Only one third of the heat energy produced in a nuclear reactor is transformed into electricity.  In Japan, the remaining two thirds of the energy that remains in the water vapor– that is, twice as much energy as contained in the generated electricity – is disposed of in the sea.  In the cooling system, seawater is used to cool the water vapor, which condenses again to water and is circulated through the reactor once again.  This heated seawater is called “thermal discharge”.  How much heat does this thermal discharge carry into the sea?  The amount is startling.

Before the Fukushima accident, that is, at the end of 2010, Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors were producing a total of 49,112,000 kilowatts of electricity.  So every day they were throwing away twice that much, approximately 100,000,000 kilowatts of energy, in the form of heat, into the sea.

This means that every day they were pumping into the sea energy equivalent to 100 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. The Hiroshima bomb destroyed the city in an instant and ended the lives of some 140,000 people, but when energy 100 times that great is “dropped” into the sea daily, what effect does that have?  That it would not be destructive of the ocean’s ecology is unimaginable.  Before saying that “nuclear power plants supply one third of the demand for electricity”, it needs to be said that “twice as much energy as the electricity they produce is used to heat up the sea.”

I want to ask, what kind of global warming debate is it that never discusses this fact?

In Japan, the number one global warming agent is the nuclear power plants.

After I left the company I was working for, I spent a long time translating medical books.  In the 1970s I was translating books depicting the suffering of people whose health was damaged by environmental pollution, and at the same time through an agent was accepting work from industry.  At that time I received a request from

TEPCO to translate a 1970s report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  In it was the following passage.

“When thermal discharge from nuclear power plants is released into the sea, the heat does not immediately disperse.  Rather it concentrates and remains suspended in what are called “hot spots”.  For this reason it has a very large effect on sea life near the shore.  In the shallows, even a difference of two or three degrees can kill fish eggs or young fish.”

I translated this English correctly and delivered the manuscript to TEPCO.  The report of which it was a part was apparently suppressed within the company.  To this day it has never appeared.

Moreover, the claim that nuclear power is a cheap form of energy is also untrue.  Nuclear power plants are located far from the users of the electricity, so they require extraordinarily long transmission systems (In 1964 the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) stipulated that “Dangerous nuclear power plants must not be located in heavily populated areas”).  The nuclear power plants that deliver electricity  to the capital are the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini reactors, Niigata Prefecture’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactor, and Ibaragi Prefecture’s Tokai Daini reactor.   The 14 nuclear power plants sending electricity to the Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe) area are lined up along the faraway shore of the Japan Sea at Wakasa Bay, in Fukui Prefecture.　When you take into account the transmission systems connecting the power plants with the metropolitan areas they serve, you cannot call it an inexpensive source of electricity.

Without Nuclear Power, Will There Be Blackouts?

After the Fukushima Daiichi accident, TEPCO carried out planned blackouts, and the Kan Naoto administration, “in order to avoid a major blackout due to electricity shortages in the summer months” is considering enacting measures enforcing limits on electricity consumption for the first time since the oil shock of 1974. This deep-seated “blackout fear” held by so many seems to be grounded in the idea that we must continue gingerly to maintain the nuclear power industry, which advertises itself as providing one-third of the country’s electricity. What I see in the opinion polls is the attitude, I don’t like living with nuclear power plants, but without them there is no way to get the electricity, so there’s nothing to be done because like they say, you can’t exchange your back for your belly.

This is a huge misunderstanding that must be corrected.

A survey by year of the generating capacity of Japan’s main sources of electrical power compared with the total amount of electricity demand tells a different story.  In no year has the peak demand for electricity – that is, the demand for electricity in the hours between 2 and 3pm on the hottest days of summer – exceeded what could be provided by the combination of fossil fuel and water powered generators.   Moreover, the highest recorded peak demand was in 2001, and has never been surpassed in the ten years since then.  Rather, with the economic downturn, demand for electricity fell in 2008 and 2009.

From whence, then, comes the misunderstanding that nuclear power plants supply one third of the country’s electricity, and that without them there would be blackouts?.  The answer sounds like a joke, but it is true: it is that while Japan has a very large capability for generating electricity from natural gas, these facilities have been intentionally kept operating at only 50-60 per cent of capacity.  Among the major sources of electricity used in the advanced countries, natural gas is the cleanest.  Then there are the petroleum powered plants; amazingly they are operating at only 10 to 20 per cent of their capacity.  (This figure may sound unbelievable, but since the 1970s Oil Shock, most of the developed countries have a policy of reducing oil consumption as far as possible.  Japan’s fossil fuel power plants use mainly coal and natural gas.) The idea that without nuclear power there would be blackouts is nonsense.

The reason TEPCO carried out intentional blackouts after the earthquake is that the fossil fuel reactors in the region also suffered temporary damage. No doubt there was also difficulty delivering fuel.  But repairing fossil fuel power plants is nowhere near as difficult at repairing nuclear power plants.  It’s just a matter of replacing damaged parts.  Once repair work begins, it doesn’t take long before the plant is operating again.  And once the fossil fuel plants are back on line, electricity demand is no problem.

