Showing posts with label Radioactive leaks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Radioactive leaks. Show all posts

Sunday, March 2, 2014

APOCALYPSE NOW / FUKUSHIMA


 As Harvey Wasserman expounds ~ Fukushima's missing melted cores and gushing radioactivity continues to fester in secret and speculation on the ultimate impact borders from relatively harmless to intensely apocalyptic. However, it is obvious to all that the impacts of these emissions on human and ecological health are unknown primarily because the nuclear industry has resolutely refused to study them: Allen L Roland

 
As Wasserman explains ~ " This "see no evil, pay no damages” mindset dates from the Bombing of Hiroshima to Fukushima to the disaster coming next … which could be happening as you read this "  so here are some major points to consider as you determine , as I do, that this is indeed Apocalypse Now (courtesy of Harvey Wasserman)

 
1. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), the U.S. military initially denied that there was any radioactive fallout, or that it could do any damage. Despite an absence of meaningful data, the victims (including a group of U.S. prisoners of war) and their supporters were officially “discredited” and scorned

 
2. During and after the Bomb Tests (1946-63), down winders in the South Pacific and American west, along with thousands of U.S. “atomic vets,” were told their radiation-induced health problems were imaginary … until they proved utterly irrefutable.

 
3. By refusing to compile long-term emission assessments, the industry systematically hides health impacts at Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc., forcing victims to rely on isolated independent studies which it automatically deems “discredited.”

 
4. Stack monitors and other monitoring devices failed at  (TMI) Three Mile Island (1979) making it impossible to know how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it impacted and how.

 
5. But some 2,400 TMI downwind victims and their families were denied a class action jury trial by a federal judge who said “not enough radiation” was released to harm them, though she could not say how much that was or where it went. 

 
6. Widespread death and damage downwind from TMI have been confirmed by Dr. Stephen Wing, Jane Lee and Mary Osbourne, Sister Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Sternglass, Jay Gould, Joe Mangano and others, along with hundreds of anecdotal reports.


7. Fukushima’s on-going fallout is already far in excess of that from Chernobyl, which was far in excess of that from Three Mile Island.

 
8. Three Russian scientists who compiled more than 5,000 studies concluded in 2005 that Chernobyl had already killed nearly a million people worldwide. 

 
9. Key low-ball Chernobyl death estimates come from the World Health Organization, whose numbers are overseen by International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations organization chartered to promote the nuclear industry. 

 
10. When Fukushima Units 1-4 began to explode, President Obama assured us all the fallout would not come here, and would harm no one, despite having no evidence for either assertion.

 
11. Since President Obama did that, the U.S. has established no integrated system to monitor Fukushima’s fallout, nor an epidemiological data base to track its health impacts … but it did stop checking radiation levels in Pacific seafood.

 
12. Devastating health impacts reported by sailors stationed aboard the USS Ronald Reagan near Fukushima are being denied by the industry and Navy, who say radiation doses were too small to do harm, but have no idea what they were.

 
13. Though it denies the sailors on the Reagan were exposed to enough Fukushima radiation to harm them, Japan (like South Korea and Guam) denied the ship port access because it was too radioactive (it’s now docked in San Diego).

 
14. The Reagan sailors are barred from suing the Navy, but have filed a class action against Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), which has joined the owners at TMI, the Bomb factories, uranium mines, etc., in denying all responsibility.

 
15. At least 300 tons of radioactive water continue to pour into the ocean at Fukushima every day, according to official estimates made prior to such data having been made a state secret.

 
16. To the extent they can be known, the quantities and make-up of radiation pouring out of Fukushima are also now a state secret, with independent measurement or public speculation punishable by up to ten years in prison.

 
17. Likewise, “There is no systematic testing in the U.S. of air, food and water for radiation,” according to University of California (Berkeley) nuclear engineering Professor Eric Norman.

 
18. No current dismissal of general human and ecological impacts ~”apocalyptic” or otherwise ~ can account over time for the very long half-lives of radioactive isotopes Fukushima is now pouring into the biosphere. 

 
19. As Fukushima’s impacts spread through the centuries, the one certainty is that no matter what evidence materializes, the nuclear industry will never admit to doing any damage, and will never be forced to pay for it .
 

20. Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, warned that it is a form of suicide to raise radiation levels within Earth’s vital envelope, and that if he could, he would “sink” all the reactors he helped develop.  “Now when we go back to using nuclear power,” he said in 1982, “I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and it is important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it.”    See full article: http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/02/50-reasons-fear-fukushima/
 

Check out this brief 8 minute video as PBS takes us on a terrifying 'Post-Apocalyptic' tour inside Fukushima ~ http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/02/pbs-post-apocalyptic-tour-fukushima/
 

Dr Ken Buesseler is a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has examined the waters around Fukushima, makes his assessment of the situation: "It is not over yet by a long shot, Chernobyl was in many ways a one week fire-explosive event, nothing with the potential of this right on the ocean. We've been saying since 2011 that the reactor site is still leaking whether that's the buildings and the ground water or these new tank releases. There's no way to really contain all of this radioactive water on site. Once it gets into the ground water, like a river flowing to the sea, you can't really stop a ground water flow. You can pump out water, but how many tanks can you keep putting on site?"

