Work in progress: World Nuclear Fallout Atlas
World Nuclear Fallout Atlas - starting with North America
I want to give students, reporters, investigative reporters, teachers, librarians and attorneys a quick lesson in using the Database in MS Word, (see home page) to document a premise based on your intuition. I am sending an email to the writing department in Pennsylvania, Bucknell University, asking the person who receives it, to forward it to the school newspaper. So, in addition to sending them the link to my home page describing my two new books, I am starting a new book on this page as an example of how to use the MS Word version of the database for investigative reporting.
My premise is: If I can demonstrate the usefulness of the database (MS Word version), by sending a cold-call email to the general infomation email address in the writing department asking them to look over my books then to forward the url to the school newspaper in order to make the information available to students ...then, if I show them what I get back when I type the word, Pennsylvania, into the database, I'll show them what comes up ...plus, neighboring articles of relevance.
So, I typed Pennsylvania into the search engine of the MS Word version of the database, and there were ten direct hits, plus a few other references that piqued my intuition, (shown below).
Now, the next time I return in the next week, I will write an article or legal argument based on the returns from the database (the returns exclude Three Mile Island at this time, except for one), and nearby entries neighboring those 10 hits, that caught my interest. I'll give you a hint, I found it very interesting that the nuclear reactor in Pennsyvania produced, snow. Because I have read the entire database, having hand-numbered each entry, I remembered that among the 9,000 entries, the word, snow, popped about many times. I remembered two of them vaguely, because a related post mentioned that steam coming up from the reactors was not steam, it was radioactive steam ...I then typed snow into the search engine.
When you look over the rough data indexed below under, Pennsylvania, you'll see in one of the newswire entries, that the reactor in Pennsylvania produced, snow, which amazed people.
In another numbered newswire listing, you'll read that U.S. Navy sailors stationed offshore Fukushima on the nuclear aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, when the three reactors were blowing up and melting down, were excited that it start snowing, and played in the snow and had snowball fights.
In another listing, you'll read that it was not snow, is was a chemical reaction caused by the fallout, a condensation of the radioactive steam.
Another listing, is a memoir of a man that as a child remembered snow falling after Chernobyl blew up and melted down. [Editor's note: correction, it was not snow, I think it was blue rain, or yellow rain ...yes, it was yellow rain. When it fell in Japan, they said it was pollen. Pollen is one of the biggest carriers of radionuclides.]
Another listing documents the horrible diseases and deaths suffered by the U.S. Navy sailors, as a result of playing in the radionuclide, snow.
Now, if your were to type, navy, into the search engine of MS Word version of the database, you'll see that initially when the sailors reported illness, they were laughed at, and it was called, stress. That many got worse and worse, they then got legal representation, their case was thrown out, they again pursued legal recourse to 'be made whole with legal remedy', but by then they were dying, bearing dead children or birthing kids with brain cancer, their eyeballs were being cut out, and they were enduring the torments of hell.
However, the U.S. media, with a few exceptions that are captured in the database, as a rule did not care, and denied them public awareness. And they slipped and continue to slip out of the public mind, which is intentionally filled with Trump, Hillary, Obama, North Korea.
As you get familiar with the database and the free book series I'm producing, you'll seen thousands of entries about Fukushima airborne and seaborne fallout killing millions of sea mammals, fish, starfish and mutating them, flowers, trees, insects, fruit and making the animal feed in the U.S. unsafe and consequently the milk across the United States and presumably Canada, as well, too full of Fukushima fallout to be safe to drink ...and you'll discover there are 54 more reactors in Japan, almost all are built in tsunami zones, on active earthquake faults, and/or by active volcanoes.
So you have to ask yourself one question, if only three of the Japanese nuclear reactors blowing up and melting down is slowing destroying all life in the Pacific Ocean, and they are dumping hundreds of tons and now a billion pounds of nuclear waste into the sea and burning it up into the sky ...why in the hell would North Korea need long range nuclear weapons, when they can blow up all of Japan's nuclear reactors, and wipe out the United States with fallout ...or, simply wait for Japan's aging reactors to fail all by themselves. Trump that.
What's New with My Subject?
