Archive for the ‘Precautions against cellular/DNA damage’ Category

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Statement to the NRC on the FitzPatrick plant in NY State

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

Alliance for a Green Economy (AGREE) has petitioned the NRC to suspend the license of FitzPatrick until there is a thorough review of their woefully inadequate venting system and until there is one or more public hearings. Today, staffer of AGREE (Jessica Azulay) and Paul Gunter (Beyond Nuclear, a national organization) spoke in person before the NRC Petition Review Board near Washington, D.C. while three others spoke by phone. Chapter member Linda DeStefano's statement to the NRC is below. Nice work, Linda – Jessica Helm, Sierra Club

Statement made by Linda DeStefano to the NRC Petition Review Board today, 4.18.12

I'm the representative from the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club to the Alliance for a Green Economy. The Atlantic Chapter covers NYS and has 37,500 members. The Chapter is part of the national Sierra Club. The national Sierra Club has a long history of speaking out about the problems with nuclear energy. These problems include the intractable problem of nuclear waste, the record of serious accidents both in the U.S. and other countries, the possibility of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility, the prohibitive cost of nuclear energy that is subsidized with our taxes while renewable forms of energy receive relatively little governmental assistance.

The nuclear power plant in question before us today, FitzPatrick, has all these problems plus additional ones. It is a G.E. Mark 1 boiling water reactor, the same as those which failed at Fukushima - with disastrous consequences. There are several other such facilities in the U.S. but FitzPatrick has the additional drawback of being the only one which has not followed the long-standing advice of the NRC to install a hardened vent. The existing venting system is woefully inadequate. In an accident, it's so-called solution is to release radioactivity at ground level into the environment. FitzPatrick should NOT be put into the same category as the other Mark 1 reactors in terms of license renewal until 2016 as it is the only one without the hardene vent.

More than 900,000 people live within 50 miles of FitzPatrick.
Syracuse is only 36 miles away from FitzPatrick. As someone who lives just outside Syracuse, I feel personally threatened. And I worry for all living things that would be faced with dangerous doses of radioactivity. Our area has farmland and beautiful natural areas. We have Lake Ontario - one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the U.S. I don't understand how Entergy's interest in saving a relatively small amount of money by refusing to install a hardened vent can be weighed against the economic, health and environmental disaster that a serious accident or terrorist attack would entail. The Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club asks that the NRC regard our safety as more important than Entergy's bottom line.

Linda A. DeStefano
member of the Energy Committee
Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club
New York State

Posted in Fukushima, History of nuclear power, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage | | No Comments »

False Reassurances

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

The Chemical and Nuclear age have nothing to do with our 40% lifetime chance
of getting cancer. (Paraphrased)

This is how David Brenner, PhD, of the The Center for Radiological Research at Columbia, answered my question on at a talk on "The Many Ways Radiation Affects our Lives". The talk was held at Hofstra College on Dec. 1st, 2011.

I formulated my question after Dr. Brenner quizzed the audience on if we knew what our lifetime chances of getting cancer was. After a few guesses that were on the low side, he informed us we all had a 40% chance of getting cancer during our lifetime. I asked "In the 1950s, chemicals in our environment, food, and personal products became widespread, at the same time US nuclear testing released the equivalent in radiation of 18,000- 29,000 Hiroshimas. Within 10 years cancer rates began escalating towards the epidemic rates they are at today.
Do you disagree?"

The Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization, started by scientists and physicians. It is dedicated to understanding the relationships between low-level, nuclear radiation and public health. From their website:

"During the first half century of the Nuclear Age a growing body of medical and scientific evidence has emerged to demonstrate a probable causal link between low-level internal radiation from the ingestion of man-made fission products and world-wide increases in immune deficiency diseases, especially cancer and those affecting the newborn. RPHP has assembled much of the epidemiological evidence documenting these links."

"Five books published by RPHP research associates summarize hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals dealing with these impacts of ingested, low-level fission products--products which did not exist in nature prior to the Nuclear Age. In addition to the effects upon the immune response of all age groups, the very young have been especially affected. RPHP has repeatedly pointed out the radiation-induced damage apparent in official vital statistics, tracing changes in infant mortality rates and underweight live births in the postwar period, especially during the above ground nuclear test years of the 1950s and the 1960s."

