Showing posts with label radiation.. Show all posts

Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Helen Caldicott - interview

"We need to be depressed. People can get through depression. […] People need to be sad, they need to be depressed. They need to get moving and close down all the reactors in America. They need to start getting off their bottoms and moving away from their computers, using their democracy, educating their representatives […] taking over the state house, the congress because you own them. In the vacuum that people leave by not using their democracy in an educated fashion that the corporations step into the vacuum."

---Helen Caldicott

Caldicott: Fukushima to be pouring radioactive water into Pacific “probably for the rest of time… forever more”

“There’s simply nothing anyone can do about it”
“Nuclear industry is covering it up because they know if truth comes out it will be end of nuclear power”

ENEews,

24 March, 2014

At 43:00 in

Dr. Helen Caldicott: There seems to be no end in sight for this dreadful catastrophe. About 300 to 400 tons of radioactive water per day are pouring into the Pacific, have been for the last 3 years, and will continue probably for the rest of time because no one can find out where the molten cores of a hundred of seethingly hot uranium are. No one can get near them because they’re so radioactive, and the water will continue to flow over them, I guess, forever more. I can’t see any other way out of it. [...] I had the same reaction as you when two days after the tsunami and earthquake occurred [...] I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach [...] there is simply nothing anyone can do about it. And people are asking me all the time what can I take, what nutrients can I take? There’s nothing you can take to remove the radioactive elements from your body once you’ve eaten them.

At 46:15 in

Caldicott: We need to be depressed. People can get through depression. […] People need to be sad, they need to be depressed. They need to get moving and close down all the reactors in America. They need to start getting off their bottoms and moving away from their computers, using their democracy, educating their representatives […] taking over the state house, the congress because you own them. In the vacuum that people leave by not using their democracy in an educated fashion that the corporations step into the vacuum.

At 50:00 in

Caldicott: The nuclear industry is covering it up because they know damn well that if the real truth comes out it will be the end of nuclear power.

At 55:30 in

Caldicott: It’s only America that can save the planet, if you rise to your full moral and spiritual height and decide to do it. Nothing else matters, nothing else matters.

Monday, 17 March 2014

The ecology of Chernobyl

Forests Around Chernobyl not decaying properly

It wasn't just people, animals and trees that were affected by radiation exposure at Chernobyl, but also the decomposers: insects, microbes, and fungi

Smithsonian Mag,

14 March, 2014

Nearly 30 years have passed since the Chernobyl plant exploded and caused an unprecedented nuclear disaster. The effects of that catastrophe, however, are still felt today. Although no people live in the extensive exclusion zones around the epicenter, animals and plants still show signs of radiation poisoning.

Birds around Chernobyl have

significantly smaller brains

that those living in non-radiation poisoned areas;

trees there grow slower

; and

fewer spiders and insects

—including bees, butterflies and grasshoppers—live there. Additionally, game animals such as wild boar caught outside of the exclusion zone—including some bagged

as far away as Germany

—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation.

However, there are even more fundamental issues going on in the environment. According to a new study published in Oecologia, decomposers—organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay—have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem.

The team decided to investigate this question in part because of a peculiar field observation. “We have conducted research in Chernobyl since 1991 and have noticed a significant accumulation of litter over time,” the write. Moreover, trees in the infamous Red Forest—an area where all of the pine trees turned a reddish color and then died shortly after the accident—did not seem to be decaying, even 15 to 20 years after the meltdown.

“Apart from a few ants, the dead tree trunks were largely unscathed when we first encountered them,” says Timothy Mousseau, a biologist at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and lead author of the study. “It was striking, given that in the forests where I live, a fallen tree is mostly sawdust after a decade of lying on the ground.”

