25 April 2011

Chernobyl Legacy: ~985,000 Prematurely Dead From April 26, 1986 Nuclear Accident (death count will continue to rise over next 20 years at least, with new lung cancers and other cancers still developing, radiation contamination-induced cancers to continue to evolve…)

Tomorrow, April 26, 2011 will mark the 25th Anniversary of what has
been mankind’s worst industrial accident ever, until the ongoing
Fukushima disaster, the Chernobyl nuclear accident commencing with
a steam explosion on April 26, 1986, followed by a ten day graphite
fire. According to Dr. Alexey Yablokov, president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy and former environmental advisor to the late President Boris Yeltsin:

‘The life expectancy in Russia, which had been the same as that of the United States, is now 59 for men and 64 for women, a fact that Dr. Yablokov attributes principally to Chernobyl: “You see longevity dropping precipitously right after 1986 and the accident.”’[*A1]

Dr. Yablokov headed a review of ~5000 studies in non-English
languages including Byelorus, Ukranian, Russian, which is now
available in English in book form – which now you can purchase for
but $10 when the original cost was $150 per copy (see end of
this article/newsletter for how you can get yourself a copy).
From reviewing these studies, Dr. Yablokov et al have evaluated
that, so far, approximately 985,000 people have died prematurely
from the effects of Chernobyl’s radioactive contamination, which
has spread worldwide, as has Fukushima’s.

Does this jive with nuclear power being “safe and clean?”
Or even ‘green’ ???? Fukushima has propelled new perceptions
of nuclear power’s dangers upon the world, besides just the worrying
about our still unfathomed problem of nuclear waste, which has
to be perfectly contained for tens and hundreds of thousands of
years – remember, the thousands of pounds of plutonium that are
produced every year in nuclear plants have a hazardous life of
240,000 – 480,000 years! Just one microgram is the lung-cancer
causing dose. Twenty pounds of the stuff could theoretically
kill every human being on Earth, with the lung cancers typically
taking 20-30 years to develop from inhaling a tiny particle
of plutonium.

Yes, Fukushima has also released plutonium into the atmosphere
from its fuel pool fire(s) and criticality, besides the explosions in reactors 1-3. Then there is all the red hot radioactive water with all the 500-plus radionuclides present that a nuclear reactor fissioning uranium can produce. This radioactive water has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean, spreading its contamination all about the waters of the Earth, and the lands that receive these waters, incorporating them
into the environment, food, plants, animals, and yes, human
bodies and genes. Mutations will result, forever changing our
gene pool, many of these causing birth defects, and non-viable
fetuses that will be released by our women’s wombs as stillbirths
and miscarriages.

But the unfortunate anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster
is now upon us, so let us go back in time. . . to the last century
…25 years ago it was…Early in the morning. Still dark out. April 26, 1986. Over in the northern Ukraine. When that country was still part of the USSR.

Testing was going on at reactor number four at the Chernobyl Atomic
Energy Station. Power output had dropped to 7%, when suddenly it
surged to 100 times 100% of full power in less than one minute!!!
A catastrophic steam explosion occurred that “flipped the reactor’s
massive cap like a coin and left it wedged and hanging askew inside
the ruined reactor. The reactor’s core caught fire, leading to the
largest single non-military radiation release in history.” [*1]

Here is another description from corpwatch.org:

“The nuclear fuel elements ruptured, and the resulting explosive
force of steam lifted off the cover plate of the reactor, releasing
radioactivity into the atmosphere. A second explosion threw out
fragments of burning fuel and graphite from the reactor core and
allowed air to rush in, causing the graphite moderator to burst into flames.”

Just in case it has been drubbed into your brain, NO, Chernobyl was NOT a “meltdown” like many media mouths continue to state. The core did not simply, and more innocuously, just “melt” into the ground. No, explosions occurred, and then the fires.

Estimates vary, but nuclear physicist Dr. Vladimir Chernousenko, who
supervised the clean-up [and subsequently died from cancer] stated “for a 10-kilometer zone around the exploded reactor, 80 per
cent of the reactor’s radioactivity escaped – – something like 7 BILLION curies” out of a possible 9 billion curies. That is an unbelievable quantity of radiation. A food irradiation plant theoretically holds up to 10 MILLION curies of radiation.

