. 
Bio-accumulation of radioactive elements around Fukushima will devastate many future Japanese generations, while the Pacific Ocean is also being contaminated by leaking radioactive water. Yet there is still no good solution from the Japanese government.
As I watched the tsunami power into the reactor complex at Fukushima on March 11, 2011, I realized the world would never be the same again. No nuclear reactor can withstand being drowned in a massive wave of water without catastrophic consequences.
There were three nuclear reactors undergoing fission at the time while one, unit four, had just been emptied of its radioactive core, which was now situated in an unprotected cooling pool on the roof of the building, 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground. As the power supply to the reactors was disrupted during the earthquake, and the auxiliary diesel generators in the basements of the reactors failed because they were flooded, the pumps which supplied up to 1 million gallons of cooling water to each reactor failed.
Within hours the intensely hot radioactive cores in units one, two and three started to melt. As they melted, the zirconium metal cladding on the uranium fuel rods reacted with water to produce hydrogen which exploded with overwhelming intensity in the buildings of units one, two, three and four releasing huge amounts of radioactive elements into the air.
On March 15 alone, it is estimated that 100 quadrillion Becquerels of cesium, 400 quadrillion of iodine plus 400 quadrillion of inert noble gases (xenon, krypton and argon) escaped. Over a period of time two-and-a-half to three times more noble gases were released into the air than at Chernobyl.
Noble gases are very high energy gamma emitters similar to x-rays, which penetrate human bodies externally and, when inhaled, are absorbed from the lungs and stored in fatty tissue exposing nearby organs, including the gonads, to gamma radiation. Cesium and iodine 131 are also gamma and beta emitters which enter the body by inhalation and ingestion. But over 100 other radioactive elements were also released during the weeks and months of the accident and thousands of people were exposed to clouds of radiation. The damaged reactors continue to emit radioactive airborne releases to this day.
Luckily the wind was blowing east across the Pacific in the first several days, taking 80 percent of the fallout with it - much of which was deposited in the Pacific Ocean. But around March 15 the wind changed, blowing to the northwest and large areas of Japan, including parts of Tokyo became severely contaminated. Approximately 2 million people are still living in highly contaminated areas in the Fukushima Prefecture and elsewhere, areas so radioactive that similarly-populated areas were quickly evacuated by the Soviets after the Chernobyl accident.
At the time of the Fukushima accident an unprecedented quantity of highly radioactive water was also released into the Pacific Ocean. But it hasn’t stopped. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) now admits that 300 tons of this water has been leaking into the Pacific every day since the accident 30 months ago and so far 270,000 tons of water has been released.
It is becoming apparent that the three molten cores, each weighing 120 to 130 tons have not only melted their way through 6 inches of steel in the reactor vessels, but they now either sit on concrete floors of the severely cracked containment buildings or they have melted their way into the earth itself – this, in nuclear parlance, is called ‘A Melt Through to China Syndrome’.
Because the reactor complex was built upon an ancient river bed located at the base of a mountain range, huge quantities of water flowing down from the mountains (1,000 tons daily) are circulating around these highly radioactive cores absorbing large concentrations of radioactive elements.
TEPCO constructed a type of concrete dam near the sea front to prevent this radioactive water from entering the sea. But the continuous flow of water built up behind the dam and overflowed into the Pacific Ocean. Each reactor core contains as much radiation as that released by 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs and contains more than 200 different radioactive elements, which variously last seconds to millions of years.
Medical implications
Tritium combines within the DNA molecule inducing mutations. In numerous animal experiments tritium causes birth defects, cancers of various organs including brain and ovaries, and it induces testicular atrophy and mental retardation at surprisingly low doses. Tritium is organically taken up in food and is concentrated in fish, vegetables, and other food groups, and it remains radioactive for over 120 years. Ingestion of contaminated food causes 10 percent to combine in the human body where it can remain for many years continuously irradiating cells.
One of the main elements is cesium, a potassium mimicker, which concentrates in the heart, endocrine organs and muscles where it can induce cardiac irregularities, heart attacks, diabetes, hypothyroidism or thyroid cancer and a very malignant muscle cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma. Cesium remains radioactive for 300 years and concentrates in the food chain.
