Monday, February 10, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
2.14 SOMERSET UK: WITCH WATCH Full Moon Vigil :: #stophinkley
Witch Watch is a 24hour vigil - sometimes longer - held on the night of the Full Moon when she is still waxing. WW evolved to defend Mother Earth as part of the Stop Hinkley C campaign and the proposed new build of nuclear power stations in Britain.
The camp glimmers in the hedgerow of the last lay-by, on the main road into the power station, near Bridgwater, Somerset. All are welcome to join us but the camp is women only after daylight hours.
WW provides a meeting place to make connection, share information and to bring your magic. A Sacred Fire is lit and tended through the night.
Witch Watch bears on-site witness and observation of the destruction and construction that is taking place, and holds a positive intention for a different future and the need for balance in the world.
The next date is Monday 16th December. Best to ring 07874 819 608 before you come to check for last minute change of plans.
For more info ring 07874 819608 or email.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
DNA Evidence Can Now Prove Link Between Cancers And Fukushima Radiation | AGreenRoad Project - Teaching A Science Of Sustainable Health/Success
What if there was a way to establish a direct and provable in court link between cancer and Fukushima radiation?
> DNA Evidence Can Now Prove Link Between Cancers And Fukushima Radiation | AGreenRoad Project - Teaching A Science Of Sustainable Health/Success
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Senator Weighs Offering Legislation Ending Liability Limits for Nuclear Disasters - NationalJournal.com
Senator Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) is considering introducing legislation this year that would overturn the federal law insulating the nuclear power industry from liability in the event of a catastrophe.
The effect could be to put energy companies -- rather than the federal government -- on the hook for any skyrocketing costs that might follow any future U.S. atomic-energy disaster.
Under the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, which Congress first passed in 1957 and has since renewed several times, the liability of nuclear power plant operators in the event of a disaster is limited. The industry pays into an insurance account -- estimated to have a current value of $12 billion -- that is intended to underwrite such expenditures as hotel stays, lost wages and replacement of property for people affected by a nuclear power plant incident.
Absent an act of Congress placing additional liability on the companies, any costs that exceed the value of the insurance fund would have to be covered by the federal government using taxpayer dollars...
more > Senator Weighs Offering Legislation Ending Liability Limits for Nuclear Disasters - NationalJournal.com
50 Reasons We Should Fear the Worst from Fukushima | EcoWatch
[This is the first in a two part series]
Fukushima’s missing melted cores and radioactive gushers continue to fester in secret.
Japan’s harsh dictatorial censorship has been matched by a global corporate media blackout aimed—successfully—at keeping Fukushima out of the public eye.
But that doesn’t keep the actual radiation out of our ecosystem, our markets … or our bodies.
But the basic reality is simple: for seven decades, government Bomb factories and privately-owned reactors have spewed massive quantities of unmonitored radiation into the biosphere.
The impacts of these emissions on human and ecological health are unknown primarily because the nuclear industry has resolutely refused to study them.
Indeed, the official presumption has always been that showing proof of damage from nuclear Bomb tests and commercial reactors falls to the victims, not the perpetrators.
And that in any case, the industry will be held virtually harmless.
This “see no evil, pay no damages” mindset dates from the Bombing of Hiroshima to Fukushima to the disaster coming next … which could be happening as you read this.
Here are 50 preliminary reasons why this radioactive legacy demands we prepare for the worst for our oceans, our planet, our economy … ourselves.
1. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), the U.S. militaryinitially denied that there was any radioactive fallout, or that it could do any damage. Despite an absence of meaningful data, the victims (including a group of U.S. prisoners of war) and their supporters were officially “discredited” and scorned.
2. Likewise, when Nobel-winners Linus Pauling and Andre Sakharov correctly warned of a massive global death toll from atmospheric Bomb testing, they were dismissed with official contempt … until they won in the court of public opinion.
3. During and after the Bomb Tests (1946-63), downwinders in the South Pacific and American west, along with thousands of U.S. “atomic vets,” were told their radiation-induced health problems were imaginary… until they proved utterly irrefutable.
4. When British Dr. Alice Stewart proved (1956) that even tiny x-ray doses to pregnant mothers could double childhood leukemia rates, she was assaulted with 30 years of heavily funded abuse from the nuclear and medical establishments.
5. But Stewart’s findings proved tragically accurate, and helped set in stone the medical health physics consensus that there is no “safe dose” of radiation … and thatpregnant women should not be x-rayed, or exposed to equivalent radiation.
6. More than 400 commercial power reactors have been injected into our ecosphere with no meaningful data to measure their potential health and environmental impacts, and no systematic global data base has been established or maintained.
7. “Acceptable dose” standards for commercial reactors were conjured from faulty A-Bomb studies begun five years after Hiroshima, and at Fukushima and elsewhere have been continually made more lax to save the industry money.
