La industria japonesa en crisis

Japan's industrial and manufacturing base is prostrate. Japan is no longer a leading industrial power. The country's exports have plummeted. The Tokyo government has announced its first trade deficit since 1980.

While the business media has narrowly centered on the impacts of power outages and energy shortages on the pace of productive activity, the broader issue pertaining to the outright radioactive contamination of the country's infrastructure and industrial base is a "scientific taboo" (i.e the radiation of industrial plants, machinery and equipment, buildings, roads, etc). 

A report released in January 2012 points to the nuclear contamination of building materials used in the construction industry, in cluding roads and residential buildings throughout Japan.(See  FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies, January 2012)

A "coverup report" by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (May 2011), entitled "Economic Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery"  presents "Economic Recovery" as a fait accompli. 

It also brushes aside the issue of radiation. The impacts of nuclear radiation on the work force and the country's industrial base are not mentioned. The report states that the distance between Tokyo -Fukushima Dai-ichi  is of the order of 230 km (about 144 miles) and that the levels of radiation in Tokyo are lower than in Hong Kong and New York City.(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery, p.15). This statement is made without corroborating evidence and in overt contradiction with independent radiation readings in Tokyo (se map below). In recent developments, Sohgo Security Services Co. is launching a lucrative "radiation measurement service targeting households in Tokyo and four surrounding prefectures".

"A map of citizens' measured radiation levels shows radioactivity is distributed in a complex pattern reflecting the mountainous terrain and the shifting winds across a broad area of Japan north of Tokyo which is in the center of the of bottom of the map."
"Radiation limits begin to be exceeded at just above 0.1 microsieverts/ hour blue. Red is about fifty times the civilian radiation limit at 5.0 microsieverts/hour. Because children are much more sensitive than adults, these results are a great concern for parents of young children in potentially affected areas.

Source: Science Magazine
The fundamental question is whether the vast array of industrial goods and components "Made in Japan" -- including hi tech components, machinery, electronics, motor vehicles, etc -- and exported Worldwide are contaminated? Were this to be the case, the entire East and Southeast Asian industrial base --which depends heavily on Japanese components and industrial technology-- would be affected. The potential impacts on international trade would be farreaching. In this regard, in January, Russian officials confiscated irradiated Japanese automobiles and autoparts in the port of Vladivostok for sale in the Russian Federation. Needless to say, incidents of this nature in a global competitive environment, could lead to the demise of the Japanese automobile which is already in crisis.

While most of the automotive industry is in central Japan, Nissan's engine factory in Iwaki city is 42 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Is the Nissan work force affected? Is the engine plant contaminated? The plant is within about 10 to 20 km of the government's "evacuation zone" from which some 200,000 people were evacuated (see map below).

Safe? This map shows cities within the evacuation zones surrounding Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant


Nuclear Energy and Nuclear War
The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war.

Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.

In Japan at the height of the disaster, "the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants".1  (See Yoichi Shimatsu, Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research,  April 12, 2011)

It should be noted that the complacency of both the media and the governments to the hazards of nuclear radiation pertains to the nuclear energy industry as well as to to use of nuclear weapons. In both cases, the devastating health impacts of nuclear radiation are casually denied. Tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb are labelled by the Pentagon as "safe for the surrounding civilian population".

No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using "safe for civilians" tactical nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.

Such an action would result in "the unthinkable": a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East and Central Asia. A nuclear nightmare, however, would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing another Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout. 

(For further details See Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2011)

The Online Interactive I-Book Reader on Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

In view of the official cover-up and media disinformation campaign, the contents of the articles and video reports in this Online Interactive Reader have not trickled down to to the broader public. (See Table of contents below)

This Online Interactive Reader on Fukushima contains a combination of analytical and scientific articles, video reports as well as shorter news reports and corroborating data.

Part I focusses on The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened? Part II  pertains to The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan. Part III  centers on the "Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe", namely the cover-up by the Japanese government and the corporate media. Part IV focusses on the issue of  Worlwide Nuclear Radiation and Part V reviews the Implications of the Fukushima disaster for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry.

In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, this Global Research Online I-Book on the dangers of global nuclear radiation is intended to break the media vacuum and raise public awareness, while also pointing to the complicity of  the governments, the media and the nuclear industry.

We call upon our readers to spread the word.

We invite university, college and high school teachers to make this Interactive Reader on Fukushima available to their students.

Michel Chossudovsky, January 25, 2012

Fukushima 2 caliente

La foto de REUTERS, que recoge el esperado encuentro del Papa con Fidel, muestra a dos personas con expresión amable:Fidel sostiene entre sus  largas y finas manos las del Pontífice que sonríe con timidez. El Papa se inclina levemente.  Parece que el encuentro fue muy bien, como no podía ser de otra forma. 

En su visita a Kuba, el sabio obispo de Roma dió una de cal y otra de arena. "No sólo tienen que cambiar las cosas en Kuba sino en todo el planeta", dijo. Pero también hizo una indirecta alusión a los negativos efectos del embargo. 

No era cuestión de pedirle milagros a Su Santidad. Ni tampoco que rezara explícitamente por los espías buenos de Fidel vamos. Aunque puestos a ello no estaría mal: ya que también son presidiarios.¿O no?.

Mientras tanto el reactor número 2 de Fukushima en peor estado de lo que se imaginaban.