So there you have it, it's quite likely that we are presently experiencing Apocalypse Now and only future generations will experience and judge the life threatening errors of our ways, regarding nuclear power.

Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/apocalypse-now-fukushima.html
 
 
 
Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and transformational counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations allen@allenroland.com

 
Allen L Roland is also a lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Vermont's Underground Radioactive Lake

VERMONT'S UNDERGROUND RADIOACTIVE LAKE

President Obama's recently announced 8 Billion dollar publicly financed start up of the Nuclear Industry in Georgia, with loan guarentees of 54 Billion, goes in the face of the fact that 25% of America's nuclear reactors are leaking radioactive material with the potential of huge future taxpayer liabilities and bailouts: Allen L Roland

The
Associated Press recently reported that at least 27 of 104 nuclear reactors across the United States are leaking potentially dangerous levels of tritium into the groundwater around the plants ~ which includes Vermont Yankee Nuclear plant. This reactor is evidently pumping large amounts underground under the reactor in badly leaking disintegrating pipes.

Let me show you how this appears to be yet another Wall Street shell game with Obama as the croupier and Main Street picking up both the tab and potential losses ~ courtesy of Vtdigger.org

Entergy, the Louisiana-based energy giant that owns the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, is once again winning applause from Wall Street. The finance industry magazine Institutional Investor lists Entergy as the top electric utility in the country and one of the top nine companies in the nation.
Last week, by the way, J.P. Morgan upgraded Entergy’s stock.

“Industry insiders love Entergy,” said VPIRG Executive Director Paul Burns. “They can’t seem to get enough of the kind of short-term, take-the-money-and-run business model that looks great on the Dow Jones, but that’s what gave us the Enron scandal and, more recently, triggered the largest economic collapse since the Depression.”

On a February 2nd conference call with investors, Entergy CFO Denault told his audience that fourth-quarter cash flow was up $300 million, in part due to “lower working capital requirements.”

Here are the facts , folks.

" Since Entergy bought Yankee in 2002, the aging plant, located in Vernon, Vermont, has suffered a series of mishaps, including a fire, the collapse of a cooling tower, and most recently a tritium leak that has created an underground pool of radioactive water the size of a football field, and at least 30 feet deep. Some of that tritium, which is carcinogenic, has reached the nearby Connecticut River. "
“We’ve seen fires, radiation leaks, and collapsing cooling towers, and now we know Entergy boosted its bottom line by skimping on maintenance at Yankee,”
Burns said. “We’re the ones wondering when the tritium is going to reach our drinking water. We’re the ones being handed a long-term deal for less power at higher costs. We’re the ones who may be on the hook for a large chunk of a billion-dollar cleanup.” Burns noted that Entergy’s “working capital requirements” also do not, apparently, include the decommissioning fund that is supposed to pay for cleaning up the plant. That fund is currently under $500 million, and the estimated cleanup costs are $1 billion. ."
http://tinyurl.com/yf3fqy8

Sound familiar ? Think too big to fail banks and Investment houses as well as Insurance giants and now it's the nuclear Industry's turn to milk the golden cow of the Obama administration's corporate largesse or political handouts ~ and at the expense, once again, of the American taxpayer.

FAIR reports that both ABC and NBC mentioned that the Georgia plant would be the first built in the U.S. in three decades, yet neither gave much of an explanation as to why this would be the case. " But as nuclear power critics have documented for years, the plants have proven to be financial disasters, with severe cost overruns and a general reluctance among investors to foot the bill for projects that are unlikely to be profitable " (Greenpeace, 10/15/08).

Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a longtime critic of the nuclear power industry, told Amy Goodman ( Truthdig, Feb 8, 2010 ) “If you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to 10 times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about 20 to 40 times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas.”

In his 2008 report “The Nuclear Illusion,” Lovins writes, “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.” http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/18

Obama's pledge of multi-billion dollar loan guarantees should cause reporters to wonder why the industry, after decades of experience, needs so much government assistance in the first place ~ unless, of course, we are looking at another Industry corporate and political bailout, which the American taxpayer should immediately reject. Or perhaps, Robert Alvarez, who served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department's secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999, is correct when he ominously predicts that more of the nation’s tapped-out treasure is apparently going to be used for costly nuclear power, and nuclear weapons we don’t need and could never use.

Incidentally, President Obama's Energy Plan as a candidate stated….." there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and [nuclear weapons] proliferation.”

Allen L Roland http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com

This weblog is sustained through donations from people like yourself. Please send check or Money Order to Allen L. Roland, PO Box 1221, Sonoma,CA 95476

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is also available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY