Friday 16 August 2013

The legacy of Fukushima


From Mike Ruppert -

Gary Stamper was Carolyn Baker's guest on the LIFEBOAT HOUR two weeks ago. This is dead, spot on, not exaggerated and totally consistent with all the scientific dots I've been bringing to you since the quake.

Read this carefully. Read all of it. And then add it to the interview I did with Guy McPherson on last week's show




At the Very Least, Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over
by Gary Stamper



15 August, 2013



The heart-breaking news from Fukushima just keeps getting worse…a LOT worse…it is, quite simply, an out-of-control flow of death and destruction. TEPCO is finally admitting that radiation has been leaking to the Pacific Ocean all along. and it’s NOT over….

I find myself moving between the emotions of sorrow and anger.

It now appears that anywhere from 300 to possibly over 450 tons of contaminated water that contains radioactive iodone, cesium, and strontium-89 and 90, is flooding into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daichi site everyday. To give you an idea of how bad that actually is, Japanese experts estimate Fukushima’s fallout at 20-30 times as high as as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings in 1945

There’s a lot you’re not being told. Oh, the information is out there, but you have to dig pretty deep to find it, and you won’t find it on the corporate-owned evening news.

An MSNBC article in April of 2012 reported that seals and polar bears were found to have “external maladies” that consisted of fur loss and open sores, obvious signs of radiation burns from the Fukushima meltdown, despite the conclusions of the article.

Fukushima radiation appears to be causing an epidemic of dead and starving Sea Lions in Californis and the FDA has refused to test for radiation

Since the summer of 2011, U.S. scientists have observed several dozen living and dead Pacific Ocean marine mammals with a strangely similar condition of skin sores and hair loss. These animals may be suffering from ‘beta burns,’ which are caused by significant external exposure to ‘beta emitters’ such as radiostrontiums, which were released in copious quantities to the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011

.Almost a third more US West Coast newborns may face thyroid problems after Fukushima nuclear disaster

Contaminated water from Fukushima reactors could double radioactivity levels of US coastal waters in 5 years — “We were surprised at how quickly the tracer spread”


IS THE PACIFIC OCEAN FOOD CHAIN DOOMED? – May 2013 – Incredibly worrisome levels of cesium, including short-lived radioactive cesium-134, have been found near Hawaii in the LOWEST part of the marine food chain: plankton. Levels up the food chain, i.e. fish, whales, seals, due to bioaccumulation, MUST be magnitudes higher in contamination now or soon – stop eating Pacific wild seafood now – Researchers find high cesium in some Pacific plankton

SEAFOOD LOVERS ACROSS THE WORLD – The ‘levels’ of radiation in the seafood you are eating now and in the future certainly contain Fukushima radiation but will be considered ‘safe’ by government scientists. Let’s boil it down quickly: Scientists say the only safe level of radiation is zero. YET, governments set ‘limits’ for radiation in food well above zero. These limits actually increase every decade or so. If you love nuclear power and nuclear weapons complexes, then you should accept these limits as well as the fact that a fraction of our cancer epidemic is blamed on nuclear emissions. If you don’t want people (or yourself) to die of cancer to preserve nuclear power and nuclear weapons, then you should heed the scientific consensus conclusion that the safe level of radiation is zero becquerels of anything. Unless you are a nuclear nut, please protect your own health and regulate your genetic stability for the sake of your children, grandchildren, etc…by NOT EATING SEAFOOD OR CONSUMING ANYTHING MADE IN THE SEA. Learn more about food safety.

KEYPOINTS ABOUT FISH CONTAMINATION

Bluefin tuna will grow in radioactivity over years with each migration back to West Pacific; older caught fish will be hotter

Media is neglecting March (2012) lab study find that North Pacific albacore ‘tuna fish’ has same Fukushima cesium contaminant

All Pacific migratory fish are probably Fukushima contaminated – why isn’t this all over Twitter?

Alaska Halibut also found with same Fuku-cesium contaminant – but did not migrate to Japan’s waters. How did cesium-134 get into Alaska halibut?

Bluefin tuna in 2012 study aren’t all equally radioactive; sample #8 contained 50% higher cesium concentrations than the average of the 15 samples

Bluefin scientists did a most non-stellar job. They cherrypicked isotopes for dose comparison.

FDA is telling media and consumers it is ‘testing fish.’ It is testing imports and not testing U.S.-caught wild seafood (billions of pounds caught annually in U.S.) More

Cesium-134 is marker for strontium-90 – causes bone cancer and immune-disorders; babies are ‘sponges’ for calcium and strontium

Levels in bluefin tuna are similar to record food concentrations in 1960s

ECRR (Busby) predicts ’61,600,000 deaths from cancer’ (and 3.5 million baby deaths) ‘from the nuclear project since 1945,’ mostly the 1960s.