After its nuclear plants were so badly damaged, TEPCO should have put its natural gas and petroleum plants into full operation, but it did not.  Rather it carried out intentional blackouts, bringing confusion to the metropolitan area and bringing losses both to industry and to private citizens.  In this it did not fulfill its responsibility as an electricity provider, and revealed a fundamental problem.  And now we hear  everywhere language fanning the fear of summertime blackouts, but this is only a false  rumor being spread by people who know nothing of electrical power generation. (Translators note: in fact in the summer since this was written, there were no electrical blackouts in Japan.)

A natural gas power plant can be built in a few months.  This was made clear in an article appearing the April 6, 2011 edition of Gasu Energii Shinbun (Gas Energy News) by Ishii Akira, head of the Energy and Environment Research Center, titled “After Fukushima, the Age of Natural Gas”.  In this article, Ishii explains Japan’s energy situation from the standpoint of a professional.  The Fukushima nuclear power plant accident took place on March 11.  Why didn’t TEPCO begin immediately to take action to ensure that there would be no electrical shortage?  If they couldn’t get it done in time, why did they not immediately ask the world’s largest manufacturer of natural gas power plants, America’s General Electric (GE) to do it for them?  An electric company that can’t supply electricity to the public has no right to be called an electric company.

Nuclear power supporters will argue that the supply of natural gas is limited.  But this too is the outdated opinion of one who does not know the energy industry.  As Ishii Akira pointed out in an article of Feb 2, 2011 in Gas Energy News, new sources of natural gas are being discovered one after another all over the world.  In the Mediterranean Sea, offshore from Madagascar, under the sea to the east of India, on the continental shelf in northwestern Australia, in Brazil, in Turkmenistan – in the ten years up to 2009 the world’s known supply of underground deposits has increased by close to 30 per cent.  In addition to this natural gas supply, new, so-called non-traditional gases such as coal bed methane, tight sand gas, shale gas, and methane hydrate are being developed one after another.  According to Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (which is dedicated to locating natural resources for Japan) the underground reserves of these new forms of natural gas total more than 922 trillion cubic meters, more than five times the reserves of traditional natural gas. No doubt there will be future discoveries one after another, so I would say that we have enough gas reserves alone to last well over 200 years.

Translated by Douglas Lummis, ideaspeddler@gmail.com

Takashi Hirose can be contacted at takhi@jcom.home.ne.jp

This is excerpted from the concluding chapter of Takashi Hirose
Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster now available in English from Amazon Kindle Books.

New research by Ipsos MORI shows that three in five global citizens (62%) oppose the use of nuclear energy – a quarter (26%) of those have been influenced by the recent nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.

The latest Ipsos Global @dvisor survey shows that support for nuclear energy is far below that for solar power (97%), wind power (93%), hydroelectric power (91%) and natural gas (80%) as a source of electricity.

Just one in four (38%) adults across 24 countries support the use of nuclear energy. Support is highest in India (61%), Poland (57%) and the United States (52%).

Britons are split on the issue with half supporting (48%) and half opposing (51%) the use of nuclear energy. One in five (20%) Britons that are against the use of nuclear energy say they their opinion has been influenced by the events in Fukushima.

Managing Director of the Ipsos MORI Reputation Centre, Milorad Ajder, said:

“Nuclear energy is a controversial issue at the best of times and the disaster in Fukushima has clearly had a negative impact on the way people see its use. With mounting global opposition, some countries are already decided to scale back its use, with some abandoning it all together.”
Download the full presentation slides
Technical Note

This survey was conducted in 24 countries including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States of America. An international sample of 18,787 adults aged 18-64 in the US and Canada, and age 16-64 in all other countries, were interviewed between May 6 and May 21, 2011 via the Ipsos Online Panel system.

Approximately 1000+ individuals participated on a country by country basis with the exception of Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Russia and Turkey, where each have a sample 500+. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics and ensure that the sample’s composition reflected that of the adult population according to the most recent country Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe.

A survey with an unweighted probability sample of this size and a 100% response rate would have an estimated margin of error of +/-3.1 percentage points for a sample of 1,000 and an estimated margin of error of +/- 4.5 percentage points for a sample of 500 19 times out of 20 per country of what the results would have been had the entire population of the specifically aged adults in that country been polled.

A nuclear forum is being held in South Africa on the 19th of May 2011 at Emperor’s Palace, Johannesburg, aimed at once again promoting nuclear energy in South Africa. As always these “forums” are not for free and are designed that way in order to keep out NGO’s and community driven organisations who simply do not have the funds to attend them. To give you an idea the cost of attending is R2850.00 per person which most NGO’s will not be able to afford, simple as that.

What happens with all these events is that 99% of the attendees are already pro nuclear so one wonders what’s the fricking point??