World Nuclear Fallout Atlas – starting with North America
09:57 AM Jun 2, 2011 | 60
NOTE: We are starting with Pennsylvania (excluding Three Mile Island - TMI) at this time. When we work on this page again, we'll include TMI. So scroll down to Pennsylvania.
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District Of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
05:12 AM Jun 5, 2011 | 11
-660- Pennsylvania nuclear reactor unexpectedly shuts down for 3 time in 1 week
09:23 AM Sep 9, 2011 | 11
05:51 AM Oct 30, 2012 | 59 -
-4646-NY Indian Point reactor shut down - Storm causes condenser problem at Pennsylvania plant
[1] 08:57 PM Dec 1, 2012 | 24 -
In north central Pennsylvania, 140 cattle were exposed to fracking wastewater when an impoundment was breached. Approximately seventy cows died; the remainder produced eleven calves, of which only three survived. In western Pennsylvania, an overflowing waste pit sent fracking chemicals into a pond and a pasture where pregnant cows grazed: half their calves were born dead.
02:01 PM Jan 23, 2013 | 57 index: snow
The Press Democrat, Dec 25, 2016
[1] 12:15 PM Feb 12, 2014 | 68 index: snow
Strontium 90
[1] 09:04 PM Dec 22, 2013 | 94 index: Navy index: snow
02:20 PM Jan 16, 2014 | 128 index: Navy index: snow
Index: blind
[1] 11:07 AM Feb 14, 2013 | 1 index: snow
[1] 11:53 AM Feb 9, 2013 | 43 index: snow
[1] 02:01 PM Jan 23, 2013 | 57 index: snow
[1] 09:16 AM Mar 8, 2012 | 52 index: snow
[1] 01:37 PM Mar 7, 2012 | 39 index: snow
[1] 01:07 PM Feb 12, 2012 | 37 index: snow
-2571- Official: Flakes fell like snow after first Fukushima explosion - like a movie
[1] 02:02 PM Jan 20, 2012 | 39 index: snow
-2329- Iodine-131 detected in Tokyo snow on Jan. 20
[1] 10:40 AM Jan 25, 2014 | 232
Pulsed release - Alaska seal lesions, deaths
10:40 AM Jan 25, 2014 | 232
Pulsed release - Alaska seal lesions, deaths
00:01 AM Jun 8, 2016
-8821- EPA Proposes Shocking Thousand-Fold Increase in Radioactivity Allowed in Drinking Water-[3]-[vi]
-8821.1- also see: Fairewinds Comments on the EPA’s Proposed Changes to the Protective Action Guidelines (PAG) Jul 29, 2016 Reports Report, EPA, Radiation Caroline Phillips Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new radiation limits for the public 25x higher than current exposure limits. These new guidelines would substantially increase the amount of radiation people can ingest the days and years following an atomic disaster. The EPA announcement was open for public comment til July 25. This is the Fairewinds brief submitted = HTTP://WWW.FAIREWINDS.ORG/NUCLEAR-ENERGY-EDUCATION//FAIREWINDS-COMMENTS-ON-THE-EPAS-PROPOSED-CHANGES-TO-THE-PROTECTIVE-ACTION-GUIDELINES-PAG -[vii]
-Exposure to high doses of radiation shortly after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island may have increased cancer among Pennsylvanians downwind of the plant, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say. Dr. Steven Wing, associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC-CH School of Public Health, led a study of cancer cases within 10 miles of the facility from 1975 to 1985. He and colleagues conclude that following the March 28, 1979 accident, lung cancer and leukemia rates were two to 10 times higher
09:57 AM Jun 2, 2011 | 60
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Alberta
British Columbia
Manitoba
New Brunswick
Newfoundland
Northwest Territories
Nova Scotia
Nunavut
Ontario
Prince Edward Island
Quebec
Saskatchewan
Yukon
Campeche
Chiapas
Chihuahua
Coahuila
Colima
Distrito Federal
Durango
Guanajuato
Guerrero
Hidalgo
Jalisco
Michoacán
Morelos
México
Nayarit
Nuevo León
Oaxaca
Puebla
Querétaro
Quintana Roo
San Luis Potosi
Sinaloa
Sonora
Tabasco
Tamaulipas
Tlaxcala
Veracruz
Yucatán
Zacatecas
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Angola
Anguilla
Antarctica
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Bouvet Island
Brazil
British Indian Ocean Territory
Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling Islands)
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Croatia (Hrvatska
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
Faroe Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
France, Metropolitan
French Guiana
French Polynesia
French Southern Territories
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Gibraltar
Greece
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Guam
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Heard and McDonald Islands
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea (North)
Korea (South)
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macau
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Martinique
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mayotte
Mexico
Micronesia
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montserrat
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Niue
Norfolk Island
Northern Mariana Islands
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Pitcairn
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Reunion
Romania
Russian Federation
Rwanda
- Georgia and S. Sandwich Isls.