Bulk of 1960s exposure was internal, largely from ingested FOOD made radioactive from hydrogen bomb test fallout.

FDA saying levels are safe is a lie. FDA says its intervention levels will kill people. Downplays risk as ‘small’ compared to our ~40-50% cancer rate. But much of that rate is prolonged fallout effects from 1960s.

Baseline levels of manmade-radionuclides in Pacific seafood pre-Fukushima caused some genetic defects and cancers in world population

FDA uses faulty dose calculations that lowball rate of cancer carnage by several magnitudes. Genetic harm from cesium’s gamma rays ignored in dose models

Alvarez asks would a 1950′s NPR ‘trivialize’ ‘impacts of open-air hydrogen bomb testing?’ You bet. Our government and media is herding us into rail-cars destined for another radioactive holocaust.

Dr. Helen Caldecott Warns West Coast Americans of Contaminated Fish and Surf
  • from video of her speaking on March 22, 2012 – see Youtube video segment beginning at about 1 minute 20 seconds:



There’s a hell of a lot [of debris] coming towards you. Huge, huge amounts. Because you saw the tsunami come in and take it out. And, of course, some radioactive fallout will have fallen on that, but I’m much, much more worried about the radiation in the ocean.


Woods Hole has said that it’s far more than Chernobyl ever was; [they've] never seen or contemplated anything like this and it will be reaching you quite soon I think in the ocean currents and the fish.

And the fish swim 1000s of miles. The EPA is not testing your fish caught on the West Coast. You should be testing your fish routinely.I would be very cautious about…I don’t know how long it takes for the fish to get here. It’s already been a year.

The fish will be radioactive and I don’t think I’d be surfing.”

What is the greatest threat to humanity? We are, of course….and our technology. Like a dangerous weapon in the hands of a child, technology has overtaken our capacity to control potential consequences.  Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, led by director Nick Bostrom, says we have entered this new kind of technological era that we have no track record of  surviving.

Our technological intelligence may have the potential for creating a better world, but so far, in areas of the economy, genetics and biologics, arms and warfare, security and surveillance, as well as the environment and energy, technology is also completely indifferent to the law of unintended consequences.

Fukushima is what happens when we have the moral responsibility of infants and the technology of adults.


12 comments:

  1. Everyone needs to take a serious chill pill over this. The spread of radioactive waste over millions of square kilometers of incredibly deep ocean is negligable.

    As someone who has visited Chernobyl (2009) and the tour guide was one of the mathematicians who plotted the spread of radioactive material, the common theme was that the threat was no where near as bad as what was broadcast. The power plant itself remained active for another 16 years, and the entire area is now one of Europes largest nature reserves. Thyroid cancer, as expected was higher in children, but there were no mass deaths, and with even the limited resources of the Ukraine, this was very contained.

    Fast forwards to Japan, and any reading out of the ordinary is instantly media fodder, rightly or wrongly.

    And here we have a small amount of material spreading out over millions of square kilometers, and we think we cant eat the seafood anymore.

    Grow up.

    As if that would stop us anyway... but thats another story.

    And yes, I am happy to put my name to this. Julian Garrett, and I was regional design manager for Ericsson 2009 in Donestk.

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  2. I fail to understand how being a regional design manager for Ericsson 2009 in Donestk.

    gives you greater credibility than the likes of Arnie Gundersen, Chris Busby, Helen Caldicott and others - so why should I believe YOU rather than other voices?. This is NOT a media beat-up - I can assure you of that - in fact most of the truth about this is being either silenced or (now) downplayed by the media.

    I don't need to grow up thank you!

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  3. Ahhh. I had the (un)fortunate responsibility to represent a new mobile company (guess which one) about the effects of both Ionising and Non-Ionising (ie. nuclear vs mobile radio) radiation in pleadings to local government about cellphone towers.
    Many things came out. New Zealand AM radio has been pumping out thousands of times more powerful transmissions than is allowed by cellphone towers, more powerful by far than anything Fukushima has released, continuously, since 1940 or so. Where? Titahi Bay.

    I am a supporter of your site - I read it all the time for a LOT of good news, but as a governmental level expert witness that has represented the commerce commision, I would like to make it quite clear that the dispersal of this material over the vast area of the pacific ocean poses negligable threat.

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  4. Sorry, I didn't mean "good news", I meant a good source of news...

    Phrasing all out there...

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  5. It's bad, and I'm not sure about sea food across parts of the Pacific but this article is a bit of a reality check for at least some of the wild speculation that is floating around. It's not good news for those living near Fukushima within 1km of the coast there but it doesn't seem like it's a big deal for the Pacific Ocean in general. Not that it couldn't get worse, of course.

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  6. Having read critically and extensively on Chernobyl (both scientific and ethnographic sources) and concluded that the IAEA is guilty of a huge cover-up there, I would still treat the alarming claims of this post with some care.

    Claims about seals, sea-lions, walruses and polar bears suffering gamma-radiation burns are probably incorrect, given that when tested, the seals contained normal levels of radiation similar to what was found in seals in the mid-1990s.

    The plankton off Hawaii was measured as containing up to 10.5 Bq/kg of radioactive loading; this probably constitutes a relatively low risk. To put this in perspective, Sweden had legal limits of 300 Bq/kg for foods, prior to Chernobyl. After Chernobyl, these limits were successively raised until some foods such as reindeer (eaten by most people only on special occasions) now have a legal limit of 10,000 Bq/kg. This is probably far too high, but even by the more conservative measures, 10.5 Bq/kg is not huge.
    As we move up the food chain, bioamplification will result in greater concentrations of radionuclides, so we may see a ten- or even hundred-fold increase by the time we get to large sharks and the like. I would avoid eating large fish (they tend to contain a lot of mercury anyway), but I wouldn't necessarily swear off smaller fish, as long as they're sustainably fished (see Greenpeace's guide) and not fished too far north of NZ.

    I think the ECRR link is very good and very useful. I have a high regard for Yablokov and Busby, and consider their information far more accurate than the IAEA, WHO and other UN bodies, who are all required to conform to whatever the IAEA says.
    I think Japan is in big trouble. Their land, their groundwater, their ocean, all horribly contaminated. But we are a long way from Japan, and the sea has a huge volume of water for all the nasties to diffuse into. If the fuel from the beleagured power plants can be retrieved or contained, then yes, we'll all be exposed to slightly higher risks of cancer, but hopefully much less than what the Welsh, for example, were exposed to following Chernobyl. We are probably too far away for any appreciable iodine risks (read: thyroid problems) because of its short half-life and the largely separate weather systems of north and south hemispheres. Caesium and Strontium will be round much longer (both having half-lives of around 30 years), but hopefully the sea is voluminous enough that concentrations will never get that high.

    I guess my concern is what will happen if the fuel just continues releasing radiation unchecked, because there's a hell of a lot of fuel there; it could go on for a very long time. If it does, the results will really depend on the manner in which the radionuclides accumulate in the environment.
    Strontium readily substitutes for calcium in bones, shells, exoskeletons and corals, and so could end up collecting as strontium carbonate on the deep sea-floor, joining a layer of future limestone. That'd be great if it did that. Caesium tends to substitute for potassium, and I really don't know what this would do. Some would accumulate in muscle tissue, especially in large fish, but would the majority remain diffused in the water or would it all tend to be recycled back into the food chain?

    In short, yes it's very alarming and a horrendous tragedy, especially for the Japanese, but I am not yet assuming the worst for us here in NZ. Let's not build any more nuclear power plants, though, OK?

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  7. ...And my other concern, of course, is what will happen if they don't manage to keep all that fuel cooled, and we get melt-down and steam explosion or the like, and have masses of fallout material thrown into the air. It's incredibly dangerous stuff, especially the MOX fuel in reactor 3.
    TEPCO say they have a plan to start removing fuel to safe storage, possibly starting in 2020. We'll see.

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  8. Oh, and I've just discovered that the map shown at the top has nothing to do with radiation. It is the tsunami wave-height in centimetres, from the tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
    There is real cause for concern around Fukushima -- I have real, grave concerns. But I fear that poorly-checked articles like this will tend to discredit those concerns, by tarring anti-nuclear activism with the loony-fringe brush.

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  9. Well said, Ben. We've been imagining all sorts of horrors for all sorts of events for years. None have played out the way any doomer thinks they would have. Many doomers are giving sensible doomers a bad name and it just detracts from the message. It's like the boy who cried wolf.

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  10. Thanks for your considered thoughs Ben. The only thing is that you might be right, apparently about the map (see the comments on the original article) but you might like to look at this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eh4nBVJTsw

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  11. Sofistek - You might be right about economic collapse, but my feeling was, about Fukushima, as ZH said the conspiracy theories have been shown to be true. We were told that all was 'under control' but now we are learning that the worst prognostications of Busby, Gundersen and others are coming to pass. The chiickens are coming home to roost. BTW Who or what is a "sensible" doomer? - (sounds like an oxymoron to me)

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  12. @seemorerocks:
    Yes, I saw that youtube video. That was the video Gary Stamper claimed "appears to be the latest map ... showing radiation in the Pacific up until March 2012". He posted the link to that video in response to someone pointing out that his colour map of the ocean was misleading, and he said "what do you suppose an updated map to August 2013 – 17 months later – might look like? I think I’ll stand by the representation shown in the article."

    In fact, this video is still not quite what Stamper thinks it is. It shows projected dispersal patterns of fish larvae, algae and planktons from the area near Fukushima, but doesn't make any assumptions about levels of radiation.

    It seems Stamper is consistently failing to critically evaluate his evidence. I would look for a different source of news.

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