"RPHP has also been able to track the radiation-induced damage done to the hormonal and immune systems of the 80 million baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965 in each of the post war decades, revealing the various epidemiological anomalies: In the 1950s, children born after the enormous initial exposure to nuclear fission products began to experience epidemic increases in childhood cancer in the ages 5 to 9."

Even the National Cancer Institute (NCI) states that although cancer incidence has declined somewhat since the year 2000 (smoking declined during the last decade as well) childhood cancer has been on the rise for the last decade. I would have liked to ask Dr. Brenner what could possibly have caused that if not contact with toxic substances the environment either before or after birth.

I assume he was ignorant of the fact that even the National Cancer Institute has declared that diet and lifestyle changes can reduce one's risk by 75%. He might have pointed this out rather than scare us all with the 40% statistic.

He completely ignored the subject of internal exposure through contaminated water or food. When questioned, he did admit they have no data on this, so he did not address it.

Posted in Good and bad science, History of nuclear power, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage | | No Comments »

Women are 40% More Likely to get Cancer from Radiation than Men

Friday, October 21st, 2011

It is well known that children are very sensitive to radiation, with results ranging from birth defects, leukemia and lower IQ. What has been covered up is the high risk women face. The difference between external radiation, upon which the IAEA model is based, and radioactive particles that are ingested, through breathing or eating, is not even looked at.

Here some highlights from the NIRS briefing paper:

"The fact that this information has not been widely reported has deprived women of our right to know about this threat and protect ourselves from this harm. In addition to the 'right to know,' women have the right to protection. The U.S. Constitution guarantees “equal protection under the law.” International “allowable” radiation levels do not reflect disproportionate harm to women – or the extent to which they say they do, they are not protective."

"In the U.S. it may be necessary to depart from the international radiation regime in order to deliver constitutional rights to the more than 150 million females in the United States."

"Further, this situation violates the Right to Free Prior and Informed Consent as recognized throughout the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international human rights instruments, norms and standards;5 particularly Article 19:States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.
To our knowledge, no women, indigenous or otherwise, have given 'informed consent' to a striking lack of protection from ionizing radiation."

"The world’s radiation standards were originally developed to allow exposure rather than to prevent it. This makes sense given the historical context: the need for such regulation arose in the early 20th Century when exposure to human-concentrated or human-generated radioactivity was rare. The Manhattan Project, the all-out national effort to develop the first atomic bombs, was one of the original “drivers” pushing the development of “permissible” radiation exposure levels. It is also the origin of assuming the individual receiving a radiation dose is a male--a Manhattan Project worker. With the advent of nuclear energy and the facilities that produce nuclear fuel and handle waste, these standards have become evermore generalized to a larger and larger public."

"The current limits for most industrial radiation in the U.S. allow fatal cancer among members of the general public at a rate that is between 300--3000 times higher than the legal rate of harm from most other industrial hazards."

"A hazardous industry has traditionally been defined as one that causes cancer in one individual in a million. The Environmental Protection Agency’s goals for clean-up of contamination on industrial Super Fund sites is a risk of one in a million exposed getting cancer, with exceptions down to 1 cancer in 10,000 people exposed. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission now “allows” radiation levels to the general public that it projects would result in 1 fatal cancer in every 286 people (well, actually, adult men) exposed over a lifetime. However, this is “apples” compared to “oranges.” EPA regulations reference cancer incidence. NRC references deaths; if non-fatal cancers were included by NRC, the comparison would be even “worse.” We are less protected by NRC radiation standards than the regulation of other toxic hazards by EPA."

"The NRC limit of 100 millirems a year is comparable to the NAS 100 millirad study level. NRC’s risk assessment of 1 fatal cancer in every 286 exposed does not reflect the NAS findings that radiation at this level to women results in 1 fatal cancer in every 201 women. The NRC equation underestimates the risk to women by nearly 40%. Since NRC does not differentiate between men and women in its regulations, it does not regulate to specifically protect women. Thus women are not equally protected where such standards are in place."

