6/11 SF Japan Consulate Speak-out Sunday April 11, 2016 3:00 PM San Francisco Japanese Consulate 275 Battery St./California St. San Francisco
The people of Fukushima and Japan continued to be threatened by the ongoing contamination of Fukushima and the Abe government restarting of nuclear plants. The government continues to pressure Fukushima families and their children to return to Fukushima or lose their subsidies. These government demands is harming the health and mental conditions of the Fukushima refugees who do not want to return. The government which now controls Tokyo Electric Power Company continues to use thousands of contract workers to supposedly decontaminate the plant and the thousands of acres surrounding the plant. These workers do not have proper health and safety protection and the government uses the Yakuza to recruit day laborers and workers from other countries. They are also demanding that other prefectures or states “recycle” 16 million cubic meters of contaminated radioactive soil in construction projects throughout the country despite the danger of expanding the contamination of the entire population…
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is preparing to issue permits to allow the operation of three uranium mines in greater Grand Canyon watershed. Of course, this would benefit Energy Fuels Resources, Inc., the mining company that's requesting the permits. But what do the rest of us get? Radioactive pollution that threatens human health, wildlife, and ground and surface water.
Allowing private companies to profit at the expense of public health and the environment is just wrong -- and we can't let it happen.
Uranium mining creates fine dust containing radioactive particles, lead and arsenic. Because the dust is so fine, it travels far from mines into our waterways, recreation sites and communities. It can increase the risk of lung cancer, birth defects and kidney disease. Uranium mining exacts other costs as well: The federal government has spent billions trying to clean up old uranium mines, and the costs continue to mount.
The Center for Biological Diversity has been working to end all uranium mining in the greater Grand Canyon region. Stopping these three mines is a very important part of that greater goal, and we need your help to make it happen.
Please take action below -- tell the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality that you oppose the operation of the Canyon, AZ1 and EZ uranium mines.
And if you can, join us on Tuesday, Aug. 30 in Flagstaff at Sinagua Middle School to voice your opposition to the issuance of new permits that will allow toxic uranium mining to continue on the rim of Grand Canyon. If you plan to attend, RSVP to Katie Davis.
A MESSAGE FROM OUR FRIENDS IN LA PLONGE, SASKATCHEWAN
In the spring of 2011, the Dene, Cree, Metis and settler people of northern Saskatchewan discovered that 3 of their communities were being targeted by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization to become “the host” to store all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste with an open-ended possibility of storing spent nuclear fuel from the USA as well.
Northern Saskatchewan and the traditional lands of the Dene, Metis and settler communities have long been poisoned by the uranium industry. But in the last few years, this despoliation has intensified, with proposed long term storage of depleted uranium. We formed the Committee For Future Generations to resist these plans.
You can support us and stand with us in a number of ways. We are offering for sale prints of Marius Paul’s breathlines painting “Mother and Child” pictured above. You can listen to a recent interview Candyce Paul gave. And you can read more of this message (which includes how to purchase prints).
A study examining measurements taken from forests 60 to 120 kilometers away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant revealed that cesium levels doubled in 2013...
...Scientists are hesitant to speak about the severity of the Fukushima catastrophe. Revealing unauthorized information about the facility is a criminal offense with a sentence of up to ten years in prison.(2)...
...In May, a Buddhist monk named Koyu Abe launched a project called Make a Wish Upon Flowers, which set out to plant sunflower seeds, field mustard, amaranthus and cockscomb throughout Fukushima to adsorb the radiation.(4)...
"Ever wondered what radiation looks like? If you have, I bet you didn’t think it would look as cool as this. This is a small piece of uranium mineral sitting in a cloud chamber, which means you can see the process of decay and radiation emission..."
A sealed glass container contains liquid alcohol at the top. Emanating alcohol vapors fill the whole volume of the container until they reach the bottom of the chamber maintained to a very cold temperature (-40°C). Most of the vapour condenses on the glass surface creating a mist, but a small fraction of it stays in vapour form above the cold condenser. This creates a layer of unstable sursaturated vapour which can condense at any moment. When a charged particle crosses this vapor, it can knock electrons off the molecules forming ions. It causes the unstable alcohol vapor to condense around ions left behind by the travelling ionizing particle : the path of the particle in the matter is then revealed by a track composed of thousands droplets of alcohol...
Unless you’re a science geek who routinely trawls YouTube for entertainment, you probably haven’t seen this fascinating clip that observes a small pellet of uranium as it just sits sealed in a lighted cloud chamber infused with vaporized alcohol.
To the strains of a Strauss waltz, puffy little trails begin to erupt from the uranium in staccato straight lines, shooting through the alcohol cloud and radiating in all directions like soft white fireworks. It’s a mesmerizing sight to behold.
It is also a sobering one, because what we are enabled to observe through that cloud of alcohol is the behavior of one of the most aggressive toxins on earth: radioactive decay.
This is the stuff that gives nuclear weapons their destructive energy; the instability that, in the course of things, has been somewhat inefficiently harnessed to generate simple electricity.
It takes a whole lot of uranium, a relatively low energy source of radiation, to produce a little bit of weapons-grade plutonium. Between the mine and the battlefield, turning uranium into reactor fuel is a convenient first step on the way to enabling nuclear weapons, which is a major reason so many countries want “nuclear power”.
The dependent relationship between nuclear weapons and nuclear power stations provides one of the biggest bones of contention in the world today.
Setting that aside for others to consider, and returning to the simple lesson that is so vividly illustrated by the video, one cannot ignore the fact that even the tiniest particle of uranium is alive with radioactive potential.
Imagine the environmental hazards associated with every stage of uranium processing, from extraction to waste disposal, when every tiny particle is literally bristling with projectile energy.
While uranium in minute amounts is a common enough component of rock and soils available almost everywhere, there are relatively few places on earth where concentrations of uranium rich mineral deposits are great enough to represent opportunities for cost-efficient mining.
The danger to mine workers is not so much from the uranium ore, which has low concentrations of pure uranium relative to the mass in which it is sequestered. The real danger lies in the fine particulates and radon gas that are released from the rock in the course of mechanical extraction.
This hazard threatens the surrounding environment and population as well, since slurry and waste from the mining operation find their way into groundwater and may be redistributed through the air as well.
Even decades after uranium mines have been exhausted for all practical purposes, surrounding populations must endure the continuing threat posed by tailings, a waste byproduct of uranium mining. For example, hundreds of residents of the Navajo communities of North Church Rock and Quivera, New Mexico, where two nearby uranium mines ceased to be profitable and were abandoned at the close of the Cold War have suffered enormous health risks due to the mountainous piles of waste that the uranium mines simply left behind.
Ever since these New Mexico mines closed, corporate owners of the two lethal stacks have been feuding with the federal government over who is responsible for the cleanup.
At least one of the waste piles is scheduled to move down the road to a tailings dump, which will distance it somewhat from the local population, if not from the greater environment.
That move in itself raises another point of contamination in the uranium fuel chain: transportation. To transfer the waste to a less objectionable location, it is estimated that 38 open dump trucks will be required. Loading the trucks will stir up so much harmful particulate matter that the government will relocate residents for up to five years following the move in order to allow the dust to settle again, and to monitor the grounds for remaining contamination.
Just imagine each of those tiny particles being energized like that uranium pellet in the cloud chamber, and small enough to be inhaled… Now imagine what happens on a cellular level when all that bristling energy lodges deep in the human lung and continues to radiate indefinitely.
As those loaded dump trucks wheel through the environment to their ultimate destination, it isn’t difficult to imagine that they will be seeding the air with radioactive dust and particulates, endangering all who live and work along the way.
These same hazardous scenarios play out on a daily basis around active uranium mines, and at the processing plants where uranium ore is refined into nuclear fuel. I would guess that the concentration of harmful radiation in millings and tailings might be even greater as the uranium undergoes further refinement in the fuel production process.
Even if none of the collateral contaminants distributed by mining are considered, when nuclear energy production is viewed strictly from the perspective of fuel sourcing, it is clearly far, far from a “clean” energy source.
In fault-ridden San Louis Obispo County, stands California's last two operating nuclear reactors in the aging Diablo Canyon Power Plant (circa 1973). It is located proximally to the Los Osos, Hosgri, San Andreas, and Shoreline Faults, along shores near Avila Beach...[more]
FUKUSHIMA 3rd YEAR ANNIVERSARY EVENTS WORLDWIDE - facebook We create this page so that everyone may add the events that they organizing in their own country or city for this coming Fukushima 3rd Anniversary. The events can be any days before or after March 11th or on March 11th.
We Citizens of the world, of many nationalities, support the earnest sincere action of the young Japanese lawmaker Taro Yamamoto, breaking customary protocol to remit a letter to the Emperor of Japan, wishing to draw the Emperor's attention on the plight of his people, Fukushima's people and children left to live in an environment heavily contaminated by the ongoing 2 years and 8 months catastrophe of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant.
How the World Health Organization came under the domination of the pro-nuclear International Atomic Energy Agency – the first of two exclusive Nuclear Hotseat reports on the unholy alliance that underlies our global misunderstandings of the dangers of nuclear radiation.
INTERVIEW: Special full-length interview with Alison Katz of Independent WHO on the history, politics and criminal negligence of the World Health Organization. She is a sociologist and psychologist who worked for WHO for 18 years and now is a spokesperson for the organization that wants WHO to do its job regarding nuclear dangers and international public health. Even if you think you understand this issue, you will be shocked by the specific instances where WHO has abdicated its power. You’ll also be inspired by an international tactic Katz proposes that has the potential to turn this issue around.
The first trial sale of octopus caught off Fukushima began in June 2012, 15 months after the Dai-ichi nuclear plant explosion. (Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images)
In Japan, a nation that eats prodigious amounts of seafood, one question sits high on the list of public concerns: Is seafood caught after the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe safe for human consumption?
In the wake of the disaster, coastal fisheries in Fukushima and all neighboring precincts were quickly closed. Within two weeks, the Japanese government began monitoring radioactivity in fish, shellfish, and edible seaweeds. More than a year later, not because of new scientific findings or any changes in offshore conditions, but in an attempt to further reassure consumers, the government lowered the acceptable limit for radiation in fish from 500 becquerels per kilogram—already among the strictest standards in the world—to 100 Bq.
Last fall, Ken Buesseler, a marine geochemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, combed through a year’s worth of data released by the Japanese fisheries agency. His analysis, published Oct. 26, 2012, in the journal Science, showed that the “vast majority” of fish being caught off Fukushima and surrounding areas had radiation levels below the tightened safe-consumption limit. Among bottom-dwelling species, however, 40 percent came in over that limit. Most important, levels of radiation in the ocean and in seafood did not appear to be declining in the 12 months following the accident.
To Buesseler and others, this persistence is strong evidence of a continuing source of radiation leaking into the environment. Fish naturally lose cesium quite quickly, about 3 percent per day, if they are not re-exposed to some additional cesium source. At the same time, Buesseler acknowledged, the remaining concentrations of radionuclides in fish are generally quite low—lower than limits in force in the United States, and lower than the amount of radiation naturally present in seawater.
Still, public anxiety in Japan remains high. With the exception of a few unaffected species such as whelk and octopus, fisheries remain closed off Fukushima prefecture. And disturbing outliers—individual fish with exceedingly high levels of radiation—continue to turn up. At the Fukushima and the Ocean conference in Tokyo in November 2012, experts drawn from various fields examined the issues surrounding seafood safety. Their spirited conversation ranged well beyond the science...
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