Former WHO Official: Fukushima plant is dumping nuclear waste into ocean on a daily basis; “There’s no foreseeable end to it… and nobody has any good ideas on how to stop it” via ENENEWS

Posted on 2015/10/28 by

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Less than 15 percent of evacuees want to return to Fukushima homes via The Asahi Shimbun

Posted on 2015/10/28 by

An increasing number of evacuees are reluctant to return home in two municipalities that became ghost towns four-and-a-half years ago following the disaster at the nearby Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, a survey showed.

When asked if they would return to their homes once the evacuation order on the towns was lifted, 50.8 percent of households in the town of Tomioka and 63.5 percent of households in Okuma said “no” in the survey.

Compared with a survey last year, that is a 1.4 percentage point increase for Tomioka and a 5.6 percentage point rise for Okuma.

[…]

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Fukuzilla? China’s nuclear boom threatens global catastrophe　via The Ecologist

Posted on 2015/10/28 by

By Oliver Tickell

China’s plans for 400 nuclear reactors threaten global catastrophe, writes Oliver Tickell. In the normal way of things we could expect major accidents every few years, but with 300 reactors along China’s seismically active coast, a major tsunami would be a Fukushima on steroids – wiping out much of China and contaminating the whole planet.
“China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” That was the bullish headline in a Forbes magazine article last week.

It went on to praise the scale of the planned nuclear investment in China’s new Five-Year Plan that runs from 2016 to 2020. Under the plan the government is to invest over US$100 billion to build seven new reactors a year until 2030.

“By 2050”, James Conca wrote for Forbes, “nuclear power should exceed 350 GW in that country, include about 400 new nuclear reactors, and have resulted in over a trillion dollars in nuclear investment.”
Now Conca is pretty enthusiastic about this. But the reality is a potential nuclear nightmare in the making. Experience to date shows that we should, on average, expect a major nuclear accident to take place for every 3,000 to 4,000 years of reactor operation. And with over 400 reactors running at once, it doesn’t take long to clock up those 3,000 years.

In fact, you could reasonably expect a major Chernobyl or Fukushima level accident every seven to ten years – in China alone, if it pursues nuclear build on that scale.
[…]
The world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe

I have done no study of the tsunami vulnerability of all the 300 nuclear reactors that could end up being built along China’s east and south coasts. But at least one – the CANDU reactor shown in the photo (above right) at Qinshan, where seven reactors are currently operational, looks vulnerable in the extreme.

And the consequences of a really big earthquake and tsunami hitting China’s coastal array of 300 nuclear reactors would be truly catastrophic. Many dozens of reactors could be struck down, each doing their own ‘Fukushima’.

This would not just bring massive radioactive contamination to China’s most developed, prosperous, productive and populated regions, but spread around the world in air and sea currents to make the world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe.

The only good news in all this is that nuclear construction in China is not proceeding anything like as fast as Forbes magazine claims. Most of the more modern ‘Generation III’ reactors are well behind in their completion times, echoing the European experience with the failed EPR design.

We can only hope that construction difficulties persist and abound – and that China’s rulers realise that investments in solar, wind and other renewables are a quicker, surer, safer way to bring power to the masses – and one that poses no existential threat to their country, and the world.

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子供がセシウムを吸い込む”被ばく”イベントが福島で決行された！via 女性自身

Posted on 2015/10/28 by yukimiyamotodepaul

（抜粋）

『みんなでやっぺ！ きれいな６国』と題したこの清掃イベントには、地元の中高校生ら約200人を含む千400人あまりが参加。しかし、６国といえば、昨年９月に全線が開通し たものの、福島第一原発の間近を通るため、いまだ車内でも毎時10μsvを越える場所がある高汚染エリアだ。

前出の女子高生と話しをした「道の駅・相馬」も今回の清掃拠点のひとつ。取材班は地元で測定活動をする「ふくいち周辺環境放射線モニタリングプロジェクト」の小澤洋一さん、深田和秀さんとともに近辺の土を調べてみた。

すると、なんと4万Bq（ベクレル／平米）で適用される、放射線管理区域の４倍以上、事故前の140倍以上（注１）もある16万４千Bq（ベクレル）／平米（注２）の放射性物質が検出された。