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and The Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
St. Helena
St. Pierre and Miquelon
Sudan
Suriname
Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tokelau
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
US Minor Outlying Islands
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City State (Holy See)
Venezuela
Viet Nam
Virgin Islands (British)
Virgin Islands (US)
Wallis and Futuna Islands
Western Sahara
Yemen
Yugoslavia
Zaire
Zambia
Zimbabwe
[1] U.S. Navy sailors had radioactive snowball fights off Fukushima - Crew toast after weeks on Pacific - significant cancers, incessant bleeding from anus or vagina, blindness
[2] Alaska seal deaths and Fukushima fallout - Skin lesions, hair loss, lethargy
[3] http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/epa-radioactivity-in-water.pdf
[i] U.S. Navy sailors had radioactive snowball fights off Fukushima - Crew toast after weeks on Pacific - significant cancers, incessant bleeding from anus or vagina, blindness
[ii] Alaska seal deaths and Fukushima fallout - Skin lesions, hair loss, lethargy
[iii] (Note: The following two endnotes accompany this info.) Alaska Marine Science Symposium (pdf), Jan. 20-24, 2014 (emphasis added): 2011 Fukushima Fall Out: Aerial Deposition On To Sea Ice Scenario And Wildlife Health Implications To Ice-Associated Seals (Dr. Doug Dasher, John Kelley, Gay Sheffield, Raphaela Stimmelmayr) - On March 11, 2011 off Japan’s west coast, an earthquake-generated tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant resulting in a major nuclear accident that included a large release of airborne radionuclides into the environment. Within five days of the accident atmospheric air masses carrying Fukushima radiation were transiting into the northern Bering and Chukchi seas. During summer 2011 it became evident to coastal communities and wildlife management agencies that there was a novel disease outbreak occurring in several species of Arctic ice-associated seals. Gross symptoms associated with the disease included lethargy, no new hair growth, and skin lesions, with the majority of the outbreak reports occurring between the Nome and Barrow region. NOAA and USFWS declared an Alaska Northern Pinnipeds Usual Mortality Event (UME) in late winter of 2011. The ongoing Alaska 2011 Northern Pinnipeds UME investigation continues to explore a mix of potential etiologies (infectious, endocrine, toxins, nutritious etc.), including radioactivity. Currently, the underlying etiology remains undetermined. We present results on gamma analysis (cesium 134 and 137) of muscle tissue from control and diseased seals, and discuss wildlife health implications from different possible routes of exposure to Fukushima fallout to ice seals. Since the Fukushima fallout period occurred during the annual sea ice cover period from Nome to Barrow, a sea ice based fallout scenario in addition to a marine food web based one is of particular relevance for the Fukushima accident. Under a proposed sea ice fallout deposition scenario, radionuclides would have been settled onto sea ice. Sea ice and snow editor’s note - index: snow would have acted as a temporary refuge for deposited radionuclides; thus radionuclides would have only become available for migration during the melting season and would not have entered the regional food web in any appreciable manner until breakup (pulsed release). The cumulative on-ice exposure for ice seals would have occurred through external, inhalation, and non-equilibrium dietary pathways during the ice-based seasonal spring haul-out period for molting/pupping/breeding activities. Additionally, ice seals would have been under dietary/metabolic constraints and experiencing hormonal changes associated with reproduction and molting.
