Reblogged from : Earth First News Wire
They sat down in chairs in front of the tents, wearing headbands and happi coats.
“We are not removing the tents,” they announced in a statement. “We are against the restart of nuclear power reactors.”
“People who are fighting for the end of nuclear power generation meet here and get information here,” said Setsuko Kuroda, 62, of Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, who frequently visits the tents.
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| 15.05.2013 | Nuclear Event | USA | State of South Carolina, [Catawba Nuclear Station] |  |
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| Description | |
| Federal regulators say more than 100 gallons of water with traces of a radioactive hydrogen isotope have leaked at a nuclear power plant in South Carolina. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that the tritium leak isn’t an emergency, but says the leak could reach groundwater. The NRC says the leak was found late Tuesday in a fiberglass discharge pipe. Duke Energy, which runs the plant, has started taking steps to fix the problem. The NRC says Duke is putting in a temporary sump pump to try to isolate the leak. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says drinking water that contains tritium can increase the risk of developing cancer. |
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Traces of radioactive hydrogen isotope have turned up in more than 100 gallons of
water after a South Carolina nuclear plant sprung a leak.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reported Wednesday (May 15) that
the leak was discovered in a fiberglass discharge pipe around 11:23 p.m.EDT Tuesday
at the Catawba Nuclear Station.
The NRC states that a “leak greater than 100 gallons containing tritium has the
potential to reach groundwater.”
Duke Energy, which runs the plant, has started taking steps to fix the problem. The
NRC says Duke is putting in a temporary sump pump to try to isolate the leak.
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There’s a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It’s invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as “rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer.” Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. “It smells like dead bodies,” observes another local.
On a Saturday morning in March, one mile south of the landfill, several Bridgeton residents have gathered at a small home in a blue-collar subdivision called Spanish Village. Concerned citizens Karen Nickel and Dawn Chapman are here to answer questions posed by four of their neighbors. “How will I ever sell my house?” “Am I going to end up with cancer 20 years down the road?” “Is there even a solution?”
In February, the landfill’s owner, Republic Services, sent glossy fliers to residents within stink radius claiming the noxious odor posed no safety risk. But official reports say otherwise. Temperature probes reveal the fire has already surpassed normal heat levels. Reports from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) indicate dangerously high levels of benzene and hydrogen sulfide in the air. In March, Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) – which has jurisdiction over Bridgeton Landfill – quietly posted an Internet notice cautioning citizens with chronic respiratory diseases to limit time outdoors. A month after Republic distributed its potentially misleading flier, the state attorney general sued the company on eight counts of environmental violations, including pollution and public nuisance. And this week, as part of a settlement set to be announced Tuesday, Republic sent another round of fliers offering to move local families to hotels during a period of increased odor related to remediation efforts.
Nickel and Chapman are stay-at-home moms; Chapman has three special-needs kids. Neither of them wants to spend her time worrying about a damn landfill fire. But until someone higher up the power chain intervenes, they have sworn to call municipal offices, file Sunshine requests and post notices to the community’s Facebook group, no matter how unsettling the facts they uncover. Scariest of all: The Bridgeton landfill fire is burning close to at least 8,700 tons of nuclear weapons wastes.
“To have somebody call you at 11 P.M., and they’re in tears, concerned for their family, that’s heartbreaking,” Chapman tells Rolling Stone. “We’re doing this because we don’t have a choice. If we don’t come together as a community and fight, no one’s going to do it for us.”
West Lake Landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site that’s home to some of the oldest radioactive wastes in the world. A six-foot chain-link fence surrounds the perimeter, plastered with bright yellow hazard signs that warn of the dangers within. On one corner stands a rusty gas pump. About 1,200 feet south of the radioactive EPA site, the fire at Bridgeton Landfill spreads out like hot barbeque coals. No one knows for sure what happens when an underground inferno meets a pool of atomic waste, but residents aren’t eager to find out.