Of course, the “Russians and the International Atomic Energy
Agency [IAEA] claimed in a 1986 report that 50 million curies of
radioactive debris, plus another 50 million curies of rare and inert
gases were discharged.”[*2] However, that report was later “condemned as a cover-up.”[*3] Sadly, Soviet authorities cared so much for their people that they “neither officially acknowledged the explosion, nor warned their citizens until May 2, 1986.”[*4]

Meanwhile, “the fire in the reactor core burned for ten days,” continuing to release radioactivity for months afterward.[*5] Yet (from Svetlana Alexievich’s tragic collection of ‘Voices From Chernobyl’):

“They suddenly started having these segments on television, like: an old lady milks her cow, pours the milk into a can, the reporter comes over with a military dosimeter, measures it. And the commentator says, See, everything’s fine, and the reactor is just ten kilometers away. They show the Pripyat River, there are people swimming in it, tanning themselves. In the distance you see the reactor and plumes of smoke above it. The commentator says: The West is trying to spread panic, telling lies about the accident.”[*6]

Soviet authorities took advantage of their people’s ignorance concerning radioactivity. The fact that you cannot see, taste or feel radioactivity contributes to it being kind of unbelievable that it can kill you. Might I ask: Are Americans any better with their knowledge concerning radioactivity than the 1986 Soviets?

And what about the nuclear French, with 78 percent of their electricity produced by 58 nuclear reactors?[*7] In the immediate wake of the Chernobyl explosion, “France, instead of taking precautions like other European countries, had its state television stations issue weather reports indicating that the cloud of radioactivity from Chernobyl had miraculously stopped short at the Franco-German border!”[*8] Amazing how a society or culture, distorted by nuclear power, can have its people sacrificed to
the radioactive gods.

(I know a lot of you think that the French are SO HAPPY with their nuclear power. However, you should know that:

“Even the French are having second thoughts. Less than 31 percent of the French public favor nuclear energy as a response to today’s energy crisis. 54 percent are now opposed to investing 3 billion euros in the construction of a new reactor, while 84 percent favor the development of renewable energy.[*14] But the French are stuck and will be for some time, since they have dug a much deeper nuclear
hole for themselves proportionally than the United States.” The reference noted as *14. www.actu-environnement.com/ae/news/1872.php4 is quoted from Science For Democratic Action Vol 15, No. 2, January 2008, Arjun Makhijani’s magazine).Back at the ole #4 Chernobyl reactor now, slipping into the time machine…

According to Sergei Vasilyevich Sobolev, Deputy Head of the Executive Committee of the Shield of Chernobyl Association:

“There was a moment when there was the danger of a nuclear explosion, and they had to get the water out from under the reactor, so that a mixture of uranium and graphite wouldn’t get into it – with the water, they would have formed a critical mass. The explosion would have been between three and five megatons. This would have meant that not only Kiev and Minsk, but a large part of Europe would have been uninhabitable. Can you imagine it? A European catastrophe.

So here was the task: who would dive in there and open the bolt on the safety valve? They promised them a car, an apartment, a dacha, aid for their families until the end of time. They searched for volunteers. And they found them! The boys dived, many times, and they opened that bolt, and the unit was given 7,000 roubles. They forgot about the cars and apartments they promised – that’s not why they dived. These are people who came from a certain culture, the culture of the great achievement. They were a sacrifice.

And what about the soldiers who worked on the roof of the reactor? Two hundred and ten military units were thrown at the liquidation of the fallout of the catastrophe, which equals about 340,000 military personnel. The ones cleaning the roof got it the worst. They had lead vests, but the radiation was coming from below, and they weren’t protected there. They were wearing ordinary, cheap imitation-leather boots. They spent about a minute and a half, two minutes on the roof each day, and then they were discharged, given a certificate and an award – 100 roubles. And then they disappeared to the vast peripheries of our motherland. On the roof they gathered fuel and graphite from the reactor, shards of concrete and metal.

It took about 20-30 seconds to fill a wheelbarrow, and then another 30 seconds to throw the “garbage” off the roof. These special wheelbarrows weighed 40 kilos just by themselves. So you can picture it: a lead vest, masks, the wheelbarrows, and insane speed.”[*9]

Karl Grossman has documented, with his EnviroVideo interview of Dr. Chernousenko, the madness on the roof, each individual soldier’s run actually lasting up to about 4 to 5 minutes worth of very high level radioactive exposure, from getting onto the roof, loading the wheelbarrow, or just a shovel, and then running it to the edge, where it could be tipped off and dumped over the side, then rapidly as possible exiting the roof.[*10] Many of these men died, or their reproductive organs were severely compromised. Soviet wives, naturally, were averse to have sex with these men for fear that their babies would be congenitally damaged.