Another very dangerous element is strontium 90, which also is poisonous for 300 years. Analogous to calcium, it concentrates in grass and milk, then relocates into bones, teeth and breast milk where it can cause bone cancer, leukemia or breast cancer.
Amongst the many other radioactive elements which are almost certainly escaping into the sea is plutonium which lasts for 240,000 years and is one of the most potent carcinogens known, such that a millionth of a gram can cause cancer. Each reactor core contains 500lbs of plutonium, but Reactor 3 contains even more, because it also contained plutonium/uranium fuel rods which were placed inside the core as an experiment.
As plutonium resembles iron in the body, it induces cancers in the lung if inhaled, and also cancers in the liver, bone, testicle and ovary. As an iron analogue, it readily crosses the placenta causing severe birth deformities similar to those produced by the drug thalidomide. All radioactive elements which irradiate the reproductive organs will induce genetic mutations in the sperm and eggs, thereby increasing the incidence of genetic diseases over future generations such as diabetes, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, hemochromatosis and 6000 others.
These are only several of over 100 deadly radioactive poisons polluting the Pacific Ocean and the air, each of which has its own pathway in the food chain and the human body. Radioactive elements are tasteless, odorless and invisible, and it takes many years for cancers and other radiation-related diseases to manifest – five to 80 years for most cancers.
Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults, fetuses are thousands of times more so. One x-ray to the pregnant abdomen doubles the likelihood of leukemia in the baby. Females are also more sensitive than men at all ages. Radiation is cumulative, there is no safe dose and each dose received by a person adds to the risk of developing cancer.
Of great concern is the fact that 18 cases of childhood thyroid cancer in children under the age of 18 have already been diagnosed and 25 more are suspected in Fukushima. This is a remarkably short incubation time for cancer, indicating that these children almost certainly received a very high dose of iodine 131 plus other carcinogenic radioactive elements that were and are still being inhaled and ingested.
Thyroid cancer in Chernobyl victims did not appear for four years. Thyroid cancer is rarely found in young children. Iodine 131 is radioactive for 100 days, and is a potent carcinogen. Iodine 129 on the other hand lasts millions of years. Over 350,000 children still live and go to school in highly radioactive areas, and as juvenile thyroid cancers are arising, so the number of leukemia cases will start to increase about two years from now, with solid cancers of various organs diagnosed about 11 years later. These will increase in frequency for the next 70 -80 years.
Food in the contaminated zone will remain radioactive for hundreds of years because it will continue to bio-accumulate radioactive elements from the soil, thus ensuring that an increased incidence of cancer will devastate many future Japanese generations.
Medical doctors in Japan are reporting that they have been ordered by their superiors not to tell the patients that their problems are radiation related.
Water and the Pacific Ocean
TEPCO originally attempted to filter this water using an Advanced Liquid Processing System to remove some of the radioactive contaminants, but one of its tanks corroded and it was closed down in June this year.
The tanks have been hastily constructed to last five years, some have rubber seams, others have metal bolts which are corroding and very few are securely welded. Recently, workers discovered that the highly radioactive water is leaking and contaminating the tank site. Three hundred tons of water escaped from a tank measuring 100 millisieverts, or 10 rems, per hour and some of this water had also drained into the sea. A nuclear worker is allowed a yearly exposure of 5 rems. Because of this finding the present accident level was raised from 1 to 3, the original accident being labeled 7 - equivalent to Chernobyl, and the worst possible case.
It is suspected that many more tanks are leaking. Until recently TEPCO had only two men patrolling 1,060 tanks twice a day armed with inadequate Geiger counters. When new instruments were provided, radiation of 1,800 millisieverts per hour, or 180 rems, was discovered in leaked water at another tank, while several days later a reading measuring 2,200 millsieverts, or 220 rems, per hour was discovered! This was estimated to be mostly beta radiation, which would not penetrate the clothing of the workers. However high levels of gamma are radiating continually from the tanks and gamma, like x-rays goes right through a human body unimpeded.