8. Bomb/reactor fallout delivers alpha and beta particle emitters that enter the body and do long-term damage, but which industry backers often wrongly equate with less lethal external gamma/x-ray doses from flying in airplanes or living in Denver.
9. By refusing to compile long-term emission assessments, the industry systematically hides health impacts at Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc., forcing victims to rely on isolated independent studies which it automatically deems “discredited.”
10. Human health damage has been amply suffered in radium watch dial painting, Bomb production, uranium mining/milling/enrichment, waste management and other radioactive work, despite decades of relentless industry denial.
11. When Dr. Ernest Sternglass, who had worked with Albert Einstein, warned that reactor emissions were harming people, thousands of copies of his Low-Level Radiation (1971) mysteriously disappeared from their primary warehouse.
12. When the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Chief Medical Officer, Dr. John Gofman, urged that reactor dose levels be lowered by 90 percent, he was forced out of the AEC and publicly attacked, despite his status a founder of the industry.
13. A member of the Manhattan Project, and a medical doctor responsible for pioneer research into LDL cholesterol, Gofman later called the reactor industry an instrument of “premeditated mass murder.”
14. Stack monitors and other monitoring devices failed at Three Mile Island (1979) making it impossible to know how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it impacted and how.
15. But some 2,400 TMI downwind victims and their families were denied a class action jury trial by a federal judge who said “not enough radiation” was released to harm them, though she could not say how much that was or where it went.
16. During TMI’s meltdown, industry advertising equated the fallout with a single chest x-ray to everyone downwind, ignoring the fact that such doses could double leukemia rates among children born to involuntarily irradiated mothers.
17. Widespread death and damage downwind from TMI have been confirmed by Dr. Stephen Wing, Jane Lee and Mary Osbourne, Sister Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Sternglass, Jay Gould, Joe Mangano and others, along with hundreds of anecdotal reports.
18. Radioactive harm to farm and wild animals downwind from TMI has been confirmed by the Baltimore News-American and Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
19. TMI’s owner quietly paid out at least $15 million in damages in exchange for gag orders from the affected families, including at least one case involving a child born with Down’s Syndrome.
20. Chernobyl’s explosion became public knowledge only when massive emissions came down on a Swedish reactor hundreds of miles away, meaning that—as at TMI and Fukushima—no one knows precisely how much escaped or where it went.
21. Fukushima’s on-going fallout is already far in excess of that from Chernobyl, which was far in excess of that from Three Mile Island.
22. Soon after Chernobyl blew up (1986), Dr. Gofman predicted its fallout would kill at least 400,000 people worldwide.
23. Three Russian scientists who compiled more than 5,000 studies concluded in 2005 that Chernobyl had already killed nearly a million people worldwide.
24. Children born in downwind Ukraine and Belarus still suffer a massive toll of mutation and illness, as confirmed by a wide range of governmental, scientific and humanitarian organizations.
25. Key low-ball Chernobyl death estimates come from the World Health Organization, whose numbers are overseen by International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations organization chartered to promote the nuclear industry.
26. After 28 years, the reactor industry has still not succeeded in installing a final sarcophagus over the exploded Chernobyl Unit 4, though billions of dollars have been invested.
27. When Fukushima Units 1-4 began to explode, President Obama assured us all the fallout would not come here, and would harm no one, despite having no evidence for either assertion.
28. Since President Obama did that, the U.S. has established no integrated system to monitor Fukushima’s fallout, nor an epidemiological data base to track its health impacts … but it did stop checking radiation levels in Pacific seafood.
29. Early reports of thyroid abnormalities among children downwind from Fukushima, and in North America are denied by industry backers who again say “not enough radiation” was emitted though they don’t know how much that might be.
30. Devastating health impacts reported by sailors stationed aboard the USS Ronald Reagan near Fukushima are being denied by the industry and Navy, who say radiation doses were too small to do harm, but have no idea what they were.
31. While in a snowstorm offshore as Fukushima melted,sailors reported a warm cloud passing over the Reaganthat brought a “metallic taste” like that described by TMI downwinders and the airmen who dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima.
32. Though it denies the sailors on the Reagan were exposed to enough Fukushima radiation to harm them, Japan (like South Korea and Guam) denied the ship port access because it was too radioactive (it’s now docked in San Diego).
33. The Reagan sailors are barred from suing the Navy, but have filed a class action against Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), which has joined the owners at TMI, the Bomb factories, uranium mines, etc., in denying all responsibility.
34. A U.S. military “lessons learned” report from Fukushima’s Operation Tomodachi clean-up campaign notes that “decontamination of aircraft and personnel without alarming the general population created new challenges.”