If the nuclear industry really wants to enter into debate with the South African public WHICH THEY DO NOT, they would make attendance for NGO’s and community driven organisations FREE but they DO NOT want to debate anything. They have an agenda and they will stick with it no matter what. In 5 years we have never been able to get anyone inside the highly secretive South African Nuclear Industry to debate anything, they cannot even answer the simplest of questions posed to them.

What is most annoying is an email promoting this event which was circulated by the company managing the event, namely Siyenza Managament (Pty) Ltd. In this email the author one Mabel Modipa spits out the biggest bunch of bogus unscientific garbage we’ve seen yet.

The email reads as follows:

Africa Needs Nuclear Power

In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident, resulting from the recent massive Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and following the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the former Soviet Union, there has been much public debate internationally concerning nuclear power.

Much of the information projected to the public is misguided and inaccurate which leads to a public fear which in turn affects the formulation of government policy internationally. This in turn affects the costs of construction of nuclear power stations because, at times, unrealistic requirements are put in place, which then tend to drive costs up.  The mystique surrounding the subject of nuclear power tends to confuse matters further, in the public mind.  A confused public cannot make informed energy decisions relating to nuclear power.

In Fukushima province the first person to die as a result of the Fukushima nuclear incident has just been reported.  He was a 64 year old farmer from Sukagama, 65km from the reactor.  He hanged himself because the authorities would not let him sell his produce.  To receive any meaningful radiation dose from his spinage a person would have to eat many tons of it, which would be impossible.  It is sad that misguided policy caused his death.

Issues of nuclear construction costs and public perceptions of nuclear power will be discussed at the forthcoming nuclear power conference; Nuclear Forum 3, on 19 May 2011 at Emperor’s Palace, Johannesburg.

The conference will be opened by the Minister of Energy, The Hon Dipuo Peters.

A lot of debate around the use of nuclear as an alternate energy source has been debated this week at the Africa World Economic Forum in Cape Town.  South Africa will be taking the lead in Africa, with the proposed implementation of nuclear as a reliable source of power for the country.  This will no doubt raise the nuclear debate in the rest of the African continent.

ENDS
5 May 2011
Issued by: Siyenza Management
+27 11 463 9184

Mike Kantey, the chairperson of the National Coalition Against Nuclear Energy duly responded to Miss Modipa with the following response.

Dear Mabel

As the National Chairperson of the Coalition Against Nuclear Energy (see www.cane.org.za) and on behalf of the African Uranium Alliance, I take the strongest objection to the unscientific and emotional language employed in your press release appended below.

If this is the quality of business “intelligence” that is sold at high expense to political, investment, and business leaders in Africa, may Heaven help us over the next century.

Not only does the recently Integrated Resource Plan (IRP2010) for South Africa make it abundantly clear at Table 18 on page 43 that a non-nuclear future is perfectly and affordably obtainable, but the respected International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA) declared the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident at its highest level of INES-7, equivalent to the worst accident ever at Chernobyl.

To trivialise and minimise this horrendous accident as your misguided “press release” appears to do makes a mockery of those Japanese citizens within a 20-km radius who have been forced to evacuate their lands and their homes, probably forever, and the risk to all those who are forced to consume foodstuffs and liquids with traces of Strontium-90 and Cesium-137. Unlike your ill-informed and disgraceful mockery of an old man’s death by suicide (an understandable response in Japanese society), as well as your simple ignorance of the basic rules of English spelling (“spinach” not “spinage”, which is what you appear to be practising), the smallest, micro-quantity of Cesium-137 or Strontium-90 will be sufficient to trigger a cancer or genetic defect, once it has been inhaled or swallowed.

I trust that your conference will not be another exercise in pulling radioactive wool over your monied classes, but an honest assessment of what really is in the best interests of the African masses.

Sincerely

Mike Kantey
National Chairperson
Coalition Against Nuclear Energy
www.cane.org.za

Source: http://www.environment.co.za

Canadians go to the polls on Monday May 2 to elect new representatives
for the House of Commons, Canada’s elected Parliament

Jack Layton is the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), which has
received a very dramatic surge in popular support in recent days, a surge
which is mainly felt in the province of Quebec but which is also being
noticed across Canada.

Here is a brief statement from Mr. Layton on the subject of nuclear power.

Gordon Edwards.

http://www.cleanairalliance.org/files/active/0/NDP response.pdf

April 8, 2011

Mr. Jack Gibbons
Chair, Ontario Clean Air Alliance
Suite 402 -625 Church Street
Toronto, ON M4Y 2G1

Dear Mr. Gibbons,

Thank you for your letter of March 29, 2011 asking about New Democrat’s position
on subsidizing the construction of new nuclear reactors in Ontario.

Jack Layton and New Democrats advocate ending public subsidies for nuclear energy
industry. New Democrats believe in halting nuclear expansion and upgrading the safety
and security of current nuclear energy and waste management facilities. We believe in
promoting clean, renewable energy to mitigate the negative effect of non-renewable
energy such as fossil fuel.

The Canadian Nuclear Industry regularly describes itself as a mature industry,
particularly concerning government regulation. As a mature industry it should be able
to operate without major subsidies from government.

It was for this reason that Canada’s New Democrats opposed the minor increase to
Canada’s Nuclear Liability Act the Harper Conservatives have tried several times to
drive through the House of Commons. It is our position that these legislated maximum
liability levels are a hidden subsidy for this industry. New Democrats feel the industry
must either accept at a minimum a liability level of $10 billion dollars rather than the few
hundred million the Harper Conservatives have in mind.

While there may be a need for government support of nuclear research New Democrats
does not see the need for government subsidies of a mature industry just as we oppose
subsidies for the tar sand. As it stands, Canadians would be better off investing in clean
energy technologies rather than nuclear considering the major risks associated with this
technology.

Sincerely,

Jack Layton, Leader
Canada’s New Democrats

http://www.cleanairalliance.org/files/active/0/NDP response.pdf

As a hibakusha survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima,
Keijiro Matsushima, 82, has been speaking publicly about his personal
experience in English for foreign audiences. Soon after the accident at
Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant triggered by the March 11 massive
earthquake and tsunami, he was asked to give an interview with the U.S.
cable TV news channel CNN.

While reports of radioactive leaks were making headlines, he thought
how best to describe what was happening and what went through his
mind.

Atomic bombs release intense heat and blasts in addition to radiation.
Their destructive power is incomparably greater than nuclear power plant
accidents, which do not lead to nuclear explosions. People who
underwent atomic bombings may see the Fukushima accident differently,
depending on their experiences.

After much thought, Matsushima made up his mind to speak frankly without
hesitation about how he felt.

“It’s like the third atomic bomb attack on Japan. But this time, we made it
ourselves,” he told CNN.

It is true the accident was triggered by a mega-earthquake. But even though Japan
experienced atomic bombs, didn’t it underestimate the horror of nuclear energy
once it got out of control? Every time Matsushima heard news about the accident,
he could not help asking himself this.

The accident evoked images of nuclear weapons in Matsushima. But he is not the
only one.

Actually, in the past, a nuclear accident prompted the leader of a major power to
take steps toward nuclear disarmament. It is Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the
Soviet Union leader at the time of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.

Faced with the accident, Gorbachev felt he experienced virtual nuclear warfare. In
terms of levels of radioactivity, an explosion of even the smallest nuclear warhead
is equivalent to three Chernobyl-class accidents, he said in a speech. Even if a very
small part of accumulated nuclear warheads explode, it would lead to a catastrophe,
he said, expressing his determination to put an end to a nuclear arms race. Twenty
months after the accident, the Soviet Union and the United States signed a treaty to
cut down on nuclear warheads in their possessions for the first time ever.

What about the Fukushima accident? How will it influence the nuclear issues?

Many U.S. experts share the view that the accident caused their wariness against
terrorism targeting nuclear power plants to grow stronger. It is a nightmarish scenario
that combines “9.11″ and “3.11.”

For example, Allison Macfarlane, associate professor of environmental science and
policy at George Mason University, has concerns about the vulnerability of spent fuel
pools. The Fukushima accident made it clear in everyone’s eyes that the loss of
cooling water at pools can result in a radioactive leak crisis.

“If pools were damaged by a terrorist attack and water was lost, the scenario would
be the same as what occurred at the Fukushima plant,” said Macfarlane, who is also
a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission, a U.S. government advisory panel on
nuclear waste.

Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists, points out the
risk of cyber terrorism to nuclear power plants. Having served as a consultant with
the National Nuclear Security Administration and National Laboratories, he worries
about a possible cyber attack that could instantly kill a regional grid that provides
electricity to nuclear power plants and on-site backup electrical systems, resulting in
a Fukushima-type disaster. He is planning to form an experts group to study how to
prevent such cyber terrorism.

National defense concerns have also surfaced. Let us presume one country has
numbers of nuclear power plants in operation. If those plants were attacked by
conventional missiles and their huge inventories of radioactive materials were
released into the atmosphere, society in the targeted country would be in turmoil.
Princeton University professor Frank von Hippel believes that the Fukushima
accident impressed on security policymakers the potential threat of attack on
nuclear power plants.

Several days after the crisis began on March 11, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said that the expanding threat of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan had
changed his thinking on the safety of nuclear power.

“It certainly caused me to reconsider the projects of building civil nuclear power
plants” in Israel, he said. Von Hippel’s interpretation of this comment is that c
onsidering the instability in the Middle East today, Netanyahu’s new position reflects,
at least to some extent, security concerns about the potential use of nuclear power
plants as “radioactive bombs” if they are targeted for attack.

Be that as it may, the growing concern about the danger of nuclear power plants
has its upside. Why not make the most of the situation to prevent nuclear
proliferation? Such views were exchanged at an international conference of
experts on the nuclear issues recently held in Washington.

