Nuclear Power/Radiation

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Time lapse map of every nuclear explosion ever on Earth

By Isao Hashimoto

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

Source: Isao Hashimoto

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US Gov’t: Alaska island “appears to show impacts from Fukushima” — “Significant cesium isotope signature” detected — Scientists anticipate more marine life to be impacted as ocean plume arrives | ENENEWS

FukushimaDaiichi-BeforeAfter-288Amchitka Island, Alaska, Biological Monitoring Report 2011 Sampling Results
September 2013: To determine what [Fukushima Dai-ichi’s] direct release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere might have contributed to the background radiation on Amchitka and Adak Islands, semiquantitative gamma spectrometry measurements were made […] The results imply that Dolly Varden [a type of fish], rockweed, and to a lesser extent, Irish lord [a type of fish] appear to contain a significant cesium isotope signature from Fukushima Dai-ichi. The estimated 134Cs/137Cs activity ratios in pooled fauna samples at the time sampled ranged from <30 to about 60 percent. Observations of Fukushima-derived fallout impacting on this region are supported by findings of elevated levels of 134Cs (and 137Cs) in lichen and soil collected from both the Adak and Amchitka regions. […]

Lichen sample from mid-2011 expressed in picocuries/kilogram — Lichen on  the island had less than 70 pCi/kg of Cs-137 in 1997.

Department of Energy:
Biological Monitoring at Amchitka Appears to Show Impacts from Fukushima Dai-ichi Incident […] The U.S. Department of Energy Office Legacy Management (LM) has a long-term stewardship mission to protect human health and the environment from the legacy of underground nuclear testing conducted at Amchitka Island, Alaska, from 1965 to 1971. […] Atmospheric monitoring in the United States showed elevated cesium activities shortly after the [Fukushima] nuclear incident. LM scientists anticipated that atmospheric transport of cesium would potentially increase the cesium activities in the 2011 biological samples collected near Amchitka. Because cesium-134 has a relatively short half-life of 2 years and indicates leakage from a nuclear reactor, it is a clear indicator of a recent nuclear accident […] Because the Amchitka 2011 sampling event occurred soon after the Fukushima nuclear accident, the biota impacted by atmospheric precipitation showed the greatest impact (e.g., species that live in freshwater or shallow ocean waters) when compared to marine biota living in deeper water. This is because ocean currents are a slower transport process than wind currents. LM scientists anticipate that the marine biota will show the impacts of Fukushima during the next sampling event, currently scheduled to occur in 2016. […]

Source: ENENEWS

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Is Humanity Bent on a Path Towards Total Species Extinction? | Waking Giant News Service

By John David Van Hove, Editor
Waking Giant News Service

“The splitting of the atom changed everything – save man’s mode of thinking, thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.” – Albert Einstein

FukishimiFalloutGiven the arrogance and hubris of modern civilization after the nuclear core meltdown and release of extremely high amounts of dangerous radiation from the cooling rods of the badly damaged Fukishima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan, a sad realization came loud and clear – humanity is pathologically bent on a path to total species extinction, not only of other living creatures, but of our own human race.

Remember this – extinction is a total waste of time!

This, my friends, is not the first wake-up call, but it may very well be the last.

NUCLEAR AGE

The nuclear age began on August 6th – 9th, 1945 after the Manhattan Project developed the bomb in secret. These dates marked the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000 – 166,000 in Hiroshima and 60,000 – 80,000 in Nagasaki.

Since that fateful day nine nations have engaged in the nuclear arms race with the dominant nations being the United States and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union). There are currently nearly 8,000 active nuclear warheads and more than 22,000 total nuclear warheads in the world. That’s enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth hundreds of times.

THREE-MILE ISLAND

Since that fateful day we’ve had a core-meltdown of Three Mile Island on March 28th, 1979 near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the United States with the release of at least 2.5 million curies of radioactive gases and 15 curies of iodine-131.

“In the nuclear age, six minutes away, from perpetual annihilation.” – Beyond War

CHERNOBYL

According to a report published by the New York Academy of Sciences, more than 1,000,000 people were killed as a direct or indirect result of the Chernobyl disaster on April 26th, 1986 in Russia with 40% of Europe is still contaminated with radiation 25 years later. Over 20,000 people have developed thyroid cancer. Turkish food exports are still extremely radioactive. Don’t buy food from Europe!