Read the entire paper at: NIRS

Posted in Good and bad science, History of nuclear power, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage | | No Comments »

Solar Energy is Far From Over

Friday, September 16th, 2011

News reports have depicted Solyndra's bankruptcy as the end of solar power in the U.S. Coming to this conclusion without any kind of analysis is ridiculous. All growing technologies have their growing pains.

The Vote Solar Initiative puts it this way: "[it is] like saying there is no future for the internet because Netscape went out of business." The same could be said for the early days of electricity, computers and cars. All of these industries had their failed companies, yet the industry went on to great success.Reports of Solar's Death are greatly exaggerated.

Posted in Precautions against cellular/DNA damage, Safe renewable energy | | No Comments »

Earthquake on the east coast is a wake-up call

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Michio Kaku's take on the recent 5.8 earthquake. Interesting, brief article discussing how close we came to a possible disaster like Fukushima, and what other factors might present problems.

Posted in History of nuclear power, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage | | No Comments »

Hurricane approaches: 20 Reactors are in the path

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Reuters has reported that 20 nuclear reactors are in danger. See complete list

From south to north Beyond Nuclear recommends that the following reactors be shut down:

  • Turkey Point Units 3 and 4 near Miami, FL
  • St. Lucie Units 1 and 2 on Florida's central Atlantic coast
  • Brunswick Units 1 and 2 in North Carolina
  • Calvert Cliffs Units 1 and 2 on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland
  • Salem Units 1 and 2, as well as Hope Creek, located just off the Delaware Bay
  • Hope Creek, located just off the Delaware Bay
  • Oyster Creek, New Jersey
  • Millstone Units 2 and 3 on Long Island Sound in Connecticut
  • Pilgrim in Massachusetts
  • Seabrook in New Hampshire

In addition many other reactors, just inland, are also at risk from Hurricane Irene. The electrical grid could be damaged by high winds, this could force nuclear power plants onto emergency generators, known to have a high failure rate.

Posted in History of nuclear power, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage, Safe renewable energy | | 1 Comment »

Kyoto University team develops method for removing Cesium from soil

Sunday, August 21st, 2011

See full article here

Posted in Good and bad science, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage | | 4 Comments »

US Government decided to downplay Fukushima radiation

Monday, August 15th, 2011

Government agreed to downplay Fukushima radiation 
 Solar IMG Podcast 

According to Arnie Gundersen, a energy advisor veteran with 39 years of experience as a nuclear power engineer, Fukushima is still unstable and leaking. Gunderson told SolarIMG that Americans are unaware they are being rained on with Fukushima nuclear hot particles and eating Fukushima contaminated food because the US government has deliberately minimized the catastrophe. This is partially due to a pact Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed with Japan. Gundersen, is working with a team of other scientists to prove government statements about Fukushima are false.

"The United States came up with a decision to downplay Fukushima," said Gundersen who is awakening the public with information such as hot particles in rain will continue falling in the U.S., not just in the Pacific Northwest, for another year, and mentioning high-level fallout in Oklahoma a few days ago.

Gundersen said that Hillary Clinton signed a pact with her counterpart in Japan agreeing for the United States to continue buying food from Japan, even thought that food is not being properly tested for radioactive materials. Gunderson got the information from high-level people in the State Department."So we are not sampling the food coming into the United States./

The US government has come up with a decision at the highest levels of the State Department, as well as other departments who made a decision to downplay Fukushima," stated Gunderson.

In April, one month after the powerful tsunami and earthquake hit Japan, Gunderson said that "Hillary Clinton signed a pact with Japan that she agreed there is no problem with Japanese food supply and we will continue to buy them so we are not sampling food coming in from Japan."

Gunderson has asked Americans with Geiger counters to send samples to him for an independent research team's study.

Gundersen is convinced that the new study will prove that what the U.S. government is telling Americans is false.