放射線管理区域とは、一般人は立ち入り禁止、放射線従事者でも10時間以上の滞在は禁止と法令（電離放射線障害防止規則・労働安全衛生法に基づく）で定められている場所。そんなところで子供に清掃活動させるのは違法行為では？　だが、主催者のチラシを見て合点がいった。

”後援”には、国土交通省や環境省、復興庁、地元自治体などの名がズラリ。”協賛”には、東京電力や東北電力までが名を連ねている。子供を使って、形だけでも「復興」をアピールしたい。このイベントから、なりふり構わぬ国の思惑が透けて見えた。

記者は事前に、主催のNPO法人ハッピーロードネット（福島県広野町）に「現場は安全なのか？」と問い合わせたところ、「留守番の者」と名乗る女性がこう答えた。

「帰還困難区域には入りませんし、放射線量の高い富岡町や浪江町などは、大人だけで清掃するので（子供の）安全は確保されています」続けて、「そういう問い合わせが多くて困っているんですよね」

と、グチをこぼす始末。

子供の被ばくを案ずる全国の母親たちから、開催の見直しを求める電話やファクスが連日寄せられていたという。

さらに、開催の数日前には、市民団体「子どもたちの健康と未来を守るプロジェクト・郡山」が、全国66の賛同団体をつのり、開催中止を求める提案書を福島 県と教育委員会に提出していた。が、結局どこも取り合わず、この危険極まりないイベントは予定通り決行されることになった。

（略）

「所属しているサッカー部のみんなが参加するから。６国がキレイになったら、避難している人が帰ってきてくれるかなと思って。放射能の影響？ 難しいからよくわからない。特に気にしていません」（ふたば未来学園高校一年・男子）「私は学校の美化委員だから参加しなくちゃいけなくて。放射能？　と くに注意点などは聞いていません」（同一年・女子）

引率の先生の考えはどうか。

「ここは学校の通学路ですし、とくに放射性物質が集まりやすい側溝などに近づかなければ大丈夫でしょう。空間線量も下がってきていますから」

そう先生が話し終わらないうちに、近くの植え込みでピーピーという放射線を感知する音が。記者が駆けつけると、前出の深田さんが、生徒がゴミを見つけて拾った道路横の植え込みを測定していた。

空間線量は毎時0.37μsv。環境省の除染基準、毎時0.23 μsvを超えている。土中からは、放射線管理区域の４倍の15万9千Bq／平米もの放射性物質が検出された。

「空間線量が低くても、土中には原発事故前の100倍以上の放射性物質があるんです」

と小澤さんは指摘する。

後日、現場で拾った吸い殻や紙くずなどに付着している放射性物質を測定してもらうと、一般ゴミからは890Bq／㎏、吸い殻からは600Bq／㎏、小澤さんが測定時に利き手にはめていた軍手からは421Bq／㎏という数値が出た。

「法令（核原料物質、核燃料物質及び原子炉の規制に関する法律）に従えば、100Bq／㎏を越える汚染物質は、ドラム缶に入れて厳重に管理しなければならない。なのに、それをはるかに越える汚染ゴミを、子供に拾わせるなんてどうかしています」（小澤さん）

（略）

「汚染エリアに入ると放射性物質をあちこちに運んでしまうから危険です」（小澤さん）

実際に、この日、小澤さんが付けていた靴カバーを測定したところ、450Bq／kgの放射性物質が検出された。

（略）

しかし、さらに深刻な事実が明らかになる。当日、小澤さんが約５時間付けていたＮ95という防塵マスクから、なんと20.6Bq/kgの放射性物質が検出されたのだ。測定してくれたちくりん舎（NPO法人市民放射能監視センター）の青木一政さんは、次のように指摘する。

「N95のマスクは0.1〜0.3ミクロン程度の粒子まで吸着します。このマスクをしていなかったら、１ミクロン以下の粒子まで肺の奥に吸い込んでいた可能性があります」

この日、マスクや軍手を付けている子供はほとんどいなかった。

「放射性セシウムには水溶性と非水溶性のものがあり、非水溶性のものは、体内に取り込まれると４〜５年くらい排出されず、心臓にとどまって放射線を出し続けます。結果、若くても心筋梗塞などになるリスクが上がるのです」