From historian Aleksandr Revalskiy: “A while ago in the papers it said that in Byelorus alone, in 1993 there were 200,000 abortions. Because of Chernobyl. We all live with that fear now.”[*11] Of malformed babies, or stillbirths, or children that will tragically develop cancer. Like the boy that was born with “a mouth that stretches to his ears and no eyes.”[*12] Or the girl born, that “wasn’t a baby, she was a little sack…not a single opening, just the eyes…more simply: no pee-pee, no butt, one kidney.”[*13]

What about this, from a “liquidator” who volunteered to help with the clean-up? After doing his deed for the day: “We came home. I took off all the clothes that I’d worn there and threw them down the trash chute. I gave my cap to my little son. He really wanted it. And he wore it all the time. Two years later they gave him a diagnosis: a tumor in his brain….You can write the rest yourself. I don’t want to talk anymore.”[*14] Hmmm, just throwing your radioactive clothes “down the trash chute?” Nice sanitation/radiation practice. And, overall, a terrible anecdote to ponder. Which callous apologists for canceration and nuclear power may scoffingly poo-poo. But whatever you may think, radiation let loose can do such a terrible thing to your child.

And the thyroid gland in your child’s neck is especially susceptible. There are at least 4000 cases of thyroid cancer caused by the Chernobyl accident, that have been verified by “a limited United Nations study.”[*15] The radionuclides of iodine, including iodine-129 with its mind-blowing “half-life” of 1.57 MILLION YEARS, are basically responsible for these thyroid cancers. [”Half-life” refers to how long it takes HALF of a radionuclide’s radioactivity to disappear. Ten to twenty “half lives” need to pass by for a radionuclides’s “hazardous life” to be over.]

Here is a little very personal description from Natalla Yarmolenka of what happened immediately after the Chernobyl explosion, as published in Index on Censorship, Volume One for the year 1996:

“In the first days after the accident, we were light-hearted and trusting, we inhabitants of the contaminated zone. We lived the same lives as before; children played out in the radioactive rain, we ate pies off open stalls, went to the woods, the grown-ups worked in the fields.

I remember that my parents did not take me and my brother to the May Day parade. They felt a parental concern. But no-one warned us about the radioactive rain.

It was on the Sunday. I wanted to plant flowers round our house. And then it started to rain, and that pleased me, because flowers grow better if you plant them and transplant them when it’s raining. My brother ran out to me. We got soaked to the skin, but nevertheless, we got the flowers planted. When we went indoors, our clothes and
shoes were covered with a greenish deposit. My brother explained that the wind and the rain had brought pollen from plants, but we know now that this was not pollen, but the
terrible dust and ash of Chernobyl…

Now I am 17, and for seven years I have been living with thyroid disease….”

Natalla Yarmolenka, eleventh class, Brahin middle school

(If you want to see fantastic photos, and text, re Chernobyl, try
http://www.elenafilatova.com Ms. Filatova is a motorcyclist and photographer who has made many trips into the contaminated zones around Chernobyl, and shares her visions and information with all of us via the internet.)

What about the medical profession, you might ask? What were they doing when all this was going on, and thereafter? Well, unfortunately, it was the repressive Soviet Union, and then it was the nutsy, corrupt Russia and Ukraine and Byelorus, still being so whacko to this very day. Some doctors were thrown in jail, or into psychiatric institutions
in those places, for doing their duty, trying to report radiation-related illnesses and deaths.

New cases of thyroid cancer continue to turn up as the next generations of exposed children, and fetuses, living on contaminated land, ingesting contaminated nourishment, drinking contaminated water, become sick.

Dr. Vladimir Chernousenko, who was also the former head of the Ukrainian Academy of Science, stated that although a 30 kilometer radius [about 18.5 miles] surrounding the Chernobyl plant was eventually evacuated because of contamination, it should have been a 600 kilometer (375 mile) radius. But that would have then included the major cities of Minsk and Kiev, which probably would have made it difficult to accomplish, for political reasons.[*16]

Remember that Byelorus, which is the “country” now, north of Ukraine, [it was also one of the Soviet “republics” in the USSR before the USSR broke up] received the most radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, due to the winds blowing to the north and northwest at the time of the steam explosion. One quarter of all the land there is contaminated
as a result of the disaster for at least 300-600 years.[*17] Mostly with cesium, which has a half life of 30 years. Though Dr. Chernousenko reckoned the contamination actually will last 100,000 years[*18] [don’t forget about the half-lives of plutonium-239 and
iodine-129 being 24,000 years and 15.7 million years respectively, and these having to be multiplied by 10-20 times to get their ‘hazardous lives.’]