Wondering whether that seeming increase in dead leaves on the forest floor and those petrified-looking pine trees were indicative of something larger, Mousseau and his colleagues decided to run some field tests. When they measured leaf litter in different parts of the exclusion zones, they found that the litter layer itself was two to three times thicker in the “hottest” areas of Chernobyl, where radiation poisoning was most intense. But this wasn’t enough to prove that radiation was responsible for this difference.

To confirm their hunch, they created around 600 small mesh bags and stuffed them each with leaves, collected at an uncontaminated site, from one of four different tree species: oak, maple, birch or pine. They took care to ensure that no insects were in the bags at first, and then lined half of them with women’s pantyhose to keep insects from getting in from the outside, unlike the wider mesh-only versions.

Mousseau distributing leaf baggies throughout Chernobyl's exclusion zones. Photo: Gennadi Milinevsky

Like a decomposer Easter egg hunt, they then scattered the bags in numerous locations throughout the exclusion zone, all of which experienced varying degrees of radiation contamination (including no contamination at all). They left the bags and waited for nearly a year—normally, an ample amount of time for microbes, fungi and insects to make short work of dead organic material, and the pantyhose-lined bags could help them assess whether insects or microbes were mainly responsible for breaking down the leaves.

The results were telling. In the areas with no radiation, 70 to 90 percent of the leaves were gone after a year. But in places where more radiation was present, the leaves retained around 60 percent of their original weight. By comparing the mesh with the panty hose-lined bags, they found that insects play a significant role in getting rid of the leaves, but that the microbes and fungi played a much more important role. Because they had so many bags placed in so many different locations, they were able to statistically control for outside factors such as humidity, temperature and forest and soil type to make sure that there wasn’t anything besides radiation levels impacting the leaves’ decomposition.

“The gist of our results was that the radiation inhibited microbial decomposition of the leaf litter on the top layer of the soil,” Mousseau says.

This means that nutrients aren’t being efficiently returned to the soil, he adds, which could be one of the causes behind the slower rates of tree growth surrounding Chernobyl.

Stars mark sites where the researchers put the leaf bags, with colors corresponding to levels of radiation. Photo: Mousseau et al., Oecologia

Other studies have found that the Chernobyl area is at risk of fire, and 27 years’ worth of leaf litter, Mousseau and his colleagues think, would likely make a good fuel source for such a forest fire. This poses a more worrying problem than just environmental destruction: Fires can potentially redistribute radioactive contaminants to places outside of the exclusion zone, Mousseau says. “There is growing concern that there could be a catastrophic fire in the coming years,” he says.

Unfortunately, there’s no obvious solution for the problem at hand, besides the need to keep a stringent eye on the exclusion zone to try to quickly snuff out potential fires that breaks out. The researchers are also collaborating with teams in Japan, to determine whether or not Fukushima is suffering from a similar microbial dead zone.

Here is a 2007 documentary about the wildlife of Chernobyl

Chernobyl reclaimed: An animal takeover (2007)

Friday, 7 March 2014

Fairewinds on WIPP

What’s leaking from the

nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot

Program?

Fairewinds

5 March, 2014

Located near Carlsbad, New Mexico this Department of Energy (DOE) experimental nuclear waste dump is attempting to store leftover radioactive plutonium and americium from the US weapons program. On February 14, 2014 there was a nuclear safety failure at the site and the Department of Energy is not being honest about it. In this film Fairewinds Energy Education's Arnie Gundersen pieces together what happened and points out Fairewinds' major concerns about the facility, the accident and the lack of transparency at the Dushanbe, capital of the Central Asian republic of

DOE.

Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Nuclear Hotseat

Nuclear Hotseat #140: NM Radiation Leak Update w/Don Hancock, Dr. Catherine Wind Euler

THE INTERVIEWS:

Don Hancock of Southwest Research and Information Center (www.sric.org) again provides us with on-the-ground information of what’s really going on with the radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Dr. Catherine Wind Euler of Mamabears Against Nukes (https://www.facebook.com/mamabears.againstnukes?fref=ts) goes over radiation basics as applies to the human body.