35. The report questioned the clean-up because “a true decontamination operations standard for ‘clearance’ was not set,” thereby risking “the potential spread of radiological contamination to military personnel and the local populace.”
36. Nonetheless, it reported that during the clean-up, “the use of duct tape and baby wipes was effective in the removal of radioactive particles.”
37. In league with organized crime, Tepco is pursuing its own clean-up activities by recruiting impoverished homeless and elderly citizens for “hot” on-site labor, with the quality of their work and the nature of their exposures now a state secret.
38. At least 300 tons of radioactive water continue to pour into the ocean at Fukushima every day, according to official estimates made prior to such data having been made a state secret.
39. To the extent they can be known, the quantities and make-up of radiation pouring out of Fukushima are also now a state secret, with independent measurement or public speculation punishable by up to ten years in prison.
40. Likewise, “There is no systematic testing in the U.S.of air, food and water for radiation,” according to University of California (Berkeley) nuclear engineering Professor Eric Norman.
41. Many radioactive isotopes tend to concentrate as they pour into the air and water, so deadly clumps of Fukushima’s radiation may migrate throughout the oceans for centuries to come before diffusing, which even then may not render it harmless.
42. Radiation’s real world impact becomes even harder to measure in an increasingly polluted biosphere, whereinteraction with existing toxins creates a synergy likely to exponentially accelerate the damage being done to all living things.
43. Reported devastation among starfish, sardines, salmon, sea lions, orcas and other ocean animals cannot be definitively denied without a credible data base of previous experimentation and monitoring, which does not exist and is not being established.
44. The fact that “tiny” doses of x-ray can harm human embryos portends that any unnatural introduction of lethal radioactive isotopes into the biosphere, however “diffuse,” can affect our intertwined global ecology in ways we don’t now understand.
45. The impact of allegedly “minuscule” doses spreading from Fukushima will, over time, affect the minuscule eggs of creatures ranging from sardines to starfish to sea lions, with their lethal impact enhanced by the other pollutants already in the sea.
46. Dose comparisons to bananas and other natural sources are absurd and misleading as the myriad isotopes from reactor fallout will impose very different biological impacts for centuries to come in a wide range of ecological settings.
47. No current dismissal of general human and ecological impacts—”apocalyptic” or otherwise—can account over time for the very long half-lives of radioactive isotopes Fukushima is now pouring into the biosphere.
48. As Fukushima’s impacts spread through the centuries, the one certainty is that no matter what evidence materializes, the nuclear industry will never admit to doing any damage, and will never be forced to pay for it (see upcoming sequel).
49. Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, warned that it is a form of suicide to raise radiation levels within Earth’s vital envelope, and that if he could, he would “sink” all the reactors he helped develop.
50. “Now when we go back to using nuclear power,” he said in 1982, “I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it.”
As Fukushima deteriorates behind an iron curtain of secrecy and deceit, we desperately need to know what it’s doing to us and our planet.
It’s tempting to say the truth lies somewhere between the industry’s lies and the rising fear of a tangible apocalypse.
In fact, the answers lie beyond.
Defined by seven decades of deceit, denial and a see-no-evil dearth of meaningful scientific study, the glib corporate assurances that this latest reactor disaster won’t hurt us fade to absurdity.
Fukushima pours massive, unmeasured quantities of lethal radiation into our fragile ecosphere every day, and will do so for decades to come.
Five power reactors have now exploded on this planet and there are more than 400 others still operating.
What threatens us most is the inevitable next disaster … along with the one after that … and then the one after that …
Pre-wrapped in denial, protected by corporate privilege, they are the ultimate engines of global terror.
——–
Harvey Wasserman’s next piece is on how Fukushima threatens our human freedom and material survival. He edits www.nukefree.org, and wrote Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth.
50 Reasons We Should Fear the Worst from Fukushima | EcoWatch
C-SPAN | Fukushima Task Force Recommendations
watch: C-SPAN | Fukushima Task Force Recommendations: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioners testified on efforts to implement the Fukushima Near-Term Task Force recommendations. The task force, formed in reaction to the nuclear power plant failure after Japan’s 2011 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami, released a series of recommendations on nuclear energy safeguards. They include requiring licensees to upgrade plants to protect against earthquakes or other natural disasters. Facilities must also have detailed emergency plans for long-term black outs at nuclear power plants.
Fukushima: Landmark Lawsuit filed against General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi
A landmark lawsuit has been filed against three companies that manufactured the reactors at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to hold General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi accountable for the catastrophic meltdowns following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The situation at Fukushima continues deteriorating and posing the risk of catastrophic leaks in the event of an earthquake. Bio-accumulation of radioactive isotopes poses an increasing risk for higher organisms, including humans.