Que Ratzinger rece y que Fidel siga alertando al personal con sus "Reflexiones" que algunos envidiosos tachan de catastrofistas. Desgraciadamente no lo son. Ya se sabe que Fidel pone a caer de un burro a quien le da la gana, por ejemplo al Obama.

A sus lúcidos 85 años le da lo mismo. En fin, que genio y figura.

 Comandante, usted dele caña al mono. Pa´lante y pa´lante, hasta que el body aguante.

En Spain, con sus 5.3 millones de desempleados, estamos en algo así como una huelga general, (convocada por los sindicatos UGT y CCOO), que según los mayores medios de comunicación está alcanzando  niveles significativos en la industria y el transporte. Hay varios canales de televisión sin señal. Habrá que esperar a la tarde para saber los resultados

Fukushima:Genocidio planetario

Introducción obsoleta: Las consecuencias del incidente de Fukushima en los ecosistemas planetarios son profundas, graves y imprevisibles. La irresponsabilidad de los gobernantes y la falta de recursos dedicados a la tecnología nuclear de uso pacífico es patente. Lo sucedido en Japón puede pasar igual en USA donde hay reactores con la misma estructura.Los daños en los genes aseguran que varias generaciones sufriran enfermedades graves. 

El artículo que he editado conserva todo su contenido intacto, tiene datos suficientes para entender que en Fukushima se ha producido un genocidio. Animo a quienes visitan codondesastre.blogspot.com que no lo pasen por alto.


"Planetary Genocide": Fukushima One Year Later : The Poisoning of Planet Earth

By Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri

“The most difficult thing of all is to see is what is right in front of your eyes.” Goethe.


As we approach the tragic one-year anniversary of Fukushima’s multiple nuclear reactors’ accident on March 11, that initially affected the entire Japanese population, we now know that this nightmare has engulfed all of us.

Let us also not forget that this is the third nuclear attack on the Japanese (the first two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Given what has not been done to ensure public safety, we cannot think of it any other way. From the very first day, there were lies and a massive cover-up of the extent of the destruction and the inherent radioactive dangers –not just from Japanese officials and TEPCO corporate reports, but also from the US. The Mark 1 reactors, built by General Electric, have design flaws.

There are many of these same-designed reactors in the US.


A year later, much of the corruption, deceit, and careless practices have been documented extensively here at Global Research ( Ver Global Research)–while mainstream news continues Orwellian doublespeak. Last month, in a rare but very belated mainstream account, CBS News reported that after the tsunami and nuclear accident: “The normal lines of [government] authority completely collapsed in Japan.”


www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57386266/report-govt-collapsed-during-japan-nuke-crisis
Early on, even essential radioactive monitoring was shut down. In May 2011, the prestigious Norsk Institute’s online site was blocked from the US. They had been monitoring on a daily basis the worldwide radioactive contamination to which we were all –and continue to be– exposed. Conveniently, any early radiation monitoring in the US was inconsistent, with numerous sites supposedly not working for one or another reason. Then the so-called “acceptable” radiation levels in food were raised in the US and EU:
www.activistpost.com/2011/04/eu-follows-epa-raises-acceptable.html


As Dr. Helen Caldicott and Dr. Chris Busby have repeatedly reported: “There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water, or other sources. Period.” See:

www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=23902

So, what is not monitored, or where the radiation rates are manipulated, then no one –government officials and corporations– can ever be held accountable, nor can increased death rates, diabetes, stillbirths, birth defects ever be attributed to this catastrophic planetary event.


When have we ever been told the truth about our life-long systemic radiation poisoning? For decades, we have been uninformed experimental laboratory rats since before the Manhattan Project. There never were any ethical or precautionary considerations. Greed and secret agendas trumped everything else.


With various half-lives –some eons-long– of numerous radioactive components, the human race and every other living creature on our planet is on its way to extinction, due to the known sterilization effects of radiation. Here is a short list of the half-life of five of the radioactive isotopes that are and will continue to poison all of our children, and us, ad infinitum, in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink and in which we bathe:


· Cesium 137: 30 years


· Plutonium 239: 24,000 years


· Strontium 90: 29 years [mimics calcium in the body]


· Uranium 235: 700-million years


· Iodine 131: 8 days [absorbed into the thyroid and gives heavy radiation dose. Also goes into the soil, passed onto us through cow’s milk.]


In a report released just a few week’s ago, the milk tested in the San Francisco area still had radioactive levels of Cesium 134 and Cesium 137. According to even a compromised EPA, these are now at “150 percent of their maximum contaminant level.” .
In addition, Fukushima’s Unit 3 reactor also used MOX [mixed oxide], a plutonium-uranium fuel mixture that is deadly. A single milligram of MOX is 2-million times more deadly than enriched uranium.


Current radiation levels reported on Feb. 25 in Tokyo, 100 miles from Fukushima and an international hub, are “25 times the Fukushima mandatory evacuation zone.” The eminent physicist Dr. Paolo Scampa has reported in detail his latest calculations on deadly radiation exposure here.


For 30-million Japanese this is an epic tragedy.