RadCast’s Mimi German weighs in on the EPA’s pesky air monitors – will they work? will they not work? and Why?!? www.RadCast.org

Chizu Hamada, a businesswoman originally from Japan, has been working to coordinate protest efforts around the world to mark the third anniversary of the start of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. She tells us about the website she created that lists all the known events taking place on and around March

11: http://fukushimathirdanniversaryevents.blogspot.com If your event isn’t listed, contact her through that site to have it added.

To hear podcast GO HERE

Friday, 7 February 2014

Porlland, Oregon

Radcast alert

RADIATION ALERT

http://RadCast.org/

Hot Snow in Portland, OR 142 CPM w/ elevated background at 37CPM from 31. Don't eat the snow!

Wednesday, 5 February 2014

Fukushima update - 02/04/2014

Scientists study kelp radiation levels

Studies of the canopies of kelp off the coast of California were spurred after may traces of radiation from the Fukashima nuclear plant were discovered, according to scientists.

Fox News,

4 February, 2013.

SAN DIEGO –

Scientists said trace amounts of cesium radiation has been identified in the kelp beds linking the nuclear waste to devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

“We are more connected then we ever thought possible,” said Dr. Mathew Edwards a professor at San Diego State University.

Fifty scientists from South, Central, and North America are set to test kelp forests along coastlines of the Pacific Ocean. The study will rely on volunteers from 20 academic and government institutions and will test 33 sites in California, including Long Beach, Malibu and Palos Verdes; two sites in Baja California and one in Washington state.

The sampling is to begin in mid-February and end in late winter.

“I don’t believe there is any health hazard to the public or the environment,” Edwards said. “I’m still eating fish and going in the ocean.”

Fukushima-US radiation runoff will merge on West Coast

Seaborne radiation from Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant will wash up on the West Coast of the U.S. this year.

Telegram,

3 February, 2014

That's raising concerns among some Americans, including the residents of the San Francisco Bay Area city of Fairfax, which passed a resolution on Dec. 6 calling for more testing of coastal seafood.

At the same time, oceanographers and radiological scientists say such concerns are unwarranted, given existing levels of radiation in the ocean.

The runoff from the Japanese plant will mingle with radiation released by other atomic stations such as Diablo Canyon in California. Under normal operations, Diablo Canyon discharges more radiation into the sea, albeit of a less dangerous isotope, than the Fukushima station, which suffered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

"There's a point to be made that we live in a radioactive world and the ocean just has radioactive isotopes in it," said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who forecasts the Fukushima plume will arrive in the U.S. early this year. "People have a limited knowledge of radioactivity."

Leaking Groundwater

At Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Dai-Ichi station, where three reactors melted down after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, about 300 metric tons of contaminated groundwater seep into the ocean each day, according to Japan's government.

Between May 2011 and August 2013, as many as 20 trillion becquerels of cesium-137, 10 trillion becquerels of strontium-90 and 40 trillion becquerels of tritium entered the ocean via groundwater, according to Tokyo Electric.

Cesium isotopes, which emit flesh-penetrating gamma rays, are among the most dangerous radionuclides emitted by the plant, said Colin Hill, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.

Strontium-90, which mimics calcium, increases the exposure risk for humans by remaining in the bones of fish for extended periods. While tritium is less radiologically intense than cesium and passes through fish faster than strontium, it can also contaminate sea creatures that encounter the isotope in high levels, Hill said.

Not Happy

Water exposed to radiation from the Fukushima plant would reach the U.S. at levels at least 100 times lower than the U.S.'s drinking water threshold, Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Allison Macfarlane said at a Dec. 6 briefing in Tokyo.

The assurances haven't eased concerns for some. "I'm terrified," Doreen Jean Dempski, a children's book author, said by phone from her home more than 5,000 miles across the Pacific from Fukushima in Carpinteria, California. "My boyfriend is a surfer and he spends hours a day in the water."