As far as how many deaths occurred secondary to the Chernobyl accident, it will surely exceed one millon people. Unfortunately, as you may see from the quote above about the “liquidators,” no scientific tracking was arranged to follow their states of health. Estimates of their numbers alone commonly range around 700,000 individuals up to 830,000. Then there are all the other humans [and animals and plants] affected in contaminated areas, and beyond, who may have unknowingly inhaled some plutonium fallout, for example, in Wales, or even in the USA. Even in Germany, you can see videos of the boars there still being too radioactive to eat at the rate of 20-80%, depending on the season – – and especially the mushroom growth and ingestion, as mushrooms hold radioactivity at very high levels.

Also, be aware that the number of cancers in such accidents of radioactive exposure usually is DOUBLE the number of deaths that occur.

When Dr. Chernousenko was speaking in Austin, Texas back in 1994,
amongst other things he revealed were the following. He was asked
about the Chernobyl reactor’s containment structure. Many nuclear power cheerleaders will repeat the mantra that Chernobyl was an inferiorly designed type of nuclear reactor, and had no containment.

The Soviet reactors at Chernobyl did not have an inferior design,
and they did have a containment structure, Dr. Chernousenko stated.
However, “the force of the explosion at Chernobyl exceeded the
protective capabilities of this containment by at least ten-fold.”[*20]

Also, he told his audience that “Dr. Rosalie Bertell, who participated
in the investigation of the [1979] accident at Three Mile Island, [in Pennsylvania,] can tell you, if a miracle hadn’t occurred, and the hydrogen bubble within that containment hadn’t dissipated, the accident within the United States would be comparable to the accident at Chernobyl. And the containment wouldn’t have been able to protect from these dangers.”[*21]

Are we Americans ready to hear that? Dr. Chernousenko warned us all that “one more nuclear accident could destroy human civilization as we know it.”[*22] Imagine if the already leaking Indian Point Nuclear Plant in Westchester County, bordering on New York City, does a Fukushima or Chernobyl. That could contaminate New York City essentially forever. Besides poisoning and ruining the lives of thirty million people, plus destroying the environment of what is arguably our most important city, our economy could be fatally impacted, taking the rest of the world along with us.

There are approximately 500 nuclear reactors in the world today[*23], and the Obama administration is moving the goalposts toward planting more of them in civilization’s backyards. Plus we are paying subsidies, or government welfare, to an otherwise unsustainable mature industry, that can then use their $20.5 billion gift from the 2005 Energy Act, for example, to dole out money for advertising, propaganda, and political contributions to our governmental representatives to promote nuclear power, and all things nuclear. Until Fukushima occurred, the media we have to watch and listen to seemed to be pushing the development of more and more nuclear plants, without adequate rebuttal. Now most of us cannot blankly accept what we smell as minimalization and baloney about Fukushima and nuclear power in general – which is not going down our gullets or into our brains so easily. Perhaps we are no longer willing to write blank checks financing the nuclear establishment’s deathwalk on the bones and souls of us and our innocent children with our own hard-earned tax money.

Oh, we hear that there could or will be a new generation of “inherently safe” nuclear reactors. And what about the mobile smaller modular nuclear units some maniacs want to sell to anyone, or float about inadequately regulated on barges?? Listen to the words of the late Dr. Chernousenko:
“To construct a safe reactor is practically impossible either here or in Russia…we simply cannot get energy from such enterprises. Because we are dealing with nuclear processes, with uncontrolled reactions, which occur within millionths of a second, and no matter what kind of protection mechanism you design, sooner or later the object must explode and they will. Why were they created at all? When they were
created, constructed, it was understood that they were extremely dangerous, but at that point the physicists were told that they must save the world from Hitler at any cost and as soon as possible. And unfortunately the physicists accomplished this, which they regret to this day.”[*24]

One last statement from Dr. Chernousenko about Ukraine nuclear plants and the data concerning disease and cancer in their surrounding environs, that you may ponder lingeringly – – for you seldom hear about U.S. studies stated so simply and clearly:

“We have conducted studies of the regions around 20 different nuclear plants in my country. In all of these territories we noticed an increase in the breast cancer rate, sometimes an increase of 15% over the normal level. We noticed a growth of anemia amongst children who lived in those areas, cardiovascular diseases, and cataracts. So from this you can conclude that even without the explosion of nuclear weapons there is quite a bit of danger to human lives.”[*25]

And just in case you think everything is under control in Moscow, twenty years after the accident, how about this report:

“Nearly 20 years after Chernobyl, large amounts of radioactive goods are still reaching markets in Moscow from the west of the country and Byelorus. In 2005, some 830 kilograms of radioactive produce were seized by officials at markets in Russia’s capital…Much of this produce consists of mushrooms and berries…all market places have a laboratory that checks goods before sale…[after] removing and treating the goods…[these] are classified as radioactive waste.”[*26]

Clap your hands if you think ALL the radioactive produce flowing into Moscow is detected as above. And what about elsewhere in Russia? And in the other states of the former Soviet Union? And what is being shipped out to the rest of the world? From a crazy country, where
its President Putin wants the G-8 countries to monopolize enriching and reprocessing uranium and nuclear waste, and sell barges that can float on any body of water in the world that have mobile nuclear power plants on them!!!!

