The World is Powerless Against Fukushima Fallout

March 8, 2012

 

Originally published at New America Media.

by Yoichi Shimatsu

A year on, the Fukushima nuclear disaster has reached far beyond Japan
as an encroaching threat to human health everywhere and to the very
existence of life on Earth. As the fallout goes global, there’s nowhere
to run or hide since even tiny dosages in rainwater and the food chain
have a cumulative effect.

In high-tech societies under constant
exposure to radiation from medical scanners, security systems, telecom
devices and consumer electronics, nearly everyone is teetering at the
brink of the cancer abyss. The slightest exposure to dust from Fukushima
is a ticket to an early exit.

Despite new admissions of a
cover-up from high officials and an independent investigation in Japan,
governments and the nuclear establishment continue to deny or downplay
the immense dangers posed by atmospheric fallout and sea dumping from
the Fukushima meltdowns. An accurate reckoning of the danger to public
health worldwide is not being discussed because governments are
powerless against the nuclear monstrosity they created.

Decades
of assurances about nuclear safety have been blown away by the
unexpected global effects of the March meltdowns. The past year’s crisis
yanked open a Pandora’s Box of bizarre science that staggers the
imagination of corporate scientists and bureaucrat engineers, from whom
there comes only dumfounded silence.

These include:

  • Previously unknown types of explosive nuclear reactions occurring midair
    or underground, which have been misrepresented as “hydrogen blasts”
  • Expansion of a vast ozone hole over the Arctic Circle, now equal in
    area to the damaged upper atmosphere over the Antarctic, caused by
    radioactive iodine and xenon gas caught in the jet stream, leaving the
    Earth’s air supply unprotected and heightening the threat of skin
    carcinoma
  • High-energy interactions of xenon gas (which decays
    into cesium) with incoming solar flares and artificial electromagnetic
    belts created by US, NATO and Russian missile-defense shields (this
    synergy is visible in the northern lights that emit a deep green color
    due to the excitation of xenon, and it is no coincidence that three
    American nuclear power plants were incapacitated during the recent solar
    flare)
  • The growing possibility of mass extinction of marine
    life in the Pacific Ocean due to the nuclear contamination of major
    spawning waters for plankton and fish, the bottom of the food chain for
    higher life-forms, including whales and humans
  • A rising threat
    to human reproductive health from ingestion of radioactive isotopes
    through food, drinking water and respiration, resulting in mass
    abortions and population decline for Japan, a trend that will extend
    worldwide
  • Mutations of contagious pathogens, such as bird flu,
    due to genetic disorders in both microorganism and host species,
    including domesticated animals and wildlife.


Public at Risk From Official Silence

At
the molecular level inside a biological cell, gamma-ray bombardment
rewrites the genetic code contained in the chromosomes, scrambling the
elegant poetry of life into gibberish. Since leukemia, cancers and birth
defects can be falsely attributed to other disorders, the governments
of North America, Europe and Asia along with international agencies can
be counted on to remain silent or mount campaigns of misdiagnosis to
protect their nuclear power and weapons programs, along with their food
and travel industries. Bureaucrats, at heart and out of self-interest,
are cowards.

While the World Health Organization imposed a strict
travel ban on Hong Kong during the much less risky SARS outbreak of
1992, the WHO and governments accept those devious ads from the Japanese
travel bureau luring tourists with the false claim that the country and
its food are safe. With rising numbers of naive tourists returning with
serious health problems, residents and travel agents in Singapore and
Hong Kong have finally become wary of sending anyone to Japan. Business
as usual is death abnormal.

Warhead Recycling Worsened the Crisis

Whatever
his timid admissions about the official cover-up so far, former Prime
Minister Naoto Kan has yet to disclose the truth behind his more
disturbing decisions: first, the absence of stenographers and voice
recordings at his emergency Cabinet meetings; and why the government had
to order the Tokyo Electric Power Company not to abandon Fukushima No.1
plant after the March 15 mini-nuclear explosions.

The
high-level cover-up and lab analysis of cesium-isotope ratios indicate
the Japanese nuclear establishment was illegally involved in the
reprocessing of weapons-grade uranium at Fukushima No. 1 and probably
two other civilian nuclear plants in northern Japan. The US Department
of Energy dares not address Tokyo’s violation of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty because much of the enriched nuclear material at Fukushima was
covertly supplied from the American military arsenal under a suspected
2006 secret accord between the Bush and Abe administrations.

According
to whistleblowers in the US non-proliferation agency, highly reactive
uranium from dismantled US warheads stored in the Fukushima
spent-fuel pools readily ignited after the quake knocked out the water
pumps. A transport casket of elongated shape resembling a missile was
sky-hooked out of a pool by helicopter soon after the tsunami, but the
remainder of the weapons-grade stock was too heavy to remove. The series
of detonations prevented repair crews from accessing controls of the
reactor cores, which eventually melted through the containment chambers
and into the subsurface soil.

When the quake and tsunami hit on
March 11, only three reactors out of a total six at Fukushima were
scheduled to produce electricity yet in actuality five were operational.
Since then plant workers disclosed that the supposedly empty Reactor 4
had been refitted with a new steel shroud in secret by GE and that it
was fully loaded with new fuel rods. The two extra reactors were running
clandestine operations, the likeliest purpose being the enrichment of
uranium prior to extraction. By no coincidence, Hitachi Electric and
Honeywell are partners in developing a laser-plasma system to extract
highly pure plutonium and uranium

The collaboration between
Washington and Tokyo in a covert nuclear-weapons program was a violation
of international law that in its hypocrisy and duplicity towers above
Iran’s suspected program or North Korea’s puny attempts at bomb-making.
Weapons production at Fukushima also violates the foundations of the
US-Japan Security treaty, which stipulates that Japan provide military
bases in exchange for protection under the American nuclear umbrella.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s selective enforcement of the
counter-proliferation treaty only spurs smaller nations to invest in
nuclear deterrence against the real possibility of a covert build-up by
Japan, Israel, India and other US allies.