Any reasonable safety precautions or realistic evacuations never took place at Fukushima or elsewhere. In addition, a collection of 40-years worth of 600,000 spent fuel rods posed an immediate HazMat threat that never went away. The water poured over them evaporated into radioactive steam to go directly into our planet’s atmosphere and the tons of sea water sprayed on the entire nuclear conflagration were criminally dumped into the Pacific Ocean. Again, because it was not monitored, we will never know how many millions of tons of radioactive water were dumped into the Pacific Ocean. The entire web of ocean life then was irreversibly contaminated with radioactive nuclear waste and detritus, as the ocean currents carried this nightmare to the west coast shores of North America (California, Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver). As with other major planetary bodies of water, the Pacific Ocean has become an enormous radioactive garbage dump of incalculable proportions that are beyond any remediation currently known to science. This majestic body of water has become one of our planet’s toilets.(1)


What about the entire web of ocean life? From the great and magnificent whales to the variety of microscopic life, this entire vast ecosystem has been poisoned. Yet, we will never know the immense extent of death and destruction that Fukushima caused to it. Even knowing that the ocean food chain is contaminated with radioactivity, this was not reported by mainstream media. So, the fishing industry is catching and selling various fish and crustaceans that are radioactive. How many tons of these have gone up through the entire food chain, and then sold to uninformed consumers who eat these HazMat foods? Profits always trump our safety and well-being. This is the massive global poisoning of our only home –Mother Earth. We are fortunate, however, that the alternative internet media has reported on these dangers.


While hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions?) will develop various radiation-related illnesses (cancers and diabetes, as well as radiation-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and birth deformities) over the next decades, the coffers of the medical profession, pharmaceutical companies, and nuclear industry will be bursting with profits. The 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl continues its deathly impact –and that was only one reactor.(2) Fukushima had six reactors.


Medical reports are already showing a significant rise in deaths due to Fukushima’s radioactive fallout. Noted toxicologist and internist Dr. Janet Sherman recently said:” Based on our continuing research, the actual death count here [in the US] may be as high as 18,000... but we continue to find that infants are hardest hit because their tissues are rapidly multiplying, they have undeveloped immune systems, and the doses of radioisotopes are proportionally greater than for adults.”


This massive and frightening crisis is the result of no precaution, no prevention, and no care or concern for human or any other kind of life on our planet. None of this is mainstream news. E.O. Wilson (“The Future of Life” and “Biodiversity”) and Bill McKibben (“The End of Nature”) were writing about these issues decades ago. The dangers of the nuclear age continue to mount with off-the-scale disastrous results to all of us.


How much longer can we be deceived about the extreme dangers of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons? Everything that encompasses nuclear energy is unsafe. It is hazardous in the extreme. Further, nuclear waste has been accumulating for six decades. There is NO LONG-TERM SAFE WAY TO STORE ANY NUCLEAR WASTE. For example, countless drums of nuclear waste have been dumped into the ocean, and have been found to be leaking radioactive poisons.


Everything on our planet has been contaminated with life-long and long-term radiation. I continue to write: “Invisible does not mean safe.” With many nuclear facilities in the US old and having numerous problems, the core issue of it as a hazardous endeavor remains. Two nuclear plants with serious troubles are Vermont Yankee, and just last month San Onofre (built right on a fault line). They are just the tips of the proverbial radioactive iceberg.


So, as long as profits trump safety, and as long as the entire nuclear industry has ties to the military, we will never be safe. Valid citizens’ and medical concerns continue to be ignored. We are all expendable.


This is not a one-issue health and/or environmental crisis. We MUST think of the bigger picture, across many disciplines. We are in the midst of a long-planned and multi-pronged assault on our health and our planet’s. The destruction of real and long-term good health has been replaced by multiple and chronic diseases (often caused by enormous toxic pollution that envelops all of us). Our entire biology has been battered for a century. The blood-brain barrier has been breached. Nano-technology and invisible stealth-created micro-organisms –both unregulated– are our modern-day plagues. Many were created in some bio-hazard lab. To add to this is the poisoning of our water, air and food supply. In 1998, the print-edition of London’s “The Ecologist” (perhaps the earliest environmental magazine, first published in the 1970s), devoted their entire issue to “The Monsanto Files. Can we survive genetic engineering?”(3) For many years, F. William Engdahl (“Seed of Destruction”) and Dr. Mae Wan-Ho both have written about the abundant and well-documented dangers of genetic engineering and the GM poisoned foods.
Add to that:, we have an illegal but on-going geo-engineered aerosol 24/7/365 stealth assault overhead that has completely changed our air and poisoned our health. In numerous lectures and research papers, Clifford Carnicom has documented that our air has been transformed to a plasma state; and with it is the associated tragedy of Morgellons syndrome that was created from some synthetic self-replicating nano-organism. There is no “off switch” for this; but the media ridicules sufferers. Time magazine recently published an article noting that these very real and documented symptoms were “delusional.” Into this synergistic nightmare are also 100,000 chemicals –90 percent of which are untested– that surround our every move.