At a March 15th press conference, Peter Anderson – an economist who has studied landfills for over 20 years – raised the worst-case scenario of a “dirty bomb,” meaning a non-detonated, mass release of floating radioactive particles in metro St. Louis. “Now, to be clear, a dirty bomb is not nuclear fission, it’s not an atomic bomb, it’s not a weapon of mass destruction,” Anderson assured meeting attendants in Bridgeton’s Machinists Union Hall. “But the dispersal of that radioactive material in air that could reach – depending upon weather conditions – as far as 10 miles from the site could make it impossible to have economic activity continue.”
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Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill, where underground fire has been smoldering since December 2010
ST. LOUIS–(KMOX)–A judge says he’ll decide by morning whether a plan to put out the fire and end the smell at the Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill is workable.
The plan — crafted by the Missouri Attorney General and the landfill owner, Republic Services Inc. — has not yet been made public. It’s now in the hands of Circuit Court Judge Michael Jamison, who met in his chambers with lawyers from both sides on a day he was scheduled to hold a hearing on the Attorney General’s lawsuit against the landfill.
“It’s not exactly a settlement,” Jamison told Bridgeton residents, reporters and environmentalists waiting in his courtroom, “But it’s something that would address the smoldering issue and what the sate may be able to do.”
The lawsuit filed by the state calls for an aggressive plan to put out the fire, which has been smoldering since December 2010 — and for fines upwards of tens-of-thousand a dollars a day for alleged violations of Missouri environmental laws. Koster’s suit claims the burning landfill is billowing benzene and other hazardous chemicals into the air, and leaking a black ooze into ground water.
Koster’s office declined to comment. The Attorney General has scheduled a news conference for 10:30 Tuesday morning in downtown St. Louis to reveal details of the proposed next step.
Already, complaints are rising that the apparent deal was made without input from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, from area businesses or from Bridgeton residents.
“The community needs to be at the table,” said the coalition’s Kat Logan Smith, “The property owners, the families and businesses here need to be at the table, because they need to decide what the bottom line is.”
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The vehicle was contained for exceeding the legal radioactive emission limits/ europics
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| 09.05.2013 | HAZMAT | Switzerland | Ticino, Bellinzona | |
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| Description | |
| CALLS are growing for more routine radioactive screening at borders after a second lorry containing unshielded radioactive material was stopped on a European road. The startling discovery in Switzerland came only five days after a group of Romanians carrying unshielded nuclear material were stopped in neighbouring Austria. A lorry from Lithuania on its way to Italy has been found to contain dangerous levels of radioactivity by customs officials. The lorry was cordoned off, while the surrounding 300 feet around the vehicle was evacuated and the Customs border crossing point was closed. A specialist team from the Bellinzona fire service and specially trained police officers were called in to investigate further, discovering that the radioactivity was from a package being transported in the lorry which was confiscated and secured. Davide Bassi, from the Swiss Border Control Office said: “It is not unusual that lorry’s have a low level of radiation, and we do carry out controls to check that this limit is not exceeded.” They were currently examining the package to find out why it was irradiated and what it contained, he said speaking to the Austrian Times. Wolfgang Mueller from Greenpeace Germany said: “It is clearly a growing problem and about time that tougher action was made to cut down on the number of dangerous nuclear transports that seem to be taking place on our streets.” |
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Published: Thu, May 9, 2013
The vehicle was contained after it was discovered to be exceeding the legal radioactive emission limits.
Shockingly, the men had even stored their sandwiches and drinking water in with the radioactive material.
In Austria the men admitted they had made the journey from Germany to Romania carrying similar radioactive loads dozens of times and had not realised how dangerous it was.
Calls are growing for more routine radioactive screening at borders/ europics
It is clearly a growing problem
Now, a lorry from Lithuania on its way to Italy has been found to contain dangerous levels of radioactivity by customs officials.
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Published on May 7, 2013
Britain’s under pressure to put tighter controls on its radioactive materials – after it’s emerged that hazardous substances have gone missing in numerous locations over the last decade. Manufacturing industries, nuclear reactors, and even schools are implicated, in a list obtained by RT from the Health and Safety authority. Some of the materials are volatile enough to be sought by terrorists – READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/r0gqyo
Steve Miller/Associated Press/File
The key problem facing nuclear plant operators, including Millstone in Connecticut, is the inability in Washington to decide what to do with radioactive waste.
NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — State officials authorized the Millstone nuclear plant on Thursday to significantly expand nuclear waste storage capacity over the next 30 years.
Without a national site to take spent nuclear fuel, Millstone Power Station’s owner, Dominion Resources Inc., turned to Connecticut for permission to increase storage at the Waterford site.
The nine-member council voted unanimously without discussion to allow Millstone to build concrete pads necessary for an expansion of its waste storage. Millstone is seeking to expand storage from 19 cask storage units now to 135 by 2045. However, Millstone’s application does not include a request to install the 135 casks, the Siting Council said.
Melanie Bachman, staff attorney for the council, said Millstone has authorization to install 49 casks and must seek permission for the remaining 86.
Ken Holt, Millstone’s spokesman, said the state’s permission to build the pads gives Dominion flexibility in planning long-term storage requirements.
The key problem facing nuclear plant operators and public officials is the inability in Washington to decide what to do with radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. Congress designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada for a nuclear waste dump, but the plan has been opposed by the state’s elected officials, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.
Gray and silver storage tanks filled with radioactive wastewater are sprawling over the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
TOKYO — Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.
Groundwater is pouring into the plant’s ravaged reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there, before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on hulking gray and silver storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of 112 Olympic-size pools.
But even they are not enough to handle the tons of strontium-laced water at the plant — a reflection of the scale of the 2011 disaster and, in critics’ view, ad hoc decision making by the company that runs the plant and the regulators who oversee it. In a sign of the sheer size of the problem, the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, plans to chop down a small forest on its southern edge to make room for hundreds more tanks, a task that became more urgent when underground pits built to handle the overflow sprang leaks in recent weeks.
“The water keeps increasing every minute, no matter whether we eat, sleep or work,” said Masayuki Ono, a general manager with Tepco who acts as a company spokesman. “It feels like we are constantly being chased, but we are doing our best to stay a step in front.”
While the company has managed to stay ahead, the constant threat of running out of storage space has turned into what Tepco itself called an emergency, with the sheer volume of water raising fears of future leaks at the seaside plant that could reach the Pacific Ocean.
That quandary along with an embarrassing string of mishaps — including a 29-hour power failure affecting another, less vital cooling system — have underscored an alarming reality: two years after the meltdowns, the plant remains vulnerable to the same sort of large earthquake and tsunami that set the original calamity in motion.
There is no question that the Fukushima plant is less dangerous than it was during the desperate first months after the accident, mostly through the determined efforts of workers who have stabilized the melted reactor cores, which are cooler and less dangerous than they once were.
But many experts warn that safety systems and fixes at the plant remain makeshift and prone to accidents.
The jury-rigged cooling loop that pours water over the damaged reactor cores is a mazelike collection of pumps, filters and pipes that snake two and a half miles along the ground through the plant. And a pool for storing used nuclear fuel remains perched on the fifth floor of a damaged reactor building as Tepco struggles to move the rods to a safer location.
The situation is worrisome enough that Shunichi Tanaka, a longtime nuclear power proponent who is the chairman of the newly created watchdog Nuclear Regulation Authority, told reporters after the announcement of the leaking pits that “there is concern that we cannot prevent another accident.”
A growing number of government officials and advisers now say that by entrusting the cleanup to the company that ran the plant before the meltdowns, Japanese leaders paved the way for a return to the insider-dominated status quo that prevailed before the disaster.
Even many scientists who acknowledge the complexity of cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl fear that the water crisis is just the latest sign that Tepco is lurching from one problem to the next without a coherent strategy.
“Tepco is clearly just hanging on day by day, with no time to think about tomorrow, much less next year,” said Tadashi Inoue, an expert in nuclear power who served on a committee that drew up the road map for cleaning up the plant.
But the concerns extend well beyond Tepco. While doing a more rigorous job of policing Japan’s nuclear industry than regulators before the accident, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has a team of just nine inspectors to oversee the more than 3,000 workers at Fukushima.