FUKISHIMA

The total radiation releases from Fukishima disaster are many times worse than Chernobyl and presently radiation levels near the site are off-the-charts (in other words a Geiger counter cannot read doses that high). According to a recent analysis by Dr. Helen Caldicott, M.D. with Physicians for Social Responsibility in each core there is as much long-lived radiation produced as there is with ONE-THOUSAND Hiroshima sized bombs.

NUCLEAR POWER & RADIATION

As Einstein said, “Nuclear energy is ONE HELL of a way to BOIL WATER.” When you fission Uranium in a nuclear power plant over 200 new elements are formed, all of which are much more poisonous to the body than the original Uranium.

Uranium is poisonous enough and has been used on the ground in both Fallujah and Baghdad during the Iraq war and has resulting in gross deformation of over 80% of the babies born in that region. Doctors are telling women not to have babies anymore. Cancer rates in children have risen 12 times.

Uranium persists in the environment for over 4.5 billion years. Western powers and the United States are contaminating the cradle of civilization. This is nothing short of genocide and solid evidence of a nuclear war being conducted on the ground in Iraq.

HEALTH EFFECTS OF RADIATION POISONING

In nuclear power plants there are numerous contaminants and isotopes being generated some of which last seconds and others persist for billions of years. Radioactive Iodine lasts six weeks and is stored in the thyroid gland. If ingested it causes thyroid cancer thus saturating the thyroid with Potassium Iodide or another iodine supplement prevents the radioactive Iodine from being absorbed. Strontium 90 has been released and will persist for 600 years. It is absorbed in the bones where bone cancer or leukemia develops. Cesium-137 lasts for 600 years and it still persists all over Europe since Chernobyl.

One of the most deadly radioactive contaminants is Plutonium. If you inhale 0.000001 Gram of Plutonium you’ll develop cancer. Hypothetically 454 Grams, or 1 Pound if evenly distributed, could give everyone on Earth cancer. Each nuclear reactor has 250,000 Grams, or 250 Kilograms of Plutonium. You only need 2.5 Kilograms to make a nuclear bomb. As a result of the radiation release from Fukishima, Japan, Plutonium is going to get out and spread all over the Northern Hemisphere. Also released is Radioactive Iodine-129 with a half-life of 17 million years, Strontium 90, Cesium-137, Tritium, Americium-241, etc., etc., etc

NUCLEAR FALLOUT

When it rains over North America the radioactive fallout comes down to Earth and lodges itself in the food supply which concentrates and accumulates until we intake it at the top of the food chain. You cannot see, taste or smell radioactive poisons in your food. Radioactivity is a silent, persistent and patient killer. All radiation is damaging and accumulative. This doesn’t mean you drop dead immediately upon intake, it could take 5 – 60 years before a cancer develops.

Radioactive waste from these nuclear power plants which has been stored underground and in tens of thousands of leaking barrels for the last fifty years will induce epidemics of Cancer, Leukemia and Genetic disease for the rest of time. Imagine 12,000 semi-truckloads of radioactive waste being transported all over North America over the next 12 years and landing at Hanford for permanent storage.

This is by far the largest public health hazard the public has ever witnessed, yet most remain solidly in denial of the consequences of nuclear power left untamed and the waste unaddressed. This is the single-most threat, short of nuclear war, to the continuance of the human species and life on Earth.

Source: Waking Giant News Service

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Fukushima Debacle Risks Chernobyl ‘Dead Zone’ as Radiation in Soil Soars | Bloomberg

By Yuriy Humber and Stuart Biggs

Radioactive soil in pockets of areas near Japan’s crippled nuclear plant have reached the same level as Chernobyl, where a “dead zone” remains 25 years after the reactor in the former Soviet Union exploded.

Soil samples in areas outside the 20-kilometer (12 miles) exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant measured more than 1.48 million becquerels a square meter, the standard used for evacuating residents after the Chernobyl accident, Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan, said in a research report published May 24 and given to the government.

Radiation from the plant has spread over 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), according to the report. The extent of contamination shows the government must move fast to avoid the same future for the area around Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant as Chernobyl, scientists said. Technology has improved since the 1980s, meaning soil can be decontaminated with chemicals or by planting crops to absorb radioactive materials, allowing residents to return.

“We need to finish this treatment as quickly as possible, within three years at most,” Tetsuo Iguchi, a specialist in isotope analysis and radiation detection at Nagoya University in central Japan, said in a telephone interview. “If we take longer, people will give up on returning to their homes.”