Nuclear power for all! Merchandise it. Export it to China and any country that wants to buy up the radioactive curse on itself and its people! Aren’t we worried about terrorists and ambushes? Dirty bombs and the next quartet of airplanes flying into a nuclear plant or four, as the original plan went for September 11th, 2001?[*27]

Remember the basics to keep your mind right about nuclear power:

Each of our 104 nuclear reactors produces those 500-plus radionuclides every day in that super-toxic brew to boil water via radioactivity and fission of uranium. The steam produced turns a turbine that produces electricity. That is what happens inside those ominous plants that Barack Obama and Steven Chu, our Energy Secretary, want to erect much more of, in your neighborhood. Especially if you live in a poor neighborhood that cannot fight such siting.

Plutonium-239, with its 24,000 year half life and 240,000 to 480,000 year hazardous life, can cause lung cancer with just one microgram, one millionth of a gram inhaled into our lung. Each nuclear reactor produces between 400-1000 pounds of plutonium EACH YEAR.

10-20 pounds of plutonium is enough to produce an atomic bomb of the power of those that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan to end World War II in 1945.

While our current president and his corporate cronies push nuclear power as a “renewable” source of energy, remember that about 80% of the uranium used in USA nuclear plants is IMPORTED, just like so much of our oil is.[*28] That may be one excuse for promoting “reprocessing” of nuclear waste, to be shipped into our country, via any means possible, from other countries’ nuclear plants. Remember that “80 percent of the collective radiation dose of the entire French nuclear power industry, and 90 percent of the radioactive emissions and discharges from the British nuclear power program, come from commercial waste reprocessing.” Not to mention the radioactive contamination around the reprocessing plant, with all its additional waste streams and toxic ventings. Around the La Hague reprocessing facility in northern coastal France “consumption of local fish and shellfish, as well as mothers and children visiting the local beaches, have been associated with increased risk of contracting leukemia. A subsequent study verified an increase of leukemia among children under the age of ten within ten kilometers (6.6 miles) of the facility, especially lymphoblastic leukemia.”[*29]

Wind and solar are the real sustainable renewable sources of energy we should have started developing before Ronald Reagan took Jimmy Carter’s functioning solar panels off the White House roof and threw
our hard earned money into nuclear power back in the 1980’s. You should know that we have wind turbines today like the 2.5 megawatt-producing Clipper that can power 675 homes. As an example, if we have four people in your average home on our Hawaiian island of Kauai, just 22 of these wind turbines could produce enough electricity for Kauai’s 58,000 people. Kauai is a very windy island. And a very sunny subtropical place too. Ready to receive both of these two forms of renewable energy.At last report, the price for electricity on Kauai was 30 cents per kilowatt hour.

Check your own utility bill. You probably pay about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, even with the high price of foreign oil. Which may heat your home, but does NOT produce your electricity in most likelihood (less than two percent of USA electricity is produced from oil).

Be aware that physicist David Goodstein of Cal Tech, and author of ‘Out Of Gas,’ has told us that an area in our southwest deserts 80 miles square could produce all the electricity for USA homes. Would you wonder about New Orleans? Have any of us ever asked why we could not start up a solar power center there, with research and development funding helping that terribly wronged city to get going economically?

Germany, Austria, Belgium are phasing out nuclear power. Have you heard about that yet, on your network news? Yes, Germany has scoured the planet to lead the world in solar and wind technology.
And Denmark today generates 25% of all its electricity from wind power. But did you know that of all countries on planet Earth, our own USA now leads the world in deployment of wind power. For
the years 2009 and 2010 we erected 15,000 megawatts of wind turbines! That would equal 4-5 nuclear plants without the radiation, cancer and Fukushima/Chernobyl disaster possibilities.

For we have been called “The Persian Gulf Of Wind” with our states of North and South Dakota alone able to produce 2/3rd’s of our USA electricity needs, with Texas’ winds able to provide the other 1/3rd. Texas is now our number one windpower state. And even George Bush, our most un-environmental president ever, tried to do something right here, helping to improve the electricity grid infrastructure with federal funds and peoplepower.

So, why could our politicians and physicists continue to push nuclear power, even with Fukushima haunting their preachings? What are these people thinking? and who is paying them what?

Helen Caldicott M.D., from her article called “Nuclear Power Is the Problem, Not The Solution” informs us:

“It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.