Two of the four authors will be appearing on an Alaska radio program this Tuesday January 28 to discuss radiation from Fukushima:
Radiation from Fukushima, APRN (Alaska Public Radio Network), Jan. 24, 2014: They’re having trouble sealing up the leaking nuclear power plants in Japan and they’re also having trouble disclosing what is going on there. Is this a reason to distrust Alaska seafood?
[iv] (see below)
(Above) Left: Location of sickened seals; Right: Blue line is radioactive plume from Fukushima mid-March 2011
[vi] HTTP://WWW.PSR.ORG/ASSETS/PDFS/EPA-RADIOACTIVITY-IN-WATER.PDF
For Immediate Release
Contacts:
Diane D’Arrigo, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 202-841-8588
Dr. Catherine Thomasson, Physicians for Social Responsibility, 202-587-5240
Kate Fried, Food & Water Watch, 202-683-4905
EPA PROPOSES SHOCKING THOUSAND-FOLD INCREASE IN RADIOACTIVITY ALLOWED IN DRINKING WATER
(Editor: emphasis and clarification added in yellow)
Proposal Would Permit INTERNAL Radiation Exposures NOT Equivalent to 250 EXTERNAL Chest X-Rays a Year
Washington, D.C. - Yesterday, the U.S. EPA quietly issued proposals to allow radioactive contamination in drinking water at concentrations vastly greater than allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The new Protective Action Guidance would permit radiation exposures equivalent to 250 chest X-rays a year. Today, environmental groups called the proposal shocking and egregious.
The EPA proposed Protective Action Guides (PAGs) would allow the general population to drink water hundreds to thousands of times more radioactive than is now legal. For example, radioactive iodine-131 has a current limit of 3 pico-curies per liter (pCi/L), in water but the new guidance would allow 10,350 (pCi/L), 3,450 times higher. For strontium-90, which causes leukemia, the current limit is 8 pCi/L; the new proposed value is 7,400 pCi/L, a 925-fold increase.
Clean Water is essential for health. Just like lead, radiation when ingested in small amounts is very hazardous to our health. It is inconceivable that EPA could now quietly propose allowing enormous increases in radioactive contamination with no action to protect the public, even if concentrations are a thousand times higher than under the Safe Drinking Water Act, said Dr. Catherine Thomasson, Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
The Bush Administration in its last days unsuccessfully tried to put forward similar proposals, which the incoming Obama Administration pulled back. Now, in the waning months of the Obama Administration, EPA’s radiation office is trying again.
These levels are even higher than those proposed by the Bush Administration-really unprecedented and shocking, said Diane D’Arrigo, Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
The Bush Administration proposal for strontium 90 was 6,650 pCi/L; the new proposal is 7,400 pCi/L. For cesium-137, the Bush proposal was for 13,600 pCi/L; Obama beats Bush with a value of 16,570 pCi/L.
All radionuclides can cause cancer and other health and reproductive problems; there is no completely safe level. Strontium causes bone cancer and leukemia. Babies, children, and females are at even greater risk than adult males.
PAGs apply not just to emergencies such as dirty bombs, and Fukushima-type nuclear power meltdowns but also to any radiological release for which a protective action may be considered - even a radiopharmaceutical transport spill. The proposed drinking water PAG would apply not to the immediate phase after a release, but rather to the intermediate phase, after the release has been stabilized, and lasting up to several years thereafter.
Radiation doses (in rems) cannot be measured but are calculated based on some measurements and many assumptions. The current Safe Drinking Water Act limits are based on 4 millirems per year. The PAGs would allow 500 millirems per year for the general population. A single chest X-ray gives about 2 millirems. Because of the way EPA is changing the definition of dose, for many radionuclides, the allowable concentration would be thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions of times higher than set under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Internal EPA documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act [links below] show that the EPA itself concluded that the proposed concentrations would exceed MCLs [Maximum Contaminant Limits of the Safe Drinking Water Act] by a factor of 100, 1000, and in two instances, 7 million. The EPA internal analysis showed that for one radionuclide, drinking a very small glass of water of approximately 4 ounces ... would result in an exposure that corresponds to a lifetime of drinking ... water ... at the MCL level.