Last, but by no means the least, of these hazards is the hidden dangers of the EMF/RF spectrum [Electromagnetic Frequency/Radiation Frequency]. The proliferation of this deadly technology encompasses: cell phones and Wi-Fi and their towers that poison our landscapes. With more than 5-billion cell phones sold, consumers were never told how dangerous they were. Outdated data and reports do not include the now constant barrage of these higher frequencies that wreck our health. There is also newly reported research demonstrating that this also includes impairment of cognitive function and brain damage.(4)


The latest release of this hazardous technology is the so-called “Smart” Meters that are being installed all over North America and Europe without any mandate and without any preliminary research that the utility [electric, gas, and water] companies did on the numerous biological threats they are already causing people who have had a meter installed.(5)


With 8,000 complaints, California leads the US in the most vocal concerns about these meters. Several cities, including Santa Cruz, CA, have banned them with year-long moratoria. There was never any mandate to force these meters on anyone; the utility companies did not warn customers of the extreme risks of constantly pulsing EMF, nor did they warn customers about breakage to our DNA or brain damage. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (founded in 1965) has called for a moratorium on these dangerous meters.(6) It is conceivable that the unfolding EMF crisis will be far worse than the asbestos and tobacco hazards combined. Scientist Prof. Olle Johansson of Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute, has been warning about these invisible biological dangers for decades. See:

Corporations have personhood and have the same legal standing as any real humans. They have the financial means to block any real justice for the environmental and health damage their products continue to cause. They are rarely held accountable. Add to that the destruction of 30-years of environmental laws meant to protect us, this is another part of the disaster recipe in which we live out our days. The nuclear industry has never told us the truth about the permanent level of radiation dangers to which we are all exposed. The plunder of our planet and the destruction of vast ecosystems have been documented for decades. These poisons, mostly invisible, envelop our every move, contaminate our DNA, and wreck our health and ability to reproduce safely. The past 10 years this destruction has been accelerated at a phenomenal rate, while mainstream media continues to report lies.




Nevertheless, more and more millions of people are waking up and connecting many of the dots of these epidemics of serious illnesses, loss of millions of jobs, theft of millions of homes, stealing of trillions of dollars of wealth to pay off banksters, CEOs and insiders, while the middle class around the globe is in extremis. Evidence continues to mount of what insider trading and printing of fiat money has done to destroy people’s lives and economies around the globe. We cannot minimize or discount a situation that is totally out of control; and we cannot think of each of these HazMats as separate problems. They are all inter-related and they are destroying out health. Connecting the dots of this multi-pronged assault on all of us as well as our entire biosphere is ESSENTIAL. It is not sustainable. It is up to all of us to become well-informed and educated about what is happening, join together, and to paraphrase Dr. Rosalie Bertell “refuse to co-operate in our own destruction.” We still have that choice.
Remember: What we don’t look for, we can’t find. If those in charge decide NOT to monitor or report the dangers, then no one is ever held accountable –that includes those in charge. We all suffer the consequences.

No olvidar Fukushima

.

Ahogados en el marasmo de información veraniega que conviente los bikinis de algunas egregias señoras en material imprescindible y goloso, el destino y situación de la central japonesa de Fukushima queda en el olvido. Pero hay mucho que decir.

Hay entre 2 .000 a 3. 000 trabajadores, que yo no dudaría en calificar de heróicos, dedicados a recoger la basura caliente, dispersada de manera aleatoria.

La limpieza de los residuos radioactivos puede llegar a ser letal. O a provocar enfermedades graves a largo plazo. Incluso en los hijos de los afectados.

Los equipos interdisciplinarios están haciendo encajes de bolillos, (vaya comparación) para estabilizar el reactor 1.

Cuando se habla de estabilizar un reactor se trata de que la energía no se desmadre y el ingenio explote al alcanzar un punto en el que no hay vuelta atrás.

En marzo la temperatura del reactor 1 superaba los 400 grados centígrados. Ultimamente va por 90. El 2 y el 3 andan en torno a 100, lo que no es mala noticia pero tampoco es para conformarse.

Toda el agua que circula por las instalaciones, y  va a parar al mar  resulta un serio ataque a la cadena alimentaria cuyos efectos no se conocerán hasta pasado mucho tiempo. Pero no hay remedio posible: se trata de enfriar los reactores y el agua raioactiva y caliente tiene que ir a algua parte.

Fukushima es un grave peligro por la contaminación con cesio -137. Su entidad es comparable a la del accidente de Tchernobil. El área de exclusión debería ser equivalente a la del reactor ruso. Y también la ingeniería nuclear debería aprender la lección.

¿Qué hacer con la basura radioactiva de Fukushima?

Who Will Take the Radioactive Rods from Fukushima?
by Yoichi Shimatsu


Yoichi Shimatsu analiza uno de los principales retos técnicos que existen en la actualidad como consecuencia del grave accidente de la central nuclear de Fukushima (Japón). Se trata del destino final de las barras de uranio, parcialmente fundidas y que contienen plutonio. Aparte del combustible dentro de la planta que consta de seis reactores, se trata de más de 7 toneladas de varillas que se tienen que remover y asignarles un destino permanente. Esto es necesario antes de cubrir las instalaciones siniestradas con un "sarcófago" de concreto para contener la radioactividad.
Las varillas no pueden permanecer en Japón. Las instalaciones de almacenamiento existentes  en Japón no son  mínimamente apropiadas. El único destino factible tendrá que ser necesariamente otro país.

El presente artículo descubre los entresijos de la actual política global en torno al almacenamiento de los desechos radiactivos. Puede ser que, agotadas otras posibles soluciones, todas más o menos problemáticas, Mongolia se convierta en el punto final de un viaje erizado de riesgos. Los ciudadanos mongoles no saldrán nada beneficiados de unos negocios probablemente muy sucios...y sin duda radioactivos.