The lawyers for the 1.415 plaintiffs stated that they have filed a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, describing the case as a landmark challenge to nuclear power plant manufacturers immunity from liability in nuclear accidents. Manufacturers and operators of nuclear power plants have been granted immunities which are unprecedented in any other industry, because no insurance company, worldwide, would agree to insure the power plants when the industry first developed.
Under Japanese law, only the Fkushima Daiichi operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) can bee held accountable for the accident. The lawyers report that the 1415 plaintiffs include 38 residents of Fukushima and 357 persons from outside Japan.
The plaintiffs allege that General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi failed to implement safety improvements to the four decades old boiling water reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, and are seeking a compensation of 100 yen (1 USD) each. The plaintiffs stress that their first priority is not the economic compensation, but to raise awareness about the problem with the power plant manufacturers immunity and the dangers of nuclear energy.
Associated Press is quoting one of the plaintiff’s lawyers, Akihiro Shima, as saying that “the manufacturers have not been held accountable and that their names are not even mentioned”. The lawsuit is, according to Akihiro Shima, intended to bring attention to the system that protects the nuclear industry around the world.
Units 1, 3 and 4 at Fukushima Daiichi were built by General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi while unit 2 was built by General Electric and Hitachi. All of the units were completed and began operations during the 1970s. Toshiba and Hitachi have declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying that they have not yet received the legal documents.
The crippled power plant continues to leak radioactive contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean and to contaminate the environment. Meanwhile, the danger of an imminent, catastrophic event, far from having been mitigated, increases by the day as TEPCO continues storing highly contaminated water in storage tanks which are likely to leak massive amounts of contaminated water in the case of a midi-sized or severe earthquake. Fukushima is located in one of the world’s most active geological areas.
A 2013 study has shown that the levels of the radioactive isotope cesium in forests in a diameter of 60 – 120 km around the power plant has almost doubled within one year, indicating a strong bio-accumulation of the pollution. The leaking water is putting considerable stress on maritime ecosystems and also here, the full bearing of the disaster may not transpire until bio-accumulation of the radioactive isotopes would eventually stress the organisms at the top of the food chain, including marine mammals and humans.
In January 2014, Japan’s Fisheries Research Agency announced that one of the samples of black sea bream specimens, caught about 37 kilometers South of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has tested 12,400 bequerels per kilogram, making it 124 times more lethal than the threshold that is considered safe for human consumption.
Adding to the protection of the nuclear industry and to popular concerns about nuclear safety is the fact that the Japanese government has passed legislation that provides for severe punishment for those who leak “unauthorized” information about the situation in Fukushima and about its effects.
Fukushima: Landmark Lawsuit filed against General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi | nsnbc international
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Uranium payments privacy, Saskatchewan
Uranium payments privacy Global News January 28, 2014 - YouTube
Uranium payments privacy Global News January 28, 2014
SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA
http://youtu.be/ooMGd35zOTM
via Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan
http://www.youtube.com/user/cleangreensask
Published on Feb 1, 2014
From Global News: "In 2012, the small northern village of Pinehouse, Saskatchewan signed a deal with two uranium companies worth $200-million. A local magazine doing an investigative report on the agreement asked to see more public documents about the village's role in that deal....but the mayor refused." Link to the Global News story aired on January 28, 2014: http://globalnews.ca/video/1113939/uranium-payments-privacy
Legal action seeks transparency from Northern Village of Pinehouse regarding uranium contracts - Posted by Andrew Loewen on Monday, January 27th, 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 27, 2014
"Plaintiffs D'Arcy Hande, Valerie Zink, and Andrew Loewen filed a statement of claim in the Court of Queen's Bench today seeking compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act on the part of Mayor Mike Natomagan of the Northern Village of Pinehouse. Mayor Natomagan has refused to release documentation requested under the Act despite the urgings of the Information and Privacy Commissioner in a public report released last November."
Read full press release:http://briarpatchmagazine.com/announcements/view/legal-action-pinehouse
Courting collaboration: How the uranium industry bought the Village of Pinehouse, and what residents are doing to take it back BY D'ARCY HANDE • NOV 1, 2013
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/courting-collaboration
Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner Gary Dickson released a Review Report on November 18, 2013 recommending that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General "consider prosecution pursuant to section 56(3) of The Local Authority Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act in respect to the refusal of the Northern Village of Pinehouse to comply with a lawful requirement of the Commissioner."
Read the report:http://www.oipc.sk.ca/Reports/Review%20Report%20LA-2013-004.pdf
"Privacy Commissioner says Pinehouse remiss," Star Phoenix, November 25, 2013
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/Privacy+commissioner+says+Pinehouse+remiss/9211561/story.html
"Uranium's chilling effects," The Media Coop, November 21, 2013
http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/uraniums-chilling-effects/19083
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