All of this is extraordinary, since EPA has recently accepted the National Academy of Sciences’ most current risk estimates for radiation, indicating radiation is considerably more dangerous per unit dose than previously believed, said D’Arrigo. Pushing allowable concentrations of radioactivity in drinking water up orders of magnitude above the longstanding Safe Drinking Water Act levels goes in exactly the opposite direction than the official radiation risk estimates go.
Under these proposals, people would be forced to get the radiation equivalent of a chest X-ray 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for up to several years, with no medical benefit or informed consent, just from drinking water. This is immoral, said D’Arrigo.
The public has 45 days from when it is published in the Federal Register to comment to the EPA on the PAG-Protective Action Guides.
These proposed changes are a particularly egregious gift to the energy industry, which would essentially be given a free pass whenever nuclear or fracking waste enters our water supply, said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch and author of the new book, Frackopoly. The EPA under President Obama has also whitewashed the impact of fracking on drinking water. This is more of the same when it comes to his EPA’s pro-industry, hands-off regulation of toxic practices that can harm public health.
The EPA Proposal:
HTTPS://WWW.EPA.GOV/RADIATION/PROTECTIVE-ACTION-GUIDES-PAGS
FOIA DOCUMENTS:
HTTP://WWW.PEER.ORG/ASSETS/DOCS/EPA/4_5_10_EPA_OFFICE_GEN_COUNSEL_EMAIL.PDF
HTTP://WWW.PEER.ORG/ASSETS/DOCS/EPA/4_5_10_OSRTI_COMMENTS.PDF
HTTP://WWW.PEER.ORG/ASSETS/DOCS/EPA/4_5_10_RADIONUCLIDE_TABLES.PDF
ANALYSIS OF PROPOSAL WHEN BUSH ADMINISTRATION TRIED IT:
HTTP://WWW.COMMITTEETOBRIDGETHEGAP.ORG/PDF/PAGREPORT102208.PDF
LETTER TO OMB OPPOSING EPA PROPOSAL
[vii] RE: Environmental Protection Agency - Radioactive Protective Action Guides (PAGs) and Water PAGs - Docket Number (EPA-HQ-OAR-2007-0268; FRL-9947-55-OW)
Dear Janet McCabe - EPA Acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation and the EPA Docket:
Fairewinds Energy Education has prepared this brief report in response to the EPA’s suggested changes to its Radiation Protective Action Guidelines (PAGs). Specifically, the EPA is suddenly recommending a huge increase to allowable public exposure levels from radiation releases caused by a mishap or disaster at an atomic reactor, waste storage site, fuel production site, etc. What does this mean? It means that the EPA is arbitrarily choosing to increase human exposure levels to atomic radiation releases without conducting an adequate scientific review and without quantifying the significant health consequences to people.
Fairewinds Energy Education’s scientific review of the data has found no evidence or basis in science to allow such a health compromising transfer of risk to everyone living in the United States. Therefore, Fairewinds Energy Education strongly objects to the implementation of these proposed rule changes that will compromise public health and safety and benefit atomic corporations by allowing a significant reduction in each corporation’s mandated cleanup of costly radiation catastrophes.
The EPA is proposing that levels of 500 millirem per year are acceptable in radioactively contaminated water for general public consumption and an increase to 100 millirem per year of exposure levels to pregnant women and young children. These levels far exceed EPA’s acceptable risk range for cancer causing radiation exposure levels.
Let me simplify this for you and for readers of Fairewinds’ comments. If implemented, this proposed change in radiation guidelines greatly increase radiation exposure to people to a totally unacceptable radiation risk level. At the same time, the changes will reduce radiation disaster cleanup costs to corporations and transfer that horrific risk and cost of cleanup to states, cities, towns, and villages that will already be suffering astronomical losses.