And a separate committee created by the government to oversee the cleanup is loaded with industry insiders, including from the Ministry of Trade, in charge of promoting nuclear energy, and nuclear reactor manufacturers like Toshiba and Hitachi. The story of how the Fukushima plant ended up swamped with water, critics say, is a cautionary tale about the continued dangers of leaving decisions about nuclear safety to industry insiders.
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Members of the media wear protective suits at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture in March. Two years after the disaster, contaminated groundwater containing radioactive strontium, a byproduct of nuclear fission, is leaking from the damaged reactor.
The Japanese nuclear plant stricken by a deadly tsunami two years ago is facing the dire issue of containing radioactive waste water, as operators rush to repair yet another possible disaster.
The March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami left the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant stricken, badly damaging its reactors, which serve to cool nuclear cores.
Now contaminated groundwater containing radioactive strontium, a byproduct of nuclear fission, is leaking from damaged reactor structures at an alarming rate of 75 gallons per minute.
PHOTOS: TOP 20 PHOTOS OF JAPAN TSUNAMI
The Dai-Ichi plant is owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, also known as Tepco, which has struggled to handle the plant’s meltdown and subsequent recovery.
The nuclear incident has been described as one of the most devastating in history, second only to Russia’s Chernobyl incident of the 1980s.
As the New York Times notes, news of the leaking groundwater comes at an embarrassing time for Tepco, which experienced a 29-hour power outage last month which affected another of the plant’s cooling systems.
RELATED: RADIOACTIVE WATER LEAK FEARED AT JAPAN NUKE PLANT
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by SUSANNAH FRAME / KING 5 News
Posted on May 2, 2013 at 9:37 PM
Updated today at 10:42 AM
The private companies working to clean up nuclear waste at the Hanford Site operate under contracts with the federal government that don’t reward them for reporting problems, creating a dangerous financial incentive that could delay responses to leaks of highly radioactive waste, according to one of the nation’s top nuclear policy experts.
“Reporting leaks in high-level waste tanks has been frowned upon at this site for decades,” said Bob Alvarez, a former presidential adviser on nuclear policy. “There’s this whole dynamic that is built up where people are totally discouraged from raising concerns, especially those that I call have a show-stopping nature to them, such as leaking high-level radioactive waste tanks.”
KING 5 reported last month that one private company working at the Hanford Site discounted for nearly a year mounting evidence of a leak in 241-AY-102, a double-shell tank holding hundreds of thousands of gallons of some of the most radioactive and chemically contaminated waste in the world.
“I think the Department of Energy and the contractors who work for them are riddled with honest, decent, hardworking, competent people, and I don’t mean to paint everyone with this brush,” said Alvarez. “The problem is that a lot of these competent, conscientious people are stuck in a corrupt system that needs to be fundamentally changed.”
On August 1, 2012, ten months after the first indicator that Tank AY-102 was leaking, the company — Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) — initiated a regularly scheduled video inspection during which workers spotted suspicious material on the floor of the tank’s annulus, the hollow space between the two walls of the tank.
Two-and-a-half months later — 12 months after the first leak indication — WRPS and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) confirmed and made public the leak in 241-AY-102. During that delay, deadly waste continued to leak into the space separating the tank’s inner and outer shells.
Contracting policies used by the government could explain that delay, said Alvarez, now a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
“Why are these contractors doing what they’re doing? It’s all purely economically motivated, of course.”
Contractors like WRPS are eligible for performance-based incentive money and award fees for finishing certain projects on time and on budget as outlined in their agreements with the government. During the months that red flags warned that Tank AY-102 was leaking, WRPS specifically stood to earn the most bonus money for completing work transferring nuclear waste from underground single-shell tanks at Hanford’s C Farm.
Alvarez and other experts who spoke with KING 5 said investigating and reporting the leak in AY-102 earlier on could have jeopardized the C Farm work, as WRPS may have had to shift resources — personnel and equipment — to deal with it.
“Where reward is given for only presenting good news, not bad news, then you have these problems. It’s just that simple,” Alvarez said. “It boils down to making money in a way where there’s the least amount of hassle to it.”