They are also running out of room to accommodate more tanks, the water keeps coming, and if there is another earthquake measuring 6 or above on the Richter scale, the plastic piping connecting the tanks and the tanks themselves could shatter releasing their contents into the ocean. If an earthquake does not eventuate, what will the Japanese do with this water? Obviously it is going to have to be discharged into the Pacific Ocean. However Prime Minister Abe recently announced that the government will spend $320 million dollars to construct a wall of ice 0.9 miles (1.45km) in length and 100 feet deep behind and around the complex to prevent the mountain aquifer from rushing in to engulf the damaged cores.
Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer estimates that trying to clean the site and control the situation would cost at the minimum half a trillion dollars, and he says that the ice wall may not even be deep enough to block the water.
Furthermore maintaining the ice wall would require huge amounts of electricity, presumably to be generated by coal as the reactors will all be closed, which will add to global warming and obviously the ice will melt should there be a power outage. Not a good solution as the ice must remain intact for over 100 years. The government also plans to spend $150 million attempting to remove the radioactive elements from the water so they can be discharged into the sea, a Sisyphean task, virtually impossible to conduct successfully.
But there are other problems which defy solution. The whole reactor site sits on sodden ground, which has now become unstable, muddy and possibly liquefied. The site itself experiences many minor earthquakes each day, but should a quake greater than 6 or 7 on the Richter scale occur, it is likely that one or several of the buildings could collapse with absolutely disastrous consequences.
To be continued...
From RT @ http://rt.com/op-edge/fukushima-catastrophe-health-japan-803/
28 Signs That the US West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried with Nuclear Radiation from Fukushima
By Michael Snyder
The map above comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center. It shows that radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the country are elevated. As you will notice, this is particularly true along the west coast of the United States. Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean. That means that the total amouont of radioactive material released from Fukushima is constantly increasing, and it is steadily building up in our food chain. Ultimately, all of this nuclear radiation will outlive all of us by a very wide margin.
They are saying that it could take up to 40 years to clean up the Fukushima disaster, and meanwhile countless innocent people will develop cancer and other health problems as a result of exposure to high levels of nuclear radiation. We are talking about a nuclear disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and it is constantly getting worse. The following are 28 signs that the west coast of North America is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima…
1. Polar bears, seals and walruses along the Alaska coastline are suffering from fur loss and open sores…
Wildlife experts are studying whether fur loss and open sores detected in nine polar bears in recent weeks is widespread and related to similar incidents among seals and walruses.
The bears were among 33 spotted near Barrow, Alaska, during routine survey work along the Arctic coastline. Tests showed they had “alopecia, or loss of fur, and other skin lesions,” the U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement.
2. There is an epidemic of sea lion deaths along the California coastline…
At island rookeries off the Southern California coast, 45 percent of the pups born in June have died, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service based in Seattle. Normally, less than one-third of the pups would die. It’s gotten so bad in the past two weeks that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared an “unusual mortality event.”
3. Along the Pacific coast of Canada and the Alaska coastline, the population of sockeye salmon is at a historic low. Many are blaming Fukushima.
4. Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.
5. A vast field of radioactive debris from Fukushima that is approximately the size of California has crossed the Pacific Ocean and is starting to collide with the west coast.
6. It is being projected that the radioactivity of coastal waters off the U.S. west coast could double over the next five to six years.
7. Experts have found very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.
8. One test in California found that 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.
9. Back in 2012, the Vancouver Sun reported that cesium-137 was being found in a very high percentage of the fish that Japan was selling to Canada…
• 73 percent
of mackerel tested
• 91 percent
of the halibut
• 92 percent
of the sardines
• 93 percent
of the tuna and eel
• 94 percent
of the cod and anchovies
• 100
percent of the carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish
Some fish samples tested to date have had very high levels of radiation: one sea bass sample collected in July, for example, had 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of cesium.
11. Some experts believe that we could see very high levels of cancer along the west coast just from people eating contaminated fish…
“Look at what’s going on now: They’re dumping huge amounts of radioactivity into the ocean — no one expected that in 2011,” Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California-Santa Cruz, told Global Security Newswire. “We could have large numbers of cancer from ingestion of fish.”