Since the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi and its decimation of much of the Fukushima Prefecture (state) due to extensive ongoing radiation releases, Fairewinds’ Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen has traveled to Japan three times on public speaking and scientific fact finding research and analysis. Most recently, Mr. Gundersen spent one month in Japan in February of 2016 measuring the ongoing radioactive releases from the atomic disaster, and interviewing numerous survivors, who have been exposed to radioactive releases from the meltdowns and are continuing to be exposed to the ongoing buildup and movement of significant amounts of radioactivity. Mr. Gundersen has two degrees in Nuclear Engineering and more than 44-years of atomic energy operations and risk analysis experience.
A thorough review by Fairewinds of the evidence collected and the available published literature proves that the proposed changes to the PAGs are a convoluted attempt to shift excessive radiation risks to a population of innocent bystanders at the same time the EPA is transferring excessive profits to the corporate owners of atomic power reactors, waste storage facilities, atomic fuel producers, etc.
Beginning in February of 2012, when Mr. Gundersen spoke at the Foreign Correspondents Press Club in Tokyo, he went on record stating that the economic cost of the Fukushima Daiichi cleanup would exceed a quarter of a trillion dollars ($250 Billion), and this figure does not include the mammoth health costs the government of Japan will have to cover for victims of this ongoing radioactive debacle.
Instead of meeting the humanitarian needs of its people, the response by the pro-nuke Japanese government, Tokyo Electric and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency - chartered by the United Nations (UN) to promote atomic power worldwide) to this ongoing radioactive tragedy has been to significantly increase allowable radiation exposures to Japanese citizens by 20x more radiation exposure than previously allowed.
The PAGs are designed to protect real people from health damaging radiation exposure, and the PAGs were serving this function as well as the regulations allowed. This change proposed by the EPA is a complete financial boondoggle that will benefit corporate profiteers while damaging the health, water, and food supplies of all Americans.
The atomic power industry in Japan, the IAEA, and the Japanese government created these changes to radiation exposure guidelines in Japan in order to minimize the astronomical radiation cleanup costs from the ongoing radiation debacle caused by the three Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns. Instead of having Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government pay the costs as the regulations were originally designed, the Japanese government has transferred enormous additional radioactive risk to its own people, who are still being unwittingly exposed. Toxic illness causing radioactivity will be in Japan for centuries, and the alleged cleanup methods currently being applied are simply spreading toxic radioactivity to Japan’s once pristine agricultural community and its crucial rivers, streams, and aquifers as well as the Pacific Ocean from which it derives much of its food sources of fish and seaweed.
While Fairewinds has numerous technical concerns that we have detailed below, the fundamental question that the EPA must address is:
-Why is the EPA considering placing civilians at such a dramatically increased magnitude of risk?
-When these corporations first built their atomic reactors and other facilities, the licenses to do so were granted under the obligation that these corporations are ultimately responsible for all maintenance and cleanup. Why are corporations gaining profits while the financial risk will be borne by people in and near those reactors for hundreds and thousands of years (in the case of plutonium releases, like what happened in Japan)?
The radiation measurements taken in Fukushima by Mr. Gundersen and other scientific colleagues coupled with their field interviews, shows that the proposed PAGs place American civilians at greater risk while saving American corporations hundreds of billions of dollars in cleanup costs.
Conclusions:
It is Fairewinds Energy Education’s expert opinion and conclusion that the proposed Protective Action Guidelines are not PROTECTIVE as required by federal statute and therefore should be rejected entirely.
Conclusion 1. It’s clear then that if the new PAGs are implemented, the atomic production industries will benefit financially at the expense of human health. This change in radiation standards is in direct contradiction to the public health role set in legal statute that created the EPA. May we remind you that your statutory authority is for: establishing generally applicable environmental standards for protection of the general environment from radioactive material.
According the National Academy of Science Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) report, the EPA is bound by the linear non-threshold (LNT) radiation theory. BEIR VII is clear that there is no safe limit for radiation exposure and that radiation damage to civilians increases in a direct proportion to the amount of radiation they receive.
-A comprehensive review of available bio-logical and biophysical data supports a linear-no-threshold (LNT) risk model-that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.
The EPA proposal to increase the PAG limits 100-fold is a direct violation of BEIR VII and the governing federal statute authorizing the EPA. According to BEIR VII, Americans will receive the corresponding 100-fold increase in radiation damage if the EPA is allowed to violate federal law and implement the guideline changes it is promoting.