と話すのは、呼吸器や放射線の専門医である松井英介氏。

「もっと心配なのは、ストロンチウム90です。こちらは測定すらされていませんが、セシウム10に対して１の割合で存在しています。特に原発周辺は 多いと言われています。これは人間の血液を作っている骨にたまるので、白血病などのリスクが上がる。わざわざ子どもにリスクを押し付けるなんて犯罪的で す」（松井氏）

（略）

国も福島県も調査しようともせず、あくまで国が立ち入りを制限しているエリア以外は「すべて安全」という立場を崩さない。

「原発が爆発しても、それでうるおっている人間がいるから、その理不尽さを払拭するために子供を利用している」

と指摘するのは経済学者で東京大学教授の安富歩さん。

「放射能がばらまかれた福島の子供が尻ぬぐいするなんて理不尽極まりない。本当は東電がやれって話し。でも、一度そういう理不尽なことを飲み込ませ ると、あとは言うことを何でも聞く都合のいい人間に育つ。国家としては、従順な人間を増やす目的もあるんでしょう」（安富さん）

（略）

後日、「後援」に名を連ねる環境省福島環境再生事務所に汚染の実態を知らせると、「清掃コースの放射線量は確認してないのでわからない。主催はハッピー ロードネットなので」と無責任な答え。さらに福島県も、「立ち入り制限されているエリアには入らないと聞いているので安全なのでは？ 吸い込みによる被曝リスクがあることは承知しているが、県から開催の見直しを求めることはできない。主催はハッピーロードネットだから」と、環境省に輪を かけた無責任ぶりを披露。

全文は子供がセシウムを吸い込む”被ばく”イベントが福島で決行された！

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The Okinawa missiles of October via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Posted on 2015/10/28 by yukimiyamotodepaul

John Bordne, a resident of Blakeslee, Penn., had to keep a personal history to himself for more than five decades. Only recently has the US Air Force given him permission to tell the tale, which, if borne out as true, would constitute a terrifying addition to the lengthy and already frightening list of mistakes and malfunctions that have nearly plunged the world into nuclear war.

The story begins just after midnight, in the wee hours of October 28, 1962, at the very height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then-Air Force airman John Bordne says he began his shift full of apprehension. At the time, in response to the developing crisis over secret Soviet missile deployments in Cuba, all US strategic forces had been raised to Defense Readiness Condition 2, or DEFCON2; that is, they were prepared to move to DEFCON1 status within a matter of minutes. Once at DEFCON1, a missile could be launched within a minute of a crew being instructed to do so.

Bordne was serving at one of four secret missile launch sites on the US-occupied Japanese island of Okinawa. There were two launch control centers at each site; each was manned by seven-member crews. With the support of his crew, each launch officer was responsible for four Mace B cruise missiles mounted with Mark 28 nuclear warheads. The Mark 28 had a yield equivalent to 1.1 megatons of TNT—i.e., each of them was roughly 70 times more powerful than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bomb. All together, that’s 35.2 megatons of destructive power. With a range of 1,400 miles, the Mace B’s on Okinawa could reach the communist capital cities of Hanoi, Beijing, and Pyongyang, as well as the Soviet military facilities at Vladivostok.

[…]

By Bordne’s account, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Air Force crews on Okinawa were ordered to launch 32 missiles, each carrying a large nuclear warhead. Only caution and the common sense and decisive action of the line personnel receiving those orders prevented the launches—and averted the nuclear war that most likely would have ensued.

[…]

Judging from what Bordne says he heard of the phone conversation, this request got a more stress-filled reaction from the major, who immediately took to the radio and read out a new coded instruction. It was an order to stand down the missiles … and, just like that, the incident was over.

To double-check that disaster had really been averted, Capt. Bassett asked for and received confirmation from the other launch officers that no missiles had been fired.

At the beginning of the crisis, Bordne says, Capt. Bassett had warned his men, “If this is a screw up and we do not launch, we get no recognition, and this never happened.” Now, at the end of it all, he said, “None of us will discuss anything that happened here tonight, and I mean anything. No discussions at the barracks, in a bar, or even here at the launch site. You do not even write home about this. Am I making myself perfectly clear on this subject?”

For more than 50 years, silence was observed.

[…]

Bassett died in May 2011. Bordne has taken to the Internet in an attempt to locate other launch crew members who may be able to help to fill in his recollections. The National Security Archives, a watchdog group based at George Washington University’s Gelman Library, has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Air Force, seeking records relating to the Okinawa incident, but such requests often do not result in a release of records for years, if ever.

I recognize that Bordne’s account is not definitively confirmed. But I find him to have been consistently truthful in the matters I could confirm. An incident of this import, I believe, should not have to rest on the testimony of one man. The Air Force and other government agencies should proactively make any records in their possession relating to this incident available in their entirety—and quickly. The public has long been presented a false picture of the dangers inherent in nuclear weapon deployment.

The entire world has a right to know the entire truth about the nuclear danger it faces.

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Exiled by nuclear tests, now threatened by climate change, Bikini islanders seek refuge in U.S. via The Washington Post

Posted on 2015/10/28 by yukimiyamotodepaul

On the morning of July 1, 1946, a second sun rose over the remote Pacific island chain of Bikini Atoll.

The world’s fourth atomic bomb had just been detonated over the area with an “unearthly brilliance that petrified observers,” wrote the Washington Post reporter at the scene.

A hundred miles away, from a ship just off the shore of tiny Rongerik Atoll, Bikini’s former residents watched a mushroom cloud form over the place that had been their home. Now it was a bomb site, shrouded in toxic nuclear fallout that would render it uninhabitable. The Bikini islanders didn’t know that yet; they had agreed to a series of nuclear tests on their islands believing they would be able to return as soon as the experiments ended.

Instead, they began a decades-long nomadic existence that would see Bikini islanders starve on atolls too small and sparse to sustain them and sicken from lingering radiation on others. The tiny community would be relocated five times in as many decades before settling elsewhere in the Marshall Islands. Some islanders watch warily as scientists re-evaluate their old home. Others have tried to move on, settle down.

But their bad luck just won’t let them. Now, they say, the rising seas and brutal storms brought on by climate change have rendered their new homes uninhabitable. On Wednesday, Marshallese Foreign Minister Tony de Brum will meet with members of Congress and ask for a change in the terms of the fund that was set up to help Bikini islanders resettle. Currently, the fund can only be used to help them buy property in the Marshall Islands, but they’re giving up on the Pacific entirely. They want to come to the U.S. instead.

“Kili [is] uninhabitable because of climate change,” de Brum told the BBC Tuesday, referring to the tiny island where about 700 people now live.

[…]

In the late ’60s, U.S. officials announced that most of the effects of its nuclear detonations had worn off, and some Bikini islanders opted to return to the atoll. But subsequent tests found alarming levels of radiation in the islands’ sand, fruit, fish and the people themselves. The hundred or so islanders living in Bikini atoll were re-evacuated in 1978, and most returned to Kili.

[…]

Niedenthal, the liaison officer for the displaced people of Bikini, says the U.S. has a moral obligation to help the community it displaced 70 years ago. He knows people who were there when the last islanders left Bikini Atoll, who still recite a promise made by an American officer there “like it’s right out of the Bible,” Niedenthal told Radio New Zealand in August.

“This American stood up to them, Commodore [Ben] Wyatt in 1946,” Niedenthal said. “[He] said ‘Don’t you worry. It doesn’t matter if you’re adrift on a raft at sea or on a sand bar, you will be like the children of America. We are going to take care of you.”

Read more at Exiled by nuclear tests, now threatened by climate change, Bikini islanders seek refuge in U.S.

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除染マスクを不法投棄か　福島・南相馬 via 日本経済新聞

Posted on 2015/10/28 by yukimiyamotodepaul

東京電力福島第１原子力発電所事故に伴う除染作業で使用したとみられるマスクや手袋などが、福島県南相馬市の海岸防災林造成地に不法に投棄されていたことが28日、同市などへの取材で分かった。

市や県によると、市の監視員からマスクや手袋などが捨てられていると26日に通報があった。除染作業で使われるのと同じ型のマスクなどが20リットルの袋２つ分ほど捨てられていた。

県が放射線量を測定した結果、毎時約0.1マイクロシーベルトで、現場周辺の放射線量と同程度だった。誰が捨てたか特定できず、造成地を所有する市が27日、回収して処分した。

続きは除染マスクを不法投棄か　福島・南相馬

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「脱原発」テント：２審も立ち退き命令　経産省の敷地内　via 毎日新聞

Posted on 2015/10/27 by

東京・霞が関の経産省の敷地内にテントを設置して脱原発を訴えている市民団体のメンバー２人に、国が立ち退きなどを求めた訴訟の控訴審判決で、東京高裁は２６日、立ち退きと土地使用料の支払いを命じた一審東京地裁判決を支持、２人の控訴を棄却した。２人は上告した。

[…]
高野伸裁判長は「やむにやまれぬ思いで原発に反対する行動に加わったと理解されるが、だからといって土地を使用する特別の権限が生じたわけではない」と指摘。土地使用料は１日約２万１０００円と算定されており、この日までに３０００万円以上となっている。（共同）

もっと読む。

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Residents in St Louis dying in record numbers from World War II radioactive waste via news.com.au

Posted on 2015/10/27 by

N 2011, residents across an American community in St Louis began to notice a chain of inexplicably high incidents of cancer and disease across its population.
For decades, both former and current residents from approximately 90 municipalities in the Missouri city were diagnosed with a long list of life-threatening illnesses, including leukaemia, lupus, brain tumours, appendix cancer, multiple sclerosis, birth defects and many more. People died. Babies died. And they’re still dying to this day, dubbed “the poison children of Coldwater Creek.”
But no one ever connected the dots as to what was really making these innocent people sick.
“You’ll never forget the moment they tell you, ‘We found lesions on your lung and your liver,’” Mary Oscko, who has stage 4 lung cancer, told CBS News.
“My husband and I had to sit down at night and discuss whether I want to be cremated or buried. I don’t want to be buried in North County, that’s the one thing I told him — I do not want to be buried where this soil is.”
In 1942, during the height of World War II, a corporation by the name of Mallinckrodt Chemical Works was hired by the US government to process uranium for the development of the world’s first nuclear weapons. The operation was dubbed ‘The Manhattan Project.’
[…]
According to a 1990 article in the New York Times, the toxic waste was dumped secretly with the approval of the federal government.
“If you have really low doses of radiation and you ingest it, over time it builds in your body. Once it gets in your body it never leaves, it’s like arsenic poisoning. It’s not one ingestion, it’s over and over, then it mutates and you end up with these cancers.
“We’re showing up with these really rare cancers, and really high rates at really young ages.”
In 2011, with the advent of Facebook, residents from the community began to reconnect and after sharing stories, they noticed a strange phenomena — unexplained high incidences of rare cancers.
[…]
Soon enough, one little Facebook page grew from simply getting back in touch, to the alarming realisation that more than 2700 residents reported rare incidents of illness. This was becoming a cancer cluster of epic proportions: 45 cases of appendix cancer, 184 cases of brain cancer, 315 cases of thyroid cancer, 448 cases of auto-immune disease, and so on.
[…]
Residents are hoping to access Downwinder status, a program set up by the US Department of Justice to compensate victims of World War II testing. Other cities in the United States, like Arizona, Nevada and Utah have received approval, but St Louis is not yet on the map.
[…]

Read more.

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Application for nuclear storage on hold via Taipei Times

Posted on 2015/10/27 by

Citing concerns over security measures, the New Taipei City Government yesterday said it is holding on to Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower, 台電) application to build a dry-storage facility to store spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants.
According to a report published yesterday in the Chinese-language Apple Daily, Taipower’s application to set up a dry-storage facility for spent fuel rods from the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District (石門) and the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in the city’s Wanli District (萬里) faces further scrutiny.
The city government said that there could be no nuclear power without nuclear safety, the report said, adding that the city government has returned the application’s environmental conservation reports on concerns over security and the facility’s resistance to seismic activity.
[…]
Plans for the facility as well as the presence of the power plants themselves have led to safety concerns among residents along the northern coast, New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said.
“The city government understands that there is an urgent need for the facility, but there can be no action as long as the safety of our residents cannot be guaranteed,” Hou said.
New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Chen Shen-hsien (陳伸賢) said the city government is in negotiations with the COA for a larger role in the decisionmaking process, adding that no decision by the central government would be acted upon without the local government’s consent.
[…]

Read more.

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