A leaking tank would certainly be one of those hassles, Alvarez added. “It’s a big time hassle because then it requires you to change priorities. It requires a rethinking of what you’re doing. It requires real soul searching about the competence of your work and maybe losing (bonus) money and maybe losing your contract.”
WRPS secured a $23 million bonus from the DOE for work performed in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2012 — nearly the same time period that numerous red flags pointing to a leak in AY-102 were discounted by the company. The $23 million was 98 percent of the available award money for the year and one of the biggest bonuses ever paid to WRPS. (In the previous year the company was awarded a $33 million bonus, or 99 percent of the potential amount the federal government could have awarded it.)
“We have a very serious problem with Hanford and we always have with the Energy Department and its contractors where the incentive to get a contract performance award, your cash award, for doing something at the end of the year outweighs the safety and environmental considerations,” said state Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-Seattle), who also serves as executive director of the citizen watchdog group, Heart of America Northwest.
He added, “Very clearly they were aimed at getting their award money, their bonus, which would have been jeopardized by saying ‘Hey! We have a leak over here.’”
Dept. of Energy not answering
KING 5 asked the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of River Protection, if the payment structure discourages contractors from coming forward with problems. The reporters also asked if the federal government has methods in place to encourage the companies they hire to investigate and report set backs. Media professionals from the DOE didn’t answer.
WRPS response
The company denied that it ignored evidence of the AY-102 leak. WRPS declined KING 5 requests to interview President Mike Johnson or any other official on camera, and insisted that all its decision-making about AY-102 was based on sound science and concern for worker safety.
“Experience gained over decades of tank farm operations led us to believe that a small amount of rainwater, not waste, was collecting in the AY-102 annulus. This was based on recent heavy rainfall, the discovery of water intrusion pathways, known low levels of radioactive cross-contamination between the primary tank and the annulus, and readings from the leak detection system,” wrote a WRPS representative in a statement to KING 5 last month.
An earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear meltdown — residents of Japan’s northeast coast suffered through three intertwined disasters after a massive 9.0 magnitude temblor struck off the coast on March 11, 2011.
TOKYO — Like the persistent tapping of a desperate SOS message, the updates keep coming. Day after day, the operators of the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have been detailing their struggles to contain leaks of radioactive water.
The leaks, power outages and other glitches have raised fears that the plant — devastated by a tsunami in March 2011 — could even start to break apart during a cleanup process expected to take years.
The situation has also attracted the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which sent a team of experts to review the decommissioning effort last month. They warned Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to clean up the site. A full report is expected to be released later this month.
Journalists have been given a rare glimpse inside Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled in the 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit the country two years ago. NBC News’ Arata Yamamoto reports.
The discovery of a greenling fish near a water intake for the power station in February that contained some 7,400 times the recommended safe limit of radioactive cesium only served to heighten concern.
There was also some reassuring news in February, when a report by the World Health Organization said Fukushima had caused “no discernible increase in health risks” outside Japan and “no observable increases in cancer above natural variation” in most of the country.
But for the most affected areas, the report said the lifetime risks of various cancers were expected to increase. For example, baby boys were predicted to have up to a 7 percent greater chance of getting leukemia in their lifetime and for baby girls the lifetime risk of breast cancer could be up to 6 percent higher than normal.
Independent nuclear expert John Large — who has given evidence on the Fukushima disaster to the U.K. parliament and written reports about it for Greenpeace — said there would be hundreds of tons of “intensely radioactive” material in the plant.
He said normally robots could be sent in to remove the fuel relatively easily, but this was difficult because of the damage caused by the tsunami.
Large said the plant was close to the water table, so it was difficult to stop water getting in and out.
“Until you can stop that transfer, you will not contain the radioactivity. That will go on for years and years until they contain it,” he said. “The structures of containment start breaking down. Engineered structures don’t last long when they are put in adverse conditions.”
Larged added: “It may have some marked effect on the health of future generations in Japan. What it will create is a Fukushima generation — like in Nagasaki and Hiroshima - where girls particularly will have difficulty marrying because of the stigma of being brought up in a radiation area.”