In the US, where much of the world’s uranium is enriched, including Australia’s, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas [theoretically] responsible
for 50 per cent of global warming.

Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release from leaky pipes 93 per cent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas [CFC] emitted yearly in the US. The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is the
main culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilizes large quantities of fossil fuel at all of its stages – the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20 to 40-year
operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.

Contrary to the nuclear industry’s propaganda, nuclear power is therefore not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential. This is not so.

These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements,
which emit high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm and cause genetic disease. [Then there are the ‘daughter products’ of degeneration of these ‘inert’ gases, including strontium and cesium. Strontium is taken in by the body, mistaken for calcium, and incorporated into bone, next to bone marrow, where it can cause bone cancer and leukemia. Cesium is absorbed and mistaken for potassium, which is the most plentiful electrolyte inside our cells. Both of these radioactive elements have a hazardous life of 300-600 years, for which we have to worry about them, and their ability to cause cancer.]

Tritium, another biologically significant gas, which is also routinely emitted from nuclear reactors is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen composed of two neutrons and one proton with an atomic weight of 3. The chemical symbol for tritium is H3. When one or both of the hydrogen atoms in water is displaced by tritium the water molecule is then called tritiated water. Tritium is a soft energy beta emitter, more mutagenic than gamma radiation, that incorporates directly into the DNA molecule of the gene.

Its half life is 12.3 years, giving it a biologically active life of 246 years. It passes readily through the skin, lungs and digestive system and is distributed throughout the body. [So watch washing dishes, and taking showers in tritiated water – – especially you unfortunate folks out in Godley, Illinois, where SIX MILLION GALLONS of it, at least, have been spilled by your Exelon nuclear plant that now has to supply you with bottled water.]

The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive waste accruing at the 442 nuclear reactors across the world is also rarely, if ever, addressed by the nuclear industry. Each typical 1000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33 tonnes of thermally hot, intensely
radioactive waste per year.

Already more than 80,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools next to the 104 US nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found.”[*30]

Paul Gunter, of Beyond Nuclear in Washington D.C., is concerned that if we attempt to move some of the fuel assemblies, and other components of nuclear waste from our nuclear plants, they may crack and fall apart, causing an accidental release of radiation, and contamination right at the site of the reactor. Some of this waste at some reactors is actually stored not in pools at ground level, but 60-100 feet, in some cases, atop the reactor building itself.

Meanwhile, un-publicized in the media, the Bush administration has helped radioactive metals into “the marketplace.” This is an internationally “harmonized” type of maneuver quietly foisted on the American people in the style of the World Trade Organization’s other “harmonizing” actions, wherein current US laws and regulations can be sabotaged and effectively overruled in the name of “free trade” if they are challenged in WTO court, as three men (usually men, who comprise about 90% of dispute panelists) make the decisions so crucial to our democratic well-being, behind closed doors in secret.

Most of these radioactive metals will come from nuclear power plants, and nuclear weapons making. Some of you may recall that we already rejected such an attempt to de-regulate some of our nuclear waste as “Below Regulatory Concern” or “BRC” to end up in our dumps, zippers, baby strollers, utensils, building foundations, asphalt, etc., back in the early 1990’s. In fact, sixteen USA states currently have laws on the books outlawing such radioactive dumping. But the nuclear industry wants to get rid of its vast amounts of radioactive waste, and doesn’t really care that much about you or me. Not if they just want to dump it by de-regulating and de-monitoring it, and SELLING it!

Another thing you should know about nuclear power plants: In addition, about half of them are so environmentally friendly they suck in and discharge forty MILLION gallons of water PER HOUR!!! That’s why they are situated next to rivers, lakes, oceans and Long Island Sounds. But when the water is discharged back into the river, lake, ocean or sound from this “once through” kind of cooling system, it might be up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than when it came in. Not good for marine and plant life in that body of water. And just being sucked in and “impinged” by the irresistible force from the intake system reportedly kills up to 90% of the victimized marine life at California’s Diablo Canyon reactor. Black and red abalone populations that Californians love, have been reduced to “near obliteration” in the outflow zone surrounding the plant’s discharges, it has been discovered. Though such information was illegally withheld from environmental regulators.

And what about the nightmare of dry cask storage, that Ace Hoffman tells us is unfolding? That these things are not being inspected properly by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC]. That it is highly unlikely they will last the hundreds of thousands of years necessary for hot high level radioactive waste to be safely stored to protect us, and our descendants, and this Earth, with all its other life forms.

More on that later.

And then the dangers of transportation of these casks and nuclear waste, mostly from nuclear reactors. 20,000 to 70,000 shipments by rail and truck and ship through 43 states over the next thirty years to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, with its 33 earthquake faults? Or to the
Skull Valley Goshute native American tribe site, somehow owned by a consortium of six nuclear utilities called Private Fuel Storage (PFS)? Theoretically, “Up to 44,000 tons of high-level waste would be shipped to a scenic stretch of Utah desert…just 45 miles west of Salt Lake City…theoretically [to] make only a “stopover” until the Yucca Mountain high-level waste dump opens.” as reported in The Atomic Watchdog, April 2005. Except scientists have already stated that Yucca Mountain is unsafe and unsuitable to be a repository. Even with the falsification of documents that was revealed.

Ambush by terrorists, anyone? Those are a lot of shipments to secure, many of them having to travel all the way across country. And exposure to this toxic waste is a frightening reality. Just imagine:

Your daughter’s out there by farmer Johnson’s wheat fields, riding her bike with her friends, when this train runs off the railroad tracks. Curious, knowing she’s not really supposed to go too close to the train tracks, the lure of the accident attracts her…With more than a wee touch of trepidation, she and her friends dare each other to see who can come nearest and…if she or any of her pals gets to within three feet of this unshielded waste if it is extruded from its transport cask, she can receive a lethal dose with but TEN SECONDS OF EXPOSURE!

She would die within two weeks, most likely from radiation sickness, with her hair falling out, her immune system crashing, eventually bleeding from every orifice, her body bloating and wasting away at the same time. A horrible death. As many experienced from the atomic bombs dropped upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, 1945.

More information is available here:

http://www.crestofthewave.com/showcase/display.php?RecordID=1144496062

Also, note here about the book ‘Chernobyl – Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, by Alexei V. Yablokov, Vastly B. Nesterenko and Alexey V. Yesterenko.
Consulting Editor: Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger. 327 pages.

Originally published in 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences at $150.00, the right to reprint has been transferred to the authors and is now available for $10.00, plus postage. This includes a separate index that was not part of the original book.

Number of Books Postage Total Cost
One @ $10.00 // $2.77 // $12.77
Five 50.00 // 4.72 // 54.72
Ten 100.00 // 7.45 // 107.45
Etc.!

Please order directly from:

GREKO PRINTING
260 W. Ann Arbor Rd.
Plymouth, MI 48170
734-453-0341 (9 to 5, Mon. to Fri., EDT)

e-mail: TONY@GREKOPRINTING.COM
Include credit card number and expiration date, number of books and address where they are to be sent.

Orders from foreign countries welcome – postage will be additional.

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As we watch events unfold at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan, radioactive nuclides are spreading around the entire northern hemisphere. Prof. Yablokov and his colleagues cite some 5000 studies of wild and domestic animals, birds, fish, plants, trees, mushrooms, bacteria, viruses, and yes- humans – that were altered, some permanently as a result of the Chernobyl radioactive releases. Animals and humans developed similar abnormalities and diseases, including birth defects and cancers. Radioactive releases from Chernobyl continue today – 25 years later. This book documents the never-ending perils from nuclear power, Fukushima the most recent.

Yes, dedicated Fukushima workers are volunteering to help get the radiating nuclear reactors and plant under control. But then some are not willing to work for even $5000 per day because of the very high likelihood of quickly contracting cancer. Radioactive water is emitting 500 rems per hour. 500 rems is a fatal dose of radiation. Video ends with dramatic reading of how workers saved Chernobyl from megaton explosion that might have contaminated Europe forever – excerpt from book 4 paragraphs ‘Voices From Chernobyl’

the link: Fukushima water 5 MILLION times legal limit radioactive contamination Story of workers saving Chernobyl > click on the following link:

there are other videos there that Dr. Miller has recorded for you since March 11,2011, day one of the Fukushima disaster, tsunami, earthquake, etc.

Dr. Miller’s youtube channel is conradmillermd

Relative to Chernobyl and the death toll:
“Radiation health experts working for the National Academy
of Sciences [state that] most cancers that result from radiation
exposure do not develop until 10-20 years after exposure. The highest
incidence of cancer is expected to occur over the next 5-10 years [from 2006], and therefore no accurate assessment of Chernobyl’s overall impact can be made until this period has expired.”[*19]

Know that incineration does NOT destroy radioactivity, or transmute radioactive elements to non-radioactive ones, or innocent ash, or some mystical untoxic vapor – However, some so-called ‘low-level’ toxic nuclear waste is being reclassified as non-radioactive so it can be dumped in your dumps with the diapers and the newspapers. Especially in five dump sites in the state of Tennessee.