Sharing Dempski's worries are the Fairfax city council, which passed the coastal testing resolution, and more than 127,000 signatories to an online petition calling for a United Nations' takeover of part of the Fukushima cleanup. South Korea has already banned imports of fish from Japan's northern Pacific coast.

Part of the issue is general concern about radiation, and the startling amounts that are released into the environment by the 435 nuclear power plants operating worldwide as of Jan. 3. Measurements that puzzle the public -- becquerels, rems, curies and sieverts -- don't aid transparency. And, worse, scientists disagree on the health risks from low-dose radiation exposure.

Risk Expectations

A report on the Fukushima disaster by the World Health Organization in February last year estimated increased cancer risk for those in the most contaminated areas around the plant, but not elsewhere in Japan. However, the report also notes that better understanding of the effects of low-dose radiation may alter risk expectations from the Fukushima accident.

Less than 100 miles up the coast from Dempski's home, Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon plant in San Luis Obispo discharged 323 million liters of water into the Pacific in 2012, or about 870 tons a day, according to data from the company on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website. That's equivalent to 130 Olympic swimming pools and more than twice the daily amount leaking from Fukushima.

Inadvertent Contact

That water contained 3,670 curies of tritium, or 136 trillion becquerels, according to the company, almost three-and- a-half times the amount released from the Fukushima plant into the ocean in the period starting May 2011. The plant also discharged cesium-137 and strontium-90, though at lower levels than Fukushima.

Diablo Canyon's discharges are regulated by the NRC and the plant complies with its licensing requirements, PG&E spokesman Blair Jones said in an e-mail. Total liquid discharges from Diablo Canyon in 2012 were 0.0165 percent of what the NRC allows, Jones said.

The radioactivity in plant wastewater comes from inadvertent contact between the isotopes and cooling water pumped through nuclear plants.

"Tritium is produced when a reactor is operating," Jones said. "Fukushima is not operating so naturally the tritium levels are lower when compared to Diablo Canyon."

Rick Castello, a San Luis Obispo-based project manager for a technology company, said by phone that he was unaware of the discharges from the nearby nuclear plant. He also harbors concerns about the approaching radiation from Fukushima.

"It's not like I think official sources would be intentionally hiding information from the people," he said by phone. "But sometimes we just don't know."

http://enenews.com/report-fukushima-nuclear-waste-will-merge-with-radiation-from-u-s-plants-when-washing-up-on-west-coast-startling-amounts-released-from-operating-reactors-diablo-canyon-officials-admit-to-r

Colin Hill, associate professor of radiation oncology at USC, Feb. 3, 2014: [Tritium can] contaminate sea creatures that encounter the isotope in high levels.

PG&E spokesman Blair Jones, Feb. 3, 2014: Total liquid discharges from Diablo Canyon in 2012 were 0.0165 percent of what the NRC allows. “Tritium is produced when a reactor is operating [...] Fukushima is not operating so naturally the tritium levels are lower.”

Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Oct. 19, 2013 (at 26:15 in): [The releases are] not continuously monitored. In my opinion, the NRC is not looking very closely over the shoulder of the companies. For instance, tritium is released periodically, but I’m not sure when the measurements are made, and that’s not documented in the environmental reports. Are the water measurements made during the release? How are the averages reported? How are the totals calculated?

Dr. Donald Moiser, professor at The Scripps Research Institute (Department of Immunology) and member of Del Mar city council in California, Oct. 19, 2013 (at 27:15 in): The problem with the data is tritium releases are episodic, so they’ll have a release of tritium one day a month when they report that to the NRC they’ll say this is the amount of tritium we released over the year. You have 5 days of release but you divide that by 365 days it doesn’t look like so much tritium, but if you’re sitting right next to the plant on the day of release, it’s quite a bit. There’s some data from Europe that says the spikes are dangerous. There’s no data in the U.S. that you can interpret.