Leaks into the sea would not only affect the marine environment, Large said, as tiny radioactive particles would be washed up on the beach, dried in the sun and then blown over the surrounding countryside by the wind.
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| image source |
Stephen Lendman
Activist Post
In her book titled No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, nuclear power/environmental health expert Rosalie Bertell (1929 – 2012) said:
Should the public discover the true health cost(s) of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death.
In her article titled “Radioactivity: No Immediate Danger,” she coined a new word. “Omnicide” describes the ultimate human rejection of life. It’s “difficult to comprehend,” but it’s happening, she said.
She called industrial radioactive pollution “cumulatively greater than Chernobyl. We are now in a no-win situation with radioactive materials, where (it’s) acceptable to have cancer deaths, deformed children and miscarriages.”
Industry propaganda falsely claims nuclear power is clean and green. The nuclear fuel cycle discharges significant amounts of greenhouse gases.
It’s also responsible for hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and elements in the environment annually.
“Claiming nuclear production of energy is ‘clean,’ ” said Bertell, “is like dieting but stuffing yourself with food between meals.”
Separately, she said:
There is no such thing as a radiation exposure that will not do damage. There is a hundred per cent possibility that there will be damage to cells. The next question is: which damage do you care about?
All toxic hazards are serious, she explained. Nuclear radiation is worst of all. It threatens all human life. “Our present path is headed toward species death – whether fast with nuclear war or technological disaster, or slow, by poison.”
Global suicide is certain. Continued nuclear proliferation and Fukushima accelerated it.
March 11 marked its second anniversary. It’s perhaps the worst ever environmental disaster. Reliable experts call large parts of Japan unsafe. They’re too hazardous to live in.
According to Professor Hiroaki Koide, Tokyo’s as contaminated as Fukushima. Thousands of city residents protested. They oppose nuclear power. They want safe energy sources replacing it.
Radiation contamination is widespread. East Asia, North America, Europe and other areas are affected.
Hazardous air, water and land readings across many areas globally are many multiples too high. Future epidemic cancer levels are certain. It occurs when body cells divide and spread uncontrollably. If untreated, it metastasizes and kills.
Michel Chossudovsky calls Fukushima “a nuclear war without a war.” It’s an “unspoken crisis of worldwide nuclear contamination.”
Tens of thousands of children have confirmed thyroid abnormalities. They reflect the tip of the iceberg. Children are especially vulnerable. No radiation dose is safe.
Karl Grossman wants planet earth made a “nuclear free zone.” We barely made it through the last century without a “major nuclear weapons exchange,” he said.
Nuclear energy in all forms is unsafe. Safe, clean, renewable solar, wind, geothermal, and other energy sources are readily available.
Admiral Hyman Rickover (1900 – 1986) was the father of America’s nuclear navy. In January 1982, he told a congressional committee that until a few billion years ago, “it was impossible to have any life on earth.”
“There was so much radiation on earth you couldn’t have any life, fish or anything.” Gradually the amount subsided. “Now, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible.”
“Every time you produce radiation, (a) horrible force” is unleashed. “In some cases (it’s) for billions of years, and I think the human race is going to wreck itself.”
“I am talking about humanity. The most important thing we could do is start having an international meeting where we first outlaw nuclear weapons to start off with. Then we outlaw nuclear reactors, too.”
“The lesson for history is when a war starts, every nation will ultimately use whatever weapons are available. That is the lesson learned time and again.” “
“Therefore, we must expect, if another war, a serious war breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form. We will probably destroy ourselves.” Widespread contamination acts in slow motion.
Disturbing reports explain. In early April, around 120 tons of contaminated water leaked from Fukushima’s No. 1′s underground storage tank. It contained an estimated 710 billion becquerels of radioactivity.
Article: 1097 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: (dave “who can do? ratmandu!” ratcliffe)
Subject: Radioactivity: No Immediate Danger? addressing our nuclear illiteracy
Summary: species annihilation–omnicide–is the ultimate human rejection o life
Keywords: our monoculture is a form of suicide; diversity gives us survival.
Date: 25 Jun 1995 21:33:42 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Lines: 414
Species annihilation . . . means a relatively swift (on the scale of civilization), deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction, and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act that requires a new word to describe it: “omnicide.” It is difficult to comprehend omnicide, but it may be possible to discern the preparations for it, and prevent its happening.
Excerpts follow from the 1991 article (starting 98 lines below) appearing in Ms. Magazine by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, on the no-win situation we, as the curators of Mother Earth, find ourselves in with the man-made radioactive materials created over the past fifty+ years. If we are to be successful in reversing this terminal radioactive poisoning of our home so the seventh generation of human’s yet to-be-born may also enjoy the gift of life and it’s challenges, we MUST inform and educate every person we come into contact with about the true facts of nuclear techonology and it’s lethal and terminal impact on all life on earth for all time.
– ratitor
We are now in a no-win situation with radioactive materials, where it has become acceptable to have cancer deaths, deformed children, and miscarriages. The “benefit,” oddly enough, is not the medical benefit, nor electricity–it is nuclear bombs. The same set of regulations is used for all three industries–energy, medical, and military–and when it comes to the bottom line, the cost benefit ratio is calculated on the basis of preventing a ten-megaton blast on London, Paris, or New York; the final judgment becomes what is needed for “national security.”Now nuclear power proponents have again mounted a synchronized international campaign to push nuclear reactors as a “solution” . . . [T]he reactor is only one small part of the nuclear fuel cycle. It cannot function without the large supporting network of mining, milling, fuel fabrication, enrichment, waste disposal, decommissioning, and the web of transportation linking these steps. Claiming nuclear production of energy is “clean” is like dieting but stuffing yourself with food between meals.
What are the alternatives for industrialized countries? A case study of the Federal Republic of Germany using 120 different energy efficiency improvements demonstrated that the nation could maintain its standard of living with a 70 percent reduction in end-use of energy. A 1983 study at M.I.T. Energy Laboratory in the U.S. concluded that improving energy usage by one percent a year caused no social strain and could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50% by 2050.
Promoting nuclear technology raises false expectations, usurps money better spent in energy efficiency, and substitutes emissions of radionuclides for emissions of carbon dioxide. The intelligent customer will not substitute one pollution for another, but will rather eliminate both by more efficient energy use. . . .
The unmasking of the human species’ terminal illness must involve dealing with violence: personal, family, city, national, and global. Some violence has been renounced, for example, a father’s right to kill his child: but other forms of violence still are seen as “socially useful,” for example, torture, imprisonment, killing children by sending them to war, and of course epidemic violence against women.
If, as a society, we are able to break out of this phase, it will be due to the careful building of a consensus in various social and political groups, which make an impact on the national power structures from within and from without. As they become more international in their thinking and acting, these groups are developing the infrastructure for the global village. Women, who have not become so unnaturally separated from their instincts, need to assume social roles for idea input, facilitating consensus decision-making, and seeing to the equitable implementation of plans and sustainability of the society’s work.
In a special way, women attend to the birthing and dying within society, and we have now turned this concern toward the process of species death–or the birthing of a new way of conducting human affairs that might avert such a death. The inclusion of women and a feminist perspective in the idea, decision-making, and implementation sectors of society is vital for species survival.
This implies for males a general reduction of power over other human beings and a playing down of masculine values, including conflict and violence within nations, workplaces, and families. Although men have always said they go to war for the sake of the women and children, it is apparent that men are willing to hurt or kill women and children in order to go to war, thinking they are serving their nation. There are beautiful aspects of nationalism that we can keep, like customs, language, lifestyle, food. But there is no reason why we need to raise standing armies and kill people who don’t agree with us.
We have much of the infrastructure in place; we have global communication, we have transportation, we know the way to cure most diseases, we have one and a half times as much food as we need for the global population. What we are talking about giving up is the right of a nation to force its own people to kill others, whether internally or externally. That is a very simple thing. Yet if we could do that we could begin to organize on the basis of a global village that would not only respect diversity, but be glad of it, because survival comes from an ability to cope with many changing situations, an ability to share when one part of the world has abundance and another part has need.
Our monoculture is another form of suicide; diversity gives us survival.