Arnie Gundersen featured on his Fairwinds website a new documentary short titled, "Dial 'M' For Meltdown." The video was created by Brian Rich to ensure the history of commercial nuclear power was documented and presented in an exciting way to a younger generation.

"I found most of the public was turned off by the complex nature of Nuclear Physics, even if what they didn't know was going to kill them and their loved ones," said Rich.

Is Fukushima stabilized? Many children to suffer thyroid cancer in three to five years

"The reactors are better than since the accident," reported Gundersen, but "they all have holes on them, so they are not holding water."

"Until a couple of weeks ago, they had to constantly add water. Now there's a system in place that's cleaning the water enough that they can pump it back into the reactor."

The reactors are still creating "an enormous amount of waste," said Gunderson, and that "the filters are hotter than a pistol."

"I still believe water is leaking into the ocean and I know water's leaking into the ground table."

Gundersen is concerned about indications that there is still iodine on site plus, "enormous amounts of iodine have been in the water."

"There's an awful lot of kids that are going to have thyroid problems in the next three to five years as the result of this."

Kicking the nuclear can, On the Edge: Unit 4, Contaminated food and water, Children and cancer

Gundersen is "becoming increasingly concerned" about Fukushima's impact on Americans.

He listed his major concerns related to Fukushima impact in the United States: Unit 4; radioactive beef, soil and rain; burning contaminated materials; and raising dose amounts.

Gunderson believes that Fukushima's Unit 4 is "very fragile and could topple" in another earthquake.

Rather than a whole of government approach of resolving the radiation problem and protecting the people each Japanese prefecture is "doing its own thing"

"There is radioactive beef. There's radioactive soil. There's going to be radioactive straw."

"The Japanese are not sampling enough," said Gunderson, and Fukushima food is being bought by unwitting Americans.

The Japanese government arbitrarily increased the amount of "acceptable limits of radiation" a person can have, including raising child amount to the same as adults.

"For every 250 REM, you can expect a cancer," he said. "So for every 10 men... one of those 10 will get cancer as a result of working at Fukushima."

"They've got 8,000 people on site," so the chances are 50:50 an individual worker will get cancer.

Gunderson stated "I'm estimating over the next five years, you're going to see a 20% increase in lung cancer. You're not going to be able to say a person's individual cancer came from Fukushima, but when you look at northern Japan, whatever the rate would have been, there will be a 20% more."

Burning contaminated materials results in what Gundersen referred to as "kicking the can."

"The Japanese are allowing the contaminated material to be burned as long as it's less than 7000 Becquerels. What they're also allowing is, if you have a high concentration material and a low concentration material, you can average those two out."

The radioactive contaminated material being burned in one prefecture in Japan contaminates the neighboring prefecture.

"It eventually ends up into the Pacific Northwest, either into B.C., Oregon, Washington or California. The process of burning the radioactive material means they're kicking the can down the road."

Gundersen added, "The accident isn't over. It's continually throwing back up the cesium which is already on the ground and getting into plants."

"It's going to get worse now with the straw harvest," he said, speaking about the Japanese rice harvest beginning in September.

"After the rice is harvested, the straw, like the rice it grew, will be contaminated. With a half-life of 30 years, you're not going to let it set in your barn for 300 years. You're going to burn it."

As the contaminated straw is burned and kicked into the next prefecture, etc, it will eventually make its way over to the United States and Canada where it will come down in the rain.

So continued Gunderson, "Kick the problem to Hawaii or British Columbia or Oregon."

"A rainout is when a radioactive cloud passes over an area and, due to a coincidental rainstorm, the hot particles get dropped on the soil."

"We're going to see another year of these rainouts."

 "Geiger counters were going off the scale" a few weeks ago in British Columbia, said Gundersen, who added that the "only conclusion you could come to was industrial burning in Japan."

Proving government wrong calls for citizenry participation

"I'm working with scientists to definitively prove what the government health officials say is wrong," Gundersen stated, adding that the public can help do that.

He added, "now with lots of citizens having Geiger counters," they can help with the new study by wiping a surface one meter by one meter with a cloth after a rainout, and placing that cloth under the Geiger counter.