See more on this story here on this website at: /?p=157

Also, here are some other sites to check out concerning Chernobyl:

http://www.chernobyl.info/en

http://www.infoukes.com/history/chornobyl/marples/

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=748

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter6.html
This angelfire site has lots of photos that will really get you into
the actual scene there at Chernobyl, photos taken by the motorcyclist
woman who dared and dares to continue riding into forbidden territory
with her trusty, and maybe kinda radioactive camera [by now]. If the above link no workee try then http://www.elenafilatova.com please.

http://www.nirs.org/mononline/mononl.htm
And here is the bestest site of all for all things nuclear. Check out
their various issues of the Nuclear Monitor, which I have referred to
frequently in this crucial post for you all.

And also, honing in on the dirtiest step in the nuclear chain, reprocessing….

http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/reprocessisnotsolution.pdf

And http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/reprocessing/reprocesshome.htm
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Your annotated footnotes are:

[*A1] Karl Grossman, 4 26 2007, page A13, Southampton Press Eastern Edition
[*A2] ‘Money Is The Real Green Power: The Hoax of Eco-Friendly Nuclear Energy’
by Karl Grossman, page 2, Extra! February 3, 2008.
[*A3] ‘The Other Half of the Nuclear Industry’s Power Couple: Christine Todd Whitman’
by Diane Farsetta, 08/27/2007, http://www.prwatch.org/node/6370
[*1]‘Chernobyl: Two Decades Later,’ by Cathie Sullivan, Science For Democratic Action, Volume 14, Number 1, April 2006, page 7.
[*2] ‘How Much Radiation Was Released By Chernobyl?’ Nuclear Monitor 641, January 27, 2006, page 8.
[*3] Ibid.
[*4] Ibid., page 6.
[*5] Op. Cit., ‘Chernobyl: Two Decades Later,’ page 8.
[*6] ‘Voices From Chernobyl’ by Svetlana Alexievich, page 143, published by Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010, in 2005.
[*7] ‘Low Carbon Diet For France,’ by Annie Makhijani and Arjun Makhijani, Science For Democratic Action, Volume 14, Number 2, page 1.
[*8] Op. Cit. Nuclear Monitor #642, page 15.
[*9] Op. Cit., Voices From Chernobyl, pages 131-132 .
[*10] ‘Interview With Vladimir Chernousenko,’ Karl Grossman, Enviro-Video 1994.
[*11] Op. Cit., Voices From Chernobyl, page 170.
[*12] Ibid., page 194.
[*13] Ibid., page 81.
[*14] Ibid., page 40.
[*15] ‘Chernobyl: Two Decades Later,’ by Cathie Sullivan, Science For Democratic Action, Volume 14, Number 1, page 10.
[*16] Op. Cit., Chernousenko, Enviro-Video 1994.
[*17] ‘Voices From Chernobyl’ by Svetlana Alexievich, page 2, published by Picador,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010, in 2005.
[*18] Op. Cit., Chernousenko, Enviro-Video 1994.
[*19] From the US Academy of Sciences, BEIR-5 Report, as annotated in Nuclear Monitor #641, page 7.
[*20] ‘Chernobyl: The True Story by Dr. Vladimir Chernousenko,’
Synthesis/Regeneration 10 [Spring 1996]
[*21] Ibid.
[*22] Op. Cit., Chernousenko, Enviro-Video 1994.
[*23] Actually ‘according to the IAEA PRIS database, as of January 1,
2007, 435 nuclear power reactors [are] in operation, 29 under
construction, 6 in long term shutdown.’ ‘Most of 435 reactors
are 20-30 years old, only 35 reactors went into operation in
the last 10 years, and 100 reactors are over 30 years in operation.’
No nuclear reactor has ever operated for 40 years or longer,
yet the Bush administration wants to ’streamline’ reactor approval, removing public input for licensure, for 40 years of operation. And they are talking about extending that to 60 years! Nuclear Monitors #651, page 5.
[*24] Op. Cit., ‘Chernobyl: The True Story.’
[*25] Ibid.
[*26] ‘Radioactive Produce still arriving at Moscow’s markets,’
Nuclear Monitor #641, January 27, 2006, page 10.
[*27] ‘U.S. Nuclear Reactors – Al Qaeda’s Original Target,’ WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor, #573 — North American Edition, September 13, 2002, page one.
[*28] ‘Uranium Prices to Skyrocket,’ Nuclear Monitor #642, February 24, 2006, page 15.
[*29] ‘The Dangers of Reprocessing,’ WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor #643, page 7.
[*30] ‘Nuclear power is the problem, not a solution,’ by Dr. Helen Caldicott, http://www.ippnw.org 13 April 2005.
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Copyright 2011 Conrad Miller M.D.