Newly emerging and developing countries are accelerating moves to introduce and
expand nuclear power generation in recent years. Naturally, there is growing interest
toward ensuring safety of nuclear power plants. At the same time, nations share
anxieties about the current situation where more countries are turning to nuclear
energy for power under the existing framework of nuclear nonproliferation, which is
starting to develop rifts.

If so, why not slow down the expansion of nuclear power use by intensifying debate
on safety and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation system in the meantime, a
German researcher suggested.

How many times did I hear the name Fukushima mentioned outside Japan? Japan
has added a negative legacy to its name as Fukushima became as common a word
as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the only nation that underwent atomic bombings and radioactive pollution caused
by a nuclear power plant, how should Japan face nuclear energy? This is a question
it must squarely address itself.

While calling for peace, safety and security, can we coexist with nuclear energy? If we
can, what conditions must be met? Is the goal achievable with the power we now
possess?

Unexpected situations could happen and we must not simply dismiss them as “outside
the scope of assumptions.” This lesson from the Fukushima accident weighs extremely
heavily in this age of nuclear weapons and energy.

Radiation readings at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi station rose to the highest since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, impeding efforts to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

Two robots sent into the reactor No. 1 building at the plant yesterday took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts of radiation per hour, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tokyo Electric Power Co., said today.

That’s more than four times the annual dose permitted to nuclear workers at the stricken plant.

[Note: these are measurements of the penetrating gamma radiation only; they do not include the less-penetrating beta and alpha radiation. (GE)]

Radiation from the station, where four of six reactors have been damaged by explosions, has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people and contaminated farmland and drinking water.

A plan to flood the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 with more water to speed up emergency cooling efforts announced yesterday by the utility known as Tepco may not be possible now.

“Tepco must figure out the source of high radiation,” said Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University. “If it’s from contaminated water leaking from inside the reactor, Tepco’s so-called ‘water tomb’ may be jeopardized because flooding the containment vessel will result in more radiation in the building.”

[Note: This is not clearly stated.  If the containment vessel is flooded while it is leaking, there will be more radioactive material "flushed out" from the damaged core, leading to an increase in penetrating gamma radiation  levels outside the vessel but still inside the containment building. (GE)]

Decontaminating Robots

Tepco plans to decontaminate the two iRobot Corp. Packbot robots before sending them into a building tomorrow or later to further investigate the damage, spokesman Takeo Iwamoto said. High radiation in the reactor buildings prevents engineers from working inside them, Iwamoto said.

The cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3 and the spent fuels rods in reactor 4 have been damaged. Tepco has been using fire trucks, concrete pumps and other emergency measures for nearly seven weeks to pour millions of liters of water to cool the units after the accident.

Tepco started moving the radioactive water, which leaked to the basements and trenches, to a waste storage facility on April 19. Tepco transferred 1.89 million liters of the water from the trenches near reactor No. 2 as of 7 a.m. today, Iwamoto said. The utility plans to install a second pump after transferring 2.5 million liters.

Tepco shares fell 3.3 percent to 412 yen today in Tokyo. The shares are down about 80 percent since the quake and tsunami struck on March 11, leaving almost 26,000 people dead or missing.

Less Damage

Reactors 1 and 2 are less damaged than estimated, Tepco said in a statement today.

As much as 55 percent of the No. 1 reactor core at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station was damaged, compared with its earlier estimate of 70 percent.

“We revised the core damage data because some readings on the containment vessel monitors were wrong,” Matsumoto said. “There was also a recording mistake. We are investigating why this happened.”

The assessment for the No. 2 reactor was cut to 25 percent from 35 percent, while that for the No. 3 unit was raised to 30 percent from 25 percent.

“It seems a reasonable estimate that three reactor cores may be damaged to a similar extent,” said Unesaki. The new estimate “doesn’t indicate lower or higher risks at the plant.”

Radiation in Tokyo’s water supply fell to undetectable levels for the first time since March 18, the capital’s public health institute said today.

The level of iodine-131 in tap water fell to zero yesterday, and cesium-134 and cesium-137 also weren’t detected, the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health said today.

[Iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137 are man-made radioactive poisons that can only come from irradiated nuclear fuel.  Iodine-131 has a  half-life of about 8 days, so it will be completely gone from the environment in a few months.  Cesium-134 has a half-life of about 2 years, so it will be completely  gone from the environment after a few decades.  Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years, so it will not be completely gone from the environment until several centuries have elapsed. (GE)]

Tokyo residents were told on March 23 that the city’s water was unsafe for  infants after iodine and cesium levels exceeded guidelines.

To contact the reporters on this story:

Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at
tinajima@bloomberg.net;

Michio Nakayama in Tokyo at
mnakayama4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Amit Prakash at
aprakash1@bloomberg.net

GENEVA, Apr 27, 2011 (IPS) – The nuclear disaster in Fukushima,
Japan and the 25th anniversary of the catastrophe in the Chernobyl
nuclear power plant in Ukraine have thrown into relief contradictions
in the role played by the World Health Organisation, which civil
society organisations have spent years pointing out.

An international coalition of NGOs, IndependentWHO, says the multilateral
agency has never shown independence in its decisions or actions, in terms
of living up to its mandate of protecting the victims of radioactive contamination.

The groups blame the WHO’s alleged inactivity in this area on an
agreement it signed in 1959 with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), an independent United Nations organisation founded to promote
“safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.”

The coalition of NGOs states that the agreement makes the WHO
“subservient” to the IAEA and prevents the U.N. health agency from
“taking any initiative or action to achieve its objectives: the preservation
and the improvement of health.”

IndependentWHO
The collective’s founding members are
Enfants de Tchernobyl Bélarus,
Physicians for Social Responsibility
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War,
the People’s Health Movement,
the Commission for Independent Information and Research on Radioactivity,
Réseau Sortir du Nucléaire,
Brut de Béton Production and
ContrAtom.

The WHO should break off “that incestuous relationship” with the IAEA,
Russian-born Swiss journalist Wladimir Tchertkoff, who has produced seven
television documentaries on Chernobyl, told IPS.

But the relationship between the two agencies is unequal, because the IAEA
depends on the U.N. Security Council, while the WHO answers to the
lower-ranking Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

In the May 1959 agreement, the two agencies agreed to work in close
cooperation and consult each other whenever either of the two plans to
undertake a programme or activity in an area in which the other has a
substantial interest. It also establishes restrictions to safeguard the
confidentiality of certain documents.

In that framework, “the nuclear lobby has managed to get the WHO to
renounce taking care of the victims of nuclear disasters,” said Swiss
academic Jean Ziegler, currently vice president of the U.N. Human Rights
Council’s Advisory Committee.

In line with the 1959 agreement, the WHO’s position is that “when there is a
nuclear accident, we are not responsible for taking care of the victims; the
nuclear agency is the sole responsible party,” Ziegler told IPS.

He described this as an appalling situation in which thousands of people die,
when they could have been saved.

This “renews our suspicion that the nuclear lobby is well-established” here, he
said, pointing to the WHO building, outside of which the interview took place.

The latest estimate of the number of Chernobyl victims, published by the two
agencies on Sept. 5, 2005, mentions 50 deaths and 4,000 cases of cancer.

IndependentWHO calls such figures absurdly low, because they fail to take
into account the health of the children living in the contaminated areas, “where
rates of illness are at 80 percent.” The statistics also “ignore the fate of the
600,000 to 1,000,000 liquidators,” the name given to the veterans of the
Chernobyl rescue and clean-up, the coalition statements adds.

Tchertkoff pointed out that the study “Chernobyl: Consequences of the
Catastrophe for People and the Environment”, a book translated from Russian
that was published in December 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences,
put the total number of people who died as a result of the disaster at 985,000,
between the Apr. 26, 1986 explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant
and 2004.

According to health data cited by the book, more than 80 percent of children
in the areas of Ukraine, Belarus — the Soviet republic of Belarusssia at the time
– and Russia that were contaminated by Chernobyl were in good health prior
to the accident, while “fewer than 20 percent are well” today.

Agreement WHA 12-40

IndependentWHO says the agreement between the WHO and
the IAEA “is a major source of disinformation on the health and
environmental consequences of the accident at Chernobyl” and
that “WHO must regain its independence completely so that it
can investigate the relationship between radiation and health.”

“Here are just three examples that illustrate perfectly the way in
which the Agreement compromises the independence of WHO:

1. The IAEA is committed, in its statutes, to the promotion of the
peaceful use of the atom. It is therefore a commercial lobby
group.

2. The IAEA has put itself forward as the body responsible for
the setting of safety standards within the nuclear industry as
a whole. It is therefore both judge and jury.

3. The IAEA has no mandate nor any expertise in matters of
public health.”

Since Apr. 27, 2007, the organisations grouped in IndependentWHO have
maintained a vigil in front of the WHO building in Geneva every working day
from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

The vigil, which consists of one to three activists, is calling for a revision of
the 1959 agreement with the IAEA and demanding that the WHO work
toward its objective, as outlined in the agency’s constitution: “the attainment
by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.”

But Tchertkoff was sceptical. The WHO “cannot do much because it is a
victim” of a situation that was created, he said.

With respect to the accident in Fukushima, in northeast Japan, caused by
the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami, “The WHO doesn’t know what to do,”
he said.

“It doesn’t have staff capable of dealing with the situation. It only has five
people, just two of whom are university graduates with no experience,”
he added.

Tchertkoff also mentioned the controversy triggered by WHO policies
during the 2009 flu pandemic, in particular with regard to the production
and distribution of flu vaccines.

Ziegler said the WHO has been “infiltrated” by the nuclear lobby and the
pharmaceutical industry.