12. BBC News recently reported that radiation levels around Fukushima are “18 times higher” than previously believed.
13. An EU-funded study concluded that Fukushima released up to 210 quadrillion becquerels of cesium-137 into the atmosphere.
14. Atmospheric radiation from Fukushima reached the west coast of the United States within a few days back in 2011.
15. At this point, 300 tons of contaminated water is pouring into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every single day.
16. A senior researcher of marine chemistry at the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Meteorological Research Institute says that “30 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium and 30 billion becquerels of radioactive strontium” are being released into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every single day.
17. According to Tepco, a total of somewhere between 20 trillion and 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium have gotten into the Pacific Ocean since the Fukushima disaster first began.
18. According to a professor at Tokyo University, 3 gigabecquerels of cesium-137 are flowing into the port at Fukushima Daiichi every single day.
19. It has been estimated that up to 100 times as much nuclear radiation has been released into the ocean from Fukushima than was released during the entire Chernobyl disaster.
20. One recent study concluded that a very large plume of cesium-137 from the Fukushima disaster will start flowing into U.S. coastal waters early next year…
Ocean simulations showed that the plume of radioactive cesium-137 released by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 could begin flowing into U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and peak in 2016.
21. It is being projected that significant levels of cesium-137 will reach every corner of the Pacific Ocean by the year 2020.
22. It is being projected that the entire Pacific Ocean will soon “have cesium levels 5 to 10 times higher” than what we witnessed during the era of heavy atomic bomb testing in the Pacific many decades ago.
23. The immense amounts of nuclear radiation getting into the water in the Pacific Ocean has caused environmental activist Joe Martino to issue the following warning…
“Your days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over.”
24. The Iodine-131, Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 that are constantly coming from Fukushima are going to affect the health of those living the the northern hemisphere for a very, very long time. Just consider what Harvey Wasserman had to say about this…
Iodine-131, for example, can be ingested into the thyroid, where it emits beta particles (electrons) that damage tissue. A plague of damaged thyroids has already been reported among as many as 40 percent of the children in the Fukushima area. That percentage can only go higher. In developing youngsters, it can stunt both physical and mental growth. Among adults it causes a very wide range of ancillary ailments, including cancer.
Cesium-137 from Fukushima has been found in fish caught as far away as California. It spreads throughout the body, but tends to accumulate in the muscles.
Strontium-90’s half-life is around 29 years. It mimics calcium and goes to our bones.
25. According to a recent Planet Infowars report, the California coastline is being transformed into “a dead zone”…
The California coastline is becoming like a dead zone.
If you haven’t been to a California beach lately, you probably don’t know that the rocks are unnaturally CLEAN – there’s hardly any kelp, barnacles, sea urchins, etc. anymore and the tide pools are similarly eerily devoid of crabs, snails and other scurrying signs of life… and especially as compared to 10 – 15 years ago when one was wise to wear tennis shoes on a trip to the beach in order to avoid cutting one’s feet on all the STUFF of life – broken shells, bones, glass, driftwood, etc.
There are also days when I am hard-pressed to find even a half dozen seagulls and/or terns on the county beach.
You can still find a few gulls trolling the picnic areas and some of the restaurants (with outdoor seating areas) for food, of course, but, when I think back to 10 – 15 years ago, the skies and ALL the beaches were literally filled with seagulls and the haunting sound of their cries both day and night…
NOW it’s unnaturally quiet.
26. A study conducted last year came to the conclusion that radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster could negatively affect human life along the west coast of North America from Mexico to Alaska “for decades”.
27. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is being projected that the cleanup of Fukushima could take up to 40 years to complete.
28. Yale Professor Charles Perrow is warning that if the cleanup of Fukushima is not handled with 100% precision that humanity could be threatened “for thousands of years“…
“Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.”
Are you starting to understand why so many people are so deeply concerned about what is going on at Fukushima?
For much more on all of this, please check out the video posted below…
About the author: Michael T. Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who now publishes The Truth. His new thriller entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.
From The Truth Wins @ http://thetruthwins.com/archives/28-signs-that-the-west-coast-is-being-absolutely-fried-with-nuclear-radiation-from-fukushima
For more information about Fukushima see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/Fukushima
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