Soil Samples

Soil samples showed one site with radiation from Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter about 25 kilometers to the northwest of the Fukushima plant, according to Kawata’s study. Five more sites about 30 kilometers from Dai- Ichi showed radiation exceeding 1.48 million becquerels per square meter.

When asked to comment on the report today, Tokyo Electric spokesman Tetsuya Terasawa said the radiation levels are in line with those found after a nuclear bomb test, which disperses plutonium. He declined to comment further.

Japan’s government introduced a mandatory exclusion zone 20 kilometers around the plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that knocked out power leading to three reactor meltdowns. Kawata’s study didn’t include samples from inside the exclusion zone, where only government and Tokyo Electric staff may enter.

The government in April ordered the evacuation of towns including Iitate, Katsurao and Namie that are outside the 20- kilometer zone after finding high levels of radiation.

‘As Soon As Possible’

“Basically, the way in which the current zones have been drawn up aren’t a concern in terms of the impact on health,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. “Using Mr. Kawata’s report as a guide, we want to do what we can to improve the soil, so people can return as soon as possible.”

While the area containing soil pockets over 1.48 million becquerels a square meter is smaller than around Chernobyl –600 square kilometers compared with 3,100 square kilometers — the level of contamination means soil needs to be cleaned or removed before residents can return, Kawata said in his report.

“It might take about one or two years for people to return to land outside the 20-kilometer zone,” the University of Nagoya’s Iguchi said. “If we replace the soil, it is possible for people to return even inside the zone.”

The “dead zone” around Chernobyl remains at 30 kilometers, Mykola Kulinich, Ukraine’s ambassador to Japan, said in Tokyo on April 26, the 25th anniversary of the disaster.

Chernobyl Fallout

Belarus, which absorbed 80 percent of the fallout from the Chernobyl explosion, estimates that 2 million, or 20 percent of the population, was affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe, while about 23 percent of the country’s land was contaminated, according to a Belarus embassy website. About a fifth of the country’s agricultural land has been rendered unusable, which means some $700 million in losses each year, according to the website.

Using crops was one solution being considered by Belarus with the idea that grains harvested from contaminated areas could then be processed to make ethanol. A study funded by a philanthropy arm of Heineken NV (HEIA) found that radioactive elements do not transfer into ethanol and this would allow Belarus to become a major supplier of the liquid used to dilute gasoline to the European Union.

Crop planting was planned in areas of “low-level” radiation, Michael Rietveld, chief executive officer of Ireland’s Greenfield Partners, which agreed with the Belarus government in 2007 to develop an ethanol business project to decontaminate the soil, said in an interview October 2009.

Crop Planting

“There are cows walking over this land now,” Rietveld said in reference to Belarus. “People are living over there. It’s not a dangerous venture to use crops in low-contaminated areas. Most of the contamination is in the soil not the air.”

The global financial crisis hampered Greenfield’s fund raising and the project closed last year after the Belarus government expressed concerns about the Irish company’s ability to attract financing.

Another solution for Fukushima may be chemical treatment of the soil to allow cesium to be absorbed into porous crystals, such as zeolite, which are more visible and simpler to remove, the University of Nagoya’s Iguchi said.

Restoring the land may be more critical in Japan than Belarus, where the population density is about 46 people per square kilometer, according to United Nations data. That’s more than seven times less than the metric for Japan, where 127.6 million people live on about 378,000 square kilometers.

Road Map

Restoring land use in Fukushima hinges on Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, ending the crisis at the nuclear station, where three reactors went into meltdown following the earthquake and tsunami that also left more than 23,000 people dead or missing.

The utility on April 17 set out a so-called road map to end the crisis in six to nine months. Tepco said it expects to achieve a sustained drop in radiation levels at the plant within three months, followed by a cold shutdown, where core reactor temperatures fall below 100 degrees Celsius.

The chance of Tepco achieving that goal is six or seven out of 10, William Ostendorff, a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee earlier this week.

Tepco has yet to decide how to deal with the plant site, Megumi Iwashita, a spokeswoman for the company said on May 26.

The most cost-effective solution may be to allow the cesium to move down into the soil to decay, Kathryn Higley, a radiation health physicist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, said in a telephone interview. Cesium has a half-life of about 30 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“They’re going to make decisions on an acre-by-acre basis as to what’s going to happen to these facilities,” she said. “The area around Chernobyl is now a nature park. When you move 100,000 people out of an area, nature does pretty well.”

Source: Bloomberg