The decommissioning of the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant is delayed by a single problem: Where to dispose of the uranium fuel rods? Many of those rods are extremely radioactive and partially melted, and some contain highly lethal plutonium.


Besides the fissile fuel inside the plant's six reactors, more than 7 tons of spent rods have to be removed to a permanent storage site before workers can bury the Fukushima facility under concrete. The rods cannot be permanently stored in Japan because the country's new waste storage centers on the northeast tip of Honshu are built on unsuitable land. The floors of the Rokkasho reprocessing facility and Mutsu storage unit are cracked from uneven sinking into the boggy soil.


Entombment of the rods inside the Fukushima 1 reactors carries enormous risks because the footing of landfill cannot support the weight of the fuel rods in addition to the reactors and cooling water inside the planned concrete containment walls. The less reactive spent fuel would have to be kept inside air-cooled dry casks. The powerful earthquakes that frequently strike the Tohoku region will eventually undermine the foundations, causing radioactive wastewater to pour unstoppably into the Pacific Ocean. The rods must therefore go to another country.


American Bad Faith
Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed by Japan in 1970, Washington's negotiators stipulated that used nuclear fuel from Japanese reactors must by law be shipped to the United States for storage or reprocessing to prevent the development of an atomic bomb. Washington has been unable to fulfill its treaty obligations to Tokyo due to the public outcry against the proposed Yucca Mountain storage facility near Las Vegas.
A panel convened by the Obama administration has just recommended the set up of a network of storage sites across the United States, a controversy certain to revive the anti-nuclear sentiments during the upcoming election campaign. The American nuclear industry has its own stockpile of more than 60,000 tons of spent fuel - not counting waste from reactors used for military and research purposes - leaving no space for Fukushima's rods inside the Nevada disposal site, if indeed it is ever opened.
To Continental Asia
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has allocated 1 trillion yen ($12 billion) in funds for nuclear waste disposal. Areva, the French nuclear monopoly, has teamed up with Tepco to find an overseas storage site. So far, the Tepco-Areva team have quietly contacted three Asian countries - Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia -- to set up a center for "reprocessing", a euphemism for nuclear dump site.
Among the threesome, China was the top choice for the Japanese nuclear establishment, which has confidence in Beijing's ability to safeguard nuclear secrets from its citizenry and even from the top leaders. Japan's space agency, which keeps 24-hour satellite observation over every nuclear-related facility in China, possesses the entire record of radiation leaks there. Since Beijing withholds this sort of data from the public, the Japanese side felt it had the necessary leverage in talks with Chinese nuclear officials.
Though the nuclear-sector bureaucrats were initially eager to receive bundles of yen, the proposal was blown away by the salt craze that swept over China. Within a couple of weeks of the Fukushima meltdowns, millions of shoppers emptied supermarket shelves on rumors that iodized salt could prevent radiation-caused thyroid cancer. The Chinese public is rightfully fearful of health-related scandals after discoveries of melamine in milk, growth hormones in pork, pesticides in vegetables, antibiotics in fish and now radioactive fallout over farmland.
A nuclear disposal deal would require trucks loaded with radioactive cargo to roll through a densely populated port, perhaps Tianjin or Ningbo, in the dead of night. There is no way that secret shipments wouldn't be spotted by locals with smart phones, triggering a mass exodus from every city, town and village along the route to the dumping grounds in China's far west. Thus, the skittishness of the ordinary Chinese citizen knocked out the easiest of nefarious plans.
Principle of Industrial Recovery
A more logical choice for overseas storage is in the sparsely populated countries that supply uranium ore to Japan, particularly Australia and Canada. As exporters of uranium, Canberra and Ottawa are ultimately responsible for storage of the nuclear waste under the legal principle of industrial recovery.
The practice of industrial recovery is already well-established in the consumer electronics and household appliances sectors where manufacturers are required by an increasing number of countries to take back and recycle used television sets, computers and refrigerators.
Under the principle, uranium mining giants like Rio Tinto and CAMECO would be required to take back depleted uranium. The cost of waste storage would then be factored into the export price for uranium ore. The added cost is passed along to utility companies and ultimately the consumer through a higher electricity rate. If the market refuses to bear the higher price for uranium as compared with other fuels, then nuclear power will go the way of the steam engine.
Australian and Canadian politicians are bound to opportunistically oppose the return of depleted uranium since any shipments from Fukushima would be met by a massive turnout of "not-in-my-backyard" protesters. The only way for Tokyo to convince the local politicos to go along quietly is by threatening to publish an online list of the bribe-takers in parliament who had earlier backed uranium mining on behalf of the Japanese interests.
Nuclear's Cost-Efficiency
The question then arise whether nuclear power, when long-term storage fees are included, is competitive with investment in renewable energy such as wind, solar, hydro and tidal resources. Renewable energy probably has the edge since they don't create waste. Natural gas remains the undisputed price beater wherever it is available in abundance. In a free market without hidden subsidies, nuclear is probably doomed.
In a lapse of professionalism, the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) has never seriously addressed nuclear-waste disposal as an industrywide issue. Based on the ration of spent rods to reactor fuel inside U.S. nuclear facilities, there are close to 200,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste at the 453 civilian nuclear-energy plants worldwide. Yet not a single permanent storage site has ever been opened anywhere.
The Fukushima 1 dilemma shows that the issues of cost-efficiency and technological viability can no longer be deferred or ignored. Ratings agencies report that Tepco's outstanding debt has soared beyond $90 billion, meaning that it cannot cover future costs of storing spent rods from its Kashiwazaki and Fukushima 2 nuclear plants. The Japanese government's debt has soared to 200 percent of GDP. Neither entity can afford the rising cost of nuclear power.
The inability of Tepco or the government to pay for nuclear waste disposal puts the financial liability squarely on its partner companies and suppliers, including GE, Toshiba, Hitachi, Kajima Construction and especially the sources of the uranium, CAMECO and Rio Tinto and the governments of Canada and Australia. A fundamental rule of both capitalism and civil law is that somebody has to pay.


Last Stop
Since Australia and Canada aren't in any hurry to take back the radioactive leftovers, that leaves Japan and treaty-partner United States with only one option for quick disposal- Mongolia.
Ulan Bator accepts open-pit mining for coal and copper, which are nothing but gigantic toxic sites, so why not take the melted-down nuclear rods? Its GDP, ranked 136 among the world's economies, is estimated to be $5.8 billion in 2010. Thus, $12 billion is an unimaginable sum for one more hole in the
Not that Mongolia would get the entirety of the budget, since the nuclear cargo would have to transit through the Russian Far East.
 Unlike the health-conscious Chinese, the population of Nakhodka or Vladivostok are used to playing fast-and-loose with radioactive materials and vodka.
Even if the mafia that runs the Russian transport industry were to demand a disproportionate cut, Mongolia's 3 million inhabitants would be overjoyed at gaining about $2,000 each, more than the average annual income, that is if the money is divided evenly after the costs of building the dump.
Realistically, the Mongolian people are unlikely to receive a penny, since the money will go into a trust fund for maintenance costs. That's because $12 billion spread over the half-life of uranium - 700 million years - is equivalent to $17 in annual rent. That doesn't even cover kibble bits for the watchdog on duty, much less the cooling system. Not that anyone will be counting since by the time uranium decays to a safe level, fossils will be the sole remnant of human life on Earth.
Illusory, shortsighted greed will surely triumph in Mongolia, and that leaves a question of moral accountability for the rest of us. Will the world community feel remorse for dumping its nuclear mess onto an ancient culture that invented boiled mutton, fermented mare's milk and Genghis Khan? For guilt-ridden diplomats from Tokyo and Washington wheedling the dirty deal in Ulan Bator, here's the rebuttal: Did the national hero, the Great Khan, ever shed any tears or feel pangs of guilt? There's no need for soul-searching. A solution is at hand.


Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, is a Hong Kong-based environmental writer and also Editor-at-large at the 4th Media, China.






Yoichi Shimatsu is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Yoichi Shimatsu

Las verdaderas consecuencias del Fukushima

Una conferencia de la doctora Helen Caldicott pone en perspectiva el accidente (o mejor dichos, los eventos) que siguen teniendo lugar en la zona contaminada de Fukushima. Se compara esta catástrofe con la mayor de la que se cuenta con datos mínimamente fiables:(sin contar el accidente de Three Miles en USA) la rotura de la vasija de uno de los reactores de Tchernobil. El actual "sarcófago" que aisla la zona caliente de Tchernobil, necesita ser reforzado. Nadie sabe cuanto aguantará. Tchernobil fue una dura lección y ayudó a mejorar la tecnología nuclear. Pero el coste en vidas humanas, y las consecuencias a largo plazo: aumento de la incidencia de varios tipos de cáncer, malformaciones congénitas, y otras de las que no se tiene aún datos, ponen de manifiesto la necesidad de nuevos avances tecnológicos en seguridad nuclear.

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in Perspective
by Dr. Helen Caldicott
Dr. Helen Caldicott's March 18th press conference in Montreal, sponsored by the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
Our thanks to Felton Davis for the transcription from the GRTV Video recording and for the annotations.

This press conference organized by Global Research was held in the context of Helen Caldicott's public lecture to Montreal on March 18, 2011.

First I want to present this report, produced by the New York Academy of Sciences, a report on Chernobyl. It can be downloaded.(2) They translated 5,000 articles from Russian for the first time into English. It seems that nearly a million people have already died as a result of Chernobyl, despite what the WH0(3) says and the IAEA.(4) This is one of the most monstrous cover-ups in the history of medicine. Because everybody should know about this.
Then we extrapolate through to Japan. Japan is by orders of magnitude many times worse than Chernobyl. Never in my life did I think that six nuclear reactors would be at risk.(5) I knew that three GE engineers who helped design these Mark I GE reactors, resigned because they knew they were dangerous.(6)
So Japan built them on an earthquake fault. The reactors partially withstood the earthquake, but the external electricity supply was cut off, and the electricity supplies the cooling water, a million gallons a minute, to each of those six reactors. Without the cooling water, the water [level] falls, and the rods are so hot they melt, like at Three Mile Island, and at Chernobyl.
So the emergency diesel generators, which are as large as a house, got destroyed by the tsunami, so there is no way to keep the water circulating in the reactors.(7) Also, on the roofs of the reactors, not within the containment vessel, are cooling pools. Every year they remove about thirty tons of the most radioactive rods that you can possibly imagine.(8) Each one is twelve feet long and half an inch thick. It gives out so much radiation, that if you stand next to it for a couple of minutes, you'll die. Not drop dead. Remember Litvinenko, the Russian, who got poisoned by polonium?(9) You'll die like that, with your hair falling out, and bleeding with massive infection, like AIDS patients die.
And [the spent fuel rods] are thermally hot, so they have to be put in a big pool, and continually cooled. The pool has really no roof.
There have been three hydrogen explosions, blowing off the roof of the building, not the containment vessel of the core, but the roof. And exposing the cooling pool.(10) Two of the cooling pools are dry. They have no water in them. Meaning that the nuclear fuel rods are covered with a material called zirconium. When zirconium is exposed to air, it burns, it ignites. Two of the cooling pools at this moment are burning. In the cooling pools are many times, like 10 to 20 times more radiation than in each reactor core. In each reactor core is as much long-lived radiation as would be produced by a thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs. We are dealing with diabolical energy.

E=MC2 is the energy that blows up nuclear bombs. Einstein said nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water.(11) Because that is all nuclear power is used for, to boil water through the massive heat, turn it into steam, and turn a turbine which generates electricity.

Now when you fission uranium, 200 new elements are formed, all of which are much more poisonous to the body than the original uranium.(12) Although uranium is pretty poisonous. America used it in Fallujah, and in Baghdad. And in Fallujah, 80 per cent of the babies being born are grossly deformed.(13) They're being born without brains, single eyes, no arms... The doctors have told the women to stop having babies. The incidence of childhood cancer has gone up about twelve times. This is genocide -- it's a nuclear war being conducted in Iraq. The uranium that they're using lasts more than 4.5 billion years. So we're contaminating the cradle of civilization. "The coalition of the willing!"

In the nuclear power plants, however, there is a huge amount of radiation: two hundred elements. Some last seconds, some last millions of years. Radioactive iodine lasts six weeks, causes thyroid cancer. That's why people are saying, "Better take potassium iodide," because that blocks the thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine, which later can cause thyroid cancer.

In Chernobyl, over 20,000 people have developed thyroid cancer.(14) They have their thyroids out, and they will die unless they take thyroid replacement every day, like a diabetic has to take insulin.
Strontium-90 will get out, it lasts for 600 years. It goes to the bone, where it causes bone cancer or leukemia. Cesium lasts for 600 years -- it's all over Europe. 40 per cent of Europe is still radioactive. Turkish food is extremely radioactive. Do not buy Turkish dried apricots, or Turkish hazelnuts. The Turks were so cross with the Russians, they sent all their radioactive tea over to Russia after Chernobyl.(15)

Forty per cent of Europe is still radioactive. Farms in Britain, their lambs are so full of cesium they can't sell them. Don’t eat European food.

But that's nothing compared to what's happening now. One of the most deadly [nuclear byproducts] is plutonium, named after Pluto, god of the underworld. One millionth of a gram, if you inhale it, would give you cancer. Hypothetically, one pound of plutonium if evenly distributed could give everyone on earth cancer. Each reactor has 250 kilograms of plutonium in it. You only need 2.5 kilograms to make an atomic bomb, because plutonium is what they make bombs with.

So any country that has a reactor, works with your uranium. You [Canada] are the biggest exporter of uranium in the world.(16) Canada sells two things: it sells wheat for life, and uranium for death. Plutonium is going to get out and spread all over the northern hemisphere. It's already heading towards North America now.

Radioactive iodine, plus strontium, plus cesium, plus tritium, and I could go on and* on and on. When it rains, downs come fallout, and it concentrates in food. If it gets into the sea, the algae concentrate it, hundreds of times. And the crustaceans concentrate it, hundreds of times. And then the little fish, then the big fish, then us.(17)

Because we stand on the apex of the food chain. You can't taste these radioactive food elements, you can't see them, you can't smell them. They're silent. When you get them inside your body, you don't suddenly drop dead of cancer, it takes five to sixty years to get your cancer, and when you feel a lump in your breast, it doesn't say, "I was made by some strontium-90 in a piece of fish you ate twenty years ago."

All radiation is damaging. It's cumulative -- each dose you get adds to your risk of getting cancer. The americium is more dangerous than plutonium -- I could go on and on. Depends if it rains if you're going to get it or not. If it rains and the radiation comes down, don't grow food, and don't eat the food, and I mean don't eat it for 600 years.

Radioactive waste from nuclear power is going to be buried, I hear, next to Lake Ontario. It's going to leak, last for millions of years, it's going to get into the water, and into the food chains. Radioactive waste will induce epidemics of cancer, leukemia, and genetic disease for the rest of time. This is the greatest public health hazard the world has ever witnessed, apart from the threat every day of nuclear war.

Einstein said "the splitting of the atom changed everything, save man's mode of thinking" -- very profound -- "and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." We are arrogant, we have a lot of hubris, and I think the reptilian mid-brain of some men's brains is pathological.(18)

We are in a situation where we have harnessed the energy of the sun. It is totally out of control. And there's simply nothing we can do about it.

NOTES
[These notes are not part of Dr. Caldicott's presentation. They were added by Felton Davis]

1) Helen Caldicott is the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and is the author of "The New Nuclear Danger" (The New Press, 2002).

2) "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe For the People and the Environment," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

3) "Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident," World Health Organization. http://www-ns.iaea.org/appraisals/chernobyl.asp

4) "Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident," International Atomic Energy Agency. http://www-ns.iaea.org/appraisals/chernobyl.asp

5) For a general description of the complex, including cross-sections of the six reactors, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents

6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three
Excerpt: On February 2, 1976, Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh "blew the whistle" on safety problems at nuclear power plants. The three engineers gained the attention of journalists and their disclosures about the threats of nuclear power had a significant impact. They timed their statements to coincide with their resignations from responsible positions in General Electric's nuclear energy division, and later established themselves as consultants on the nuclear power industry for state governments, federal agencies, and overseas governments.

7) "Japanese Scramble to Avert Meltdowns as Nuclear Crisis Deepens After Quake," New York Times, March 12, 2011, By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW L. WALD

8) The design manual for General Electric boiling water reactors was posted as a PDF document on the "What Really Happened" website, and can be downloaded at: http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/ge-manual-bwr6-reactor-design-and-operation

9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
Excerpt: Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, FSB and KGB, who escaped prosecution in Russia and received political asylum in the United Kingdom. He wrote two books, "Blowing up Russia: Terror from within" and "Lubyanka Criminal Group", where he accused the Russian secret services of staging Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts to bring Vladimir Putin to power. On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. According to doctors, "Litvinenko's murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism". Litvinenko's allegations about the misdeeds of the FSB and his public deathbed accusations that Russian president Vladimir Putin were behind his unusual malady resulted in worldwide media coverage.

10) "Greater Danger Lies in Spent Fuel Than in Reactors," Keith Bradsher & Hiroko Tabuchi, NY Times, March 17, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html

"Radiation Spread Seen; Frantic Repairs Go On," David Sanger & William J. Broad, NY Times, March 17, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18intel.html

"U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant," James Glanz & William J. Broad, NY Times, April 6, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html

"Focus on preventing explosions at Japan nuke plant," Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press, April 6, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110406/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_654

11) http://wisequotes.org/nuclear-power-is-one-hell-of-a-way-to-boil-water

12) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_product

13) "US Accused of Using Poison Gases in Fallujah," Democracy Now, Monday, November 29th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/29/u_s_accused_of_using_poison

"Evidence of Extensive War Crimes, Unprecedented in the annals of legal history," Niloufer Bhagwat, Global Research, December 11, 2004
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BHA412A.html

"Depleted Uranium Weapons: Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke," by Dave Lindorff, Global Research, October 20, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15744

"The consequences of a US war crime: Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima," Tom Eley, World Socialist, July 23, 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/fall-j23.shtml

"Research Links Rise in Fallujah Birth Defects and Cancers to US Assault," Martin Chulov, The Guardian/UK, December 31, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/31

14) "Chernobyl's Continuing Thyroid Impact,"By Mary Shomon, December 15, 2003
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/nuclearexposure/a/chernob.htm

15) "Authorities lied on impact of Chernobyl in Turkey,"Greenpeace Report
http://www.blackraiser.com/cherno.htm

16) WISE Report on the Worldwide Uranium Market http://www.wise-uranium.org/umkt.html

"Why is Uranium Important to Canada?" Canadian Nuclear Association,
http://www.cna.ca/english/pdf/nuclearfacts/04-NuclearFacts-uranium.pdf

17) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation

18) http://www.crystalinks.com/reptilianbrain.html

19) http://www.codondesastre.blogspot.com


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Nitrógeno líquido para Fukushima

Fukushima Plan: Achieving Cold Shutdown Could Take 6 Months
by Eli Kintisch  

Science publica en su último número un artículo de Eli Kintisch donde se da cuenta  de un plan a desarrollar en medio año para enfriar los reactores en la planta de Fukushima. La solución pasa por el uso de nitrógeno líquido. Así se reduciría el empleo de agua. Basta leer con atención la breve nota técnica para aquilatar que lo ocurrido en Japón es mucho más grave y dificil de controlar que cualquier otra catastrofe relacionada con el uso pacífico de la energía nuclear.

Officials with Tokyo Electric Power Co. have outlined their plans for ending the saga of the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daichi power plant.

In the first 3 to 6 months, according to the plan, crews will try to cool the reactors to a stable point, aiming for “cold shutdown” with temperatures within the reactors below 100°C. Then engineers will inject nitrogen into the pressure vessel surrounding each reactor.

Using this inert gas should make it possible to minimize the use of water in the reactor vessel and reduce the risk of hydrogen explosions, which have already rocked three of the reactors.

But crews will aim to use water to cool the outer containment vessel. The second step will focus on stopping the leakage of radionuclides into the air, essentially by fixing the outer walls of the damaged reactors or replacing them with freestanding, cubic containment barriers.

There is no timetable for the government to ease restrictions on residents who live within the 20-kilometer-radius evacuation zone.


The Japanese effort “seems to be on track, but [there’s] a long way to go,” says Lake Barrett, who helped lead the cleanup effort for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 3 decades ago at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.


He says a big challenge for the Japanese is to start recirculating water they’ve used to cool the reactors; they have already created 10 million gallons of radioactive water in a once-through process called “feed and bleed."

"They need to get those cores on recirculation and off of feed and bleed. It is drowning them with radioactive water,” Barrett says.

By the end of the shutdown effort at Three Mile Island, Lake says, U.S. engineers were left with far less radioactive water, about 600,000 gallons.

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