"If you get a positive reading on the cloth, I'd like to see the cloth," he said.

Gundersen advises people taking samples to note the location and time the sample was taken. He also requests that people wrap the sample in a triple layer of foil before mailing it to Fairwinds.

"Their constant truthful testimony against the nuclear industry... should be a real awakening to the public at large," said Brian Rich. He also said that "Meeting Arnold Gundersen and his wife Maggie only opened my eyes to the dangers our country and civilization face because of decisions made decades ago and the lies created to further the nuclear agenda."

Contact Gundersen through Fairwinds for further instructions about helping with the research: fairewinds.com/.     See ENENEWS Energy News for regular radiation updates from Fukushima and United States nuclear power plants. 

Posted in Fukushima, Good and bad science, History of nuclear power, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage | | 26 Comments »

Knocking on the Devil’s Door

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Intro to Knocking on the Devil’s Door

Following the energy reactor catastrophes of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and most recently Fukushima in Japan, nuclear energy remains a terrible specter hovering over the safety, health and well-being of millions of people around the globe.  Not only is the proliferation of nuclear weapons a lingering threat, but so is every nuclear station a ticking bomb awaiting a terrorist attack.

Yet after the all the lessons of history, the deaths of a million people following Chernobyl, according to numerous Russian studies, and the likely long-term toll of the Daiichi Fukushima plant being dramatically higher, why is the US with the most reactors in the world, so blinded by the lobbying paybacks and erroneous science of the nuclear industrial complex. Contrary to the propaganda released by the Obama administration and the energy cartel and parroted the media, nuclear energy is neither clean nor renewable.  Moreover, nuclear energy, across the stages from mining that contaminates natural habitats, rivers, and our already stressed aquifers , leaves an immense carbon footprint. It is an energy source that is utterly unsustainable for the future ahead.

In Knocking on the Devil’s Door, by award winning director Gary Null, these other disturbing issues to are treated by an extraordinary cast of scholars, scientists, physicians, activists, and global ethicists, to reveal nuclear energy as a gross violation of human rights, and an industry corrupted by money, greed and deception.

Why should terrorists bother smuggling bombs into the U.S. when, over 100 nuclear facilities lie virtually unprotected all over America – waiting to be “detonated”?

Why are licenses for worn out nuclear plants being extended behind closed doors for another 20 years, increasing the risk of a meltdown?

Many of these re-licensed plants are leaking or have leaked, polluted, radioactive, carcinogenic, tritium water.  A quarter of all US reactors have leaks.

Did you know the government plans to use $54 billion dollars, as just a down payment, to build 200 new nuclear power plants, next to every major city in America? If there were to be an accident, the liability falls completely on the taxpayers, as no insurance company will cover them. Accidents will happen; it’s only a matter of time.

We get less than 9% of our total energy needs from nuclear power.

Is it worth it?

Knock on the Devil’s Door.

Sooner or later someone is going to answer.

Posted in Chernobyl, Good and bad science, History of nuclear power, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage | | 4 Comments »

Fukushima makes Hiroshima look like a B-B gun

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama, head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo, gives emotional testimony and demands action.

From Professor Kodama's plea:

“When we research the radiation injury/sickness, we look at the total amount of radioactive materials. But there is no definite report from TEPCO or the Japanese government as to exactly how much radioactive materials have been released from Fukushima.

“So, using our knowledge base at the Radioisotope Center, we calculated. Based on the thermal output, it is 29.6 times the amount released by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In uranium equivalent, it is 20 Hiroshima bombs.

“What is more frightening is that whereas the radiation from a nuclear bomb will decrease to one-thousandth in one year, the radiation from a nuclear power plant will only decrease to one-tenth.

“In other words, we should recognize from the start that just like Chernobyl, Fukushima I Nuke Plant has released radioactive materials equivalent in the amount to tens of nuclear bombs, and the resulting contamination is far worse than the contamination by a nuclear bomb.”

Posted in Chernobyl, Fukushima, History of nuclear power, Precautions against cellular/DNA damage | | 1 Comment »

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