Now, to make an
optimistic prediction: Considering the 33-year half-life of cesium, far
more people worldwide can be expected to die horribly due to the fallout
of Fukushima rather than in any nuclear war with Iran or North Korea.
Proliferation begins at home; not only inside faulty nuclear plants but
whenever we switch on a television set or open the refrigerator door.
Our consumerist demand for convenience leads to docile acceptance of
mass suicide. Laziness -- both physical and mental -- is thus the greatest
of the seven deadly sins of this nuclear era.

Earthquakes and
volcano eruptions are becoming more frequent in Japan as well as the
entire Ring of Fire. Nearly every nuclear plant in the Pacific region
has reached the limit of its spent fuel rod capacity, meaning these time
bombs are fully loaded and ready to blow. Even when the cesium and
strontium threats diminish, the possibility of mass extinction will
remain for as long as humankind can muddle along. The chunks of uranium
blasted into seawater around Fukushima have a half-life of 700,000
years. Many more quakes, tsunamis and lava eruptions are coming --
Fukushima was only the first such crisis and it’s still not over.

Yoichi
Shimatsu, former associate editor with Pacific News Service and general
editor at the Japan Times Weekly, has reported from Fukushima and
served as an environmental consultant on countering radiation effects.

Contributor: 

Comments

Comments

This is a really odd article. I don't see any sources for any of the assertions in this piece. I'm not saying that they are not true, I am saying that I am completely unable to evaluate any of the claims presented. I expect much more from New American Media and from Hyphen.
This article is full of unsubstantiated claims, conspiracy theories, and outright wrong facts. Even to call it sensational journalism would be too kind. For starters, the photo (unattributed, by the way) is not even the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant — it's an oil refinery not far from Tokyo that was on fire after the earthquake: The Telegraph: An oil refinery in Chiba burns following the earthquake Not one item from the author's list of "bizarre science" has any basis in reality. Also he does not understand the difference between ionizing radiation and the non-ionizing radiation from "consumer electronics." The author doesn't even give the correct half-life of uranium — it's 4.47 billion years, not "700,000 years." The truth about health effects is that nobody has died or even had radiation sickness because of the Fukushima accident. Experts say there could be as many as "thousands of cancers" or even "virtually none" in the next few decades among the exposed population in Japan: AP: Future cancers from Fukushima disaster may be hidden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzZEIbnyibg is a video with interactive transcript, of a recent 40 minute talk by Prof R Broinowski My story is : We Are One People, We Share The Air We Breathe, The Anniversary of The Tragedy Of Fukushima 311 I live in South Australia, only a few hours drive away from a giant uranium mine called Olympic Dam. Since 1982, yellow cake ore has been exported from Olympic Dam, to fuel reactors around the world - there are no nuclear power reactors in Australia, just one small reactor making medical isotopes. There was a time when uranium mining was not allowed in Australia. Many Australians still oppose uranium mining, but, at this time, uranium mining is allowed in Australia. A huge majority of Australians oppose any plans to build nuclear power reactors in Australia. A huge majority of Australians oppose any plans to build nuclear waste dumps in Australia. Whether we like it or not, we are all now breathing in air which is tainted with potentially deadly hot particles from the massive amount of illegal poisonous emissions that have spewed forth from the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi facility over the past twelve months. My twin grandsons died suddenly, in their mother's womb, in early April 2011, in Sweden, where clouds of radioactive Xenon and Cesium poisons are now known to have landed from March 22nd onwards. The verdict of the autopsy into the death of my grandsons was "no apparent reason" for their death. I say these children were murdered. I say TEPCO was the murderer. The people who lied about the dangers were accomplices to the murders. The people who failed to give warnings were accomplices to the murders. Hang The Nuke Gang. Brett Stokes, Adelaide, 11th March 2012
The information which follows will demonstrate the hazard to the unborn produced by radioactive material vented into the environment.1. In the book Chernobyl: 20 Years On, a chapter is devoted to discussing the birth defects in children who, while gestating in the wombs of their mothers, were exposed to radioactivity released by the Chernobyl reactor [3]. The author provides an overview of dozens of studies which confirm that low levels of radiation present in many areas of Europe after Chernobyl were responsible for a wide variety of birth defects. These birth defects occurred where radiation exposure was judged by the radiation protection agencies to be too low to warrant concern. Fifteen studies were cited which demonstrated an increase in the incidence of a wide variety of congenital malformations. Other studies cited confirmed increases in the rate of stillbirths, infant deaths, spontaneous abortions, and low birthweight babies. An elevated incidence of Down’s syndrome was also documented. In addition, an excess of a variety of other health defects were detected which included mental retardation and other mental disorders, diseases of the respiratory and circulatory systems, and asthma. In a separate chapter of the same book, Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences provided a review of the extensive body of research conducted after Chernobyl. Regarding studies on birth defects, he cited an increased frequency of a number of congenital malformations which included cleft lip and/or palate (“hare lip”), doubling of the kidneys, polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), anomalies in the development of nervous and blood systems, amelia (limb reduction defects), anencephaly (defective development of the brain), spina bifida (incomplete closure of the spinal column), Down’s syndrome, abnormal openings in the esophagus and anus, and multiple malformations occurring simultaneously [