He recalled that an independent inquiry set up by former WHO director-
general Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998-2003) found that some of the
agency’s staff had received payments from the tobacco industry while
the agency was debating the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,
which was finally approved in 2005.

Tchertkoff believes there are two different tendencies in the WHO.

One is that if circumstances continue to deteriorate, like over the last few
weeks, it will become necessary for the WHO to once again discuss its
policy regarding nuclear radiation.

But the other group holds that a reopening of the debate would amount to
a confession “that we haven’t done anything in the past few decades,”
he said.

“A serious internal problem of this kind is lamentable at a time when we
are looking at Fukushima, Chernobyl and all of the world’s nuclear plants,
surrounded by some 410 million people living in a radius of 30 kilometres
from these danger spots,” the journalist said.

IPS, which requested an interview with WHO director of Public Health and
Environment María Neira, received no response from the WHO with regard
to these accusations.

Apr 17, 2011 10:13 PM | By Andrea Nagel
Source: http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/article1026595.ece/Deadly-cost-of-power

Before March 11, not many people outside Japan had heard of the towns of Okuma and Futaba. Now the area around the towns, home to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, one of the 15 largest nuclear power stations in the world, has been splashed across news stations around the world.

When the 9.0 earthquake and resultant tsunami hit Japan, the reactor cooling systems of the plant were disabled, which led to nuclear radiation leaks that required a 20km-radius evacuation zone.

The security category of the crisis has now reached level 7, equal to the Chernobyl disaster, which means a major release of radiation and a widespread health and environmental impact, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency .

But experts are saying the new rating exaggerates the severity of the crisis, and that the Chernobyl disaster was far worse.

April 26 will be the 26th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. The blast at Chernobyl blew the roof off a reactor and sent large amounts of radiation wafting across Europe. The accident led to the evacuation of well over 100000 people and affected livestock as far away as Scandinavia and Britain.

Against this backdrop and ever since President Jacob Zuma’s visit to France to discuss plans for our nuclear power developments, a debate is raging in South Africa over whether nuclear power is a safe alternative for energy in this country.

Some residents of Krugersdorp are have been relocated because of high levels of radiation detected on a mine in the vicinity and our National Nuclear Regulator plans to distribute hundreds of leaflets to teach the affected community how to protect themselves from mining radiation.

Environmental group Earthlife SA believes nuclear power is not only risky but also complex, dangerous and expensive.

“It’s reckless insanity to continue with the nuclear programme in South Africa,” said Tristan Taylor, spokesman for Earthlife SA.

In the same week the disaster in Japan took place, Eskom announced that South Africa is “well-equipped” to have nuclear power stations, and that we have a good nuclear safety culture.

“Clearly we’d be looking at what actually happened in Japan, but South Africa has a nuclear safety culture because of Koeberg station,” Eskom spokesman for nuclear power, Tony Scott, told Sapa.

Taylor argued: “We don’t take a breath to reassess our security schemes. This government just goes ahead with its nuclear stance, even after China put a moratorium on its nuclear projects to think about its nuclear security.

“Do we need nuclear power at the great cost of this power?” he asked.

“Not only is it unsafe, it is also one of the most expensive ways of powering this country. Aside from the costs of building and running the nuclear plants, we also require a police force to guard them.”

Eskom’s Scott has a different perspective: “How many people are killed on the roads every day compared to people killed in the nuclear industry?

“Obviously if something does go wrong in nuclear the consequences are enormous.”

But, he said most of the nuclear reactors at power stations in Japan shut themselves down as they were supposed to, following the earthquake and tsunami.

Taylor, however, asks: “Why are we going down the nuclear road when we have safer and cheaper alternatives, such as renewable wind and solar energy?

‘We should be putting combined state funds from taxation, revenue from the sale of electricity and debt into renewable energy. South Africans should be questioning not only where their electricity comes from, but also the social investment that this country is making in the supply of electricity.”

Scott was positive about South Africa’s ability to supply safe nuclear power.

“If we do build more [nuclear power stations], we would buy modern technology, and certainly the events that happened [in Japan] would be looked at and taken into account to see what technology should be used,” he said.

But Taylor says that going forward with nuclear technology is a mistake.

“Nuclear energy requires a lot of state funding.

“We know we can manufacture what we need for renewable energy locally, like windmills and solar geysers. We have the industrial base to go renewable. Plus there are distinctive safety advantages.

“The danger of nuclear energy is that it can have adverse effects on the young that are only discernable after many years. [With renewable energy] the worst thing that can happen if a windmill falls down is that it kills a cow.”

Source: http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/article1026595.ece/Deadly-cost-of-power

A one percent risk, 100 percent too high

As news of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 disappears from the front pages of the newspapers, some experts warn that the threats from the power plant can persist indefinitely, with one saying the mess cannot be cleaned up and “no-one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.”

The New York Times last week reported that United States engineers sent to help with the crisis in are warning that the troubled nuclear plant is facing an array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely. In some cases these threats are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In the new threats cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site.

“Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilised, but there is growing awareness that the risk of pumping water on the fuel presents a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend,” the report states.

For instance a rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel in the plant. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on the seismic capacity of the containment.

“Enormous stress is put on the containment structures by the rising water. “The more water in the structures, the more easily a large after-shock could rupture one of them.”

David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on similar General Electric reactors to those used in Japan and who now directs the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the welter of problems at three separate reactors revealed in the document made a successful outcome even more uncertain.

“Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air. They’ve got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse,” he told The New York Times.

In the meantime Dr. Tom Burnett is reported on the Information Clearing House site as saying: ”Fukushima is going to dwarf Chernobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.

“The disaster is occurring in the opposite way to Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

“The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no-one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.”

Spreading contamination

Radioactive lodine 131 has recently been turning up in Tokyo’s drinking water some 240 kilometres south of Fukushima. It led to official advice not to give this water to babies.

This contamination emanated from the core of the reactors at the nuclear plant, signifying a partial meltdown, which could result in far greater contamination from other dangerous radionuclides, such as Ceasium 137, and possible plutonium contamination.

Unlike lodine 131, with a half-life of just over eight days, these long-lived radioactive substances were strongly implicated in clusters of childhood leukemia near the UK nuclear facilities at Sellafield and Aldermaston from the 1960s to the 1990s

After Fukushima

“As we pursue the abolition of nuclear weapons, we also need to phase out reliance on nuclear energy. Both are incompatible with our environmental and human security,” writes the director at the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, Rebecca Johnson on the openDemocracy website.

“There is still a long way to go before anyone can feel reassured that the disaster caused by Japan’s massive off-shore earthquake and tsunami will not result in an additional nuclear catastrophe,” she writes.

She argues that major natural disasters might not be very frequent, but they will keep happening when we least expect. So we need to factor that into our energy and security choices.

“It is an inherent problem of nuclear technologies that if something goes wrong the risks are much greater and may spread far more widely than with any other kind of weapon or energy,” she writes and adds: “… the Fukushima crisis demonstrates with chilling clarity, a nuclear crisis can turn into a long-term tragedy far more frightening for the world than the worst foreseeable oil spill, fire or fossil-fuel accident.

“Fifty years of nuclear operations have resulted in many near misses and several severe nuclear accidents that caused serious contamination outside the plant: Sellafield (UK, 1957), Three Mile Island (USA, 1979), Chernobyl (Soviet Union, 1986). And now Japan, which believed it had designed its many nuclear facilities well enough to withstand earthquakes,” she writes.

The bottom line is that by the very nature of the risks involved with nuclear technology, a one percent risk is 100 percent too high.

In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel peace activist and author Jonathan Schell warns that “our most dangerous illusion is that we can control nuclear energy” and comes to the conclusion that what has happened in Japan could mark a turning point for the world.

Source of article: http://www.leadershiponline.co.za/articles/other/1244-fukushima-disaster

This nuclear energy debacle has been going on now for over 5 years. During that time hundreds of thousands of man hours worth of valid and scientific public comment opposed to further construction of any nuclear reactors has been submitted at every stage of the processes by individuals, communities and NGO’s. That has all amounted to nothing as all those comments have been totally ignored by a government and nuclear industry whose minds were long made up before they even started. Driving this is a very small group of men who all stand to benefit financially through lucrative deals constructing and operating these reactors but the public, the taxpayers, simply do NOT want these reactors and they are being ignored.

Furthermore the nuclear industry has in recent months, using taxpayers money, run a number of conferences aimed at promoting nuclear energy. The invited speakers are all pro nuclear pundits, the function venues and catering is all paid for by taxpayers but the organisers charge fees for people to come to these meetings which prevents NGO’s attending and it designed to do exactly that. Of the few NGO’s who do manage to scrape up some cash and attend, they only spend the evening being ridiculed by speakers and an audience that is all pro nuclear from the onset. So WHY have conferences promoting nuclear energy to 99% of your audience who is already brainwashed into being pro nuke? It seems media outlets are invited free of charge to these events so that they may of course write favourable nonsense in their newspapers for the nuclear industry.

Just recently one of these conferences was held close to the Atteridgeville community, the media were invited, the nuclear spin doctors were invited, the minister of energy was invited, basically anyone pro-nuclear was invited but the community involved was only told about this the day before and the news of this only reached NGO’s merely a day or two before which once again (by design) makes planning and attending very difficult.

It now also appears that the SABC has been told to clamp down on any news which shows nuclear energy in a bad light, in other words, THE TRUTH and no doubt the men who drive this very secret little industry are extending their reach to other mainstream media too.

It’s clear that these men will stop at nothing because there is a great path to self enrichment if all these very lucrative deals come to fruition. Using taxpayers money to achieve this is nothing short of scandalous if not criminal.

Here’s an article from 2008, nothing up till now has changed except a new “branding” company has been appointed in recent months. What happened to the taxpayers money that was wasted on the previous company who achieved NOTHING?