Conclusion 2. If the EPA violates federal statute and implements the new PAG limits, radiation risk to the exposed civilian population will increase 100-fold. Circumventing the Safe Drinking Water Act, Superfund cleanup levels, and EPA’s history of limiting the allowable risk of cancer to 1 in a million people exposed, is a clear breach of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 (Public Law 91-190, approved Jan. 1, 1970, 83 Stat. 855), that pertains to ecological systems.
It appears that the EPA proposed changes to the PAGs are based on the erroneous assumption, also held by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), that the meltdown at Three Mile Island (TMI) did not increase cancers in the surrounding area or in those who were victims of the disaster. The peer reviewed analysis by epidemiologist Dr. Steve Wing showed that people exposed to radiation from TMI meltdown suffered meaningful increases in cancers.
-Exposure to high doses of radiation shortly after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island may have increased cancer among Pennsylvanians downwind of the plant, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say. Dr. Steven Wing, associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC-CH School of Public Health, led a study of cancer cases within 10 miles of the facility from 1975 to 1985. He and colleagues conclude that following the March 28, 1979 accident, lung cancer and leukemia rates were two to 10 times higher downwind of the Three Mile Island reactor than upwind.
Conclusion 3. Peer reviewed scientific evidence indicates that nuclear disasters and toxic radioactive releases, such as the Three Mile Island meltdown, cause cancer. It is a complete mischaracterization of federal radiation dose standards for the EPA to suggest that increasing the PAGs 100-fold will have no deleterious impact on public health when toxic radioactive releases happen.
The proposed changes to the PAGs appear to be based upon the erroneous assumption, also misstated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), that there was no increase in cancer as a result of the tragic Chernobyl meltdown. According to the peer reviewed analysis of Dr. Alexey Yablokov and others, the people exposed to radiation discharges by the Chernobyl catastrophe experienced a statistical increase in cancer.
-It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident [catastrophe]. That is between when the accident [meltdown] occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.
The book explodes the claim of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA]- still on its website that the expected death toll from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book shows, is under-estimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl.
Conclusion 4. Peer reviewed scientific evidence clearly indicates that nuclear disasters like Chernobyl cause cancer. The EPA suggestion that increasing the PAGs 100-fold will have no deleterious effects on public health is a complete mischaracterization of federal radiation dose standards.
Fairewinds own evidence-based scientific research in Fukushima Prefecture indicates that there will be between 100,000 and 1,000,000 additional cancers in Japan as a result of the world’s most recent atomic reactor meltdowns. As delineated earlier in this submission, the Japanese government has unilaterally increased its allegedly allowable radiation exposures to humans by 20 times, putting its entire population, and especially women and children at significant risk for developing additional cancers from these intense radiation exposures.
The analysis conducted by Fairewinds Energy Education and its scientific colleagues indicates the contribution from small but highly radioactive particles (hot particles) absorbed by the internal organs of exposed individuals is being totally ignored by regulatory bodies worldwide, such as the IAEA and WHO (World Health Organization). Human exposure to these small particles within internal organs exposes people to high-energy radiation for decades. The proven impact of hot particle exposure is being completely ignored by federal regulators and all international health agencies. By not considering non-uniformly distributed radioactive particles in its dose calculations, the EPA is introducing a systematic bias to its dose calculations that will create radiation-induced casualties and a humanitarian calamity.
Conclusion 5. Peer reviewed scientific evidence indicates that small but highly radioactive particles are released in large quantities post-accident. The radioactive concentration in releases is not uniformly distributed. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the dose consequences from these hot particles
must be ascertained before making any changes to PAG regulations.
The EPA proposed changes to the PAGs absolutely underestimate the radiation induced cancers that those changes will cause to people throughout the United States while offering an enormous financial bonus to the corporation creating the risk and producing these highly radioactive liquid and gaseous discharges. Changing the PAGs decimates public health by putting the public at greater risk of radiation induced cancers while benefiting corporate profits.
Study suggests Three Mile Island radiation may have injured people living near reactor, University of North Carolina, February 1997: HTTP://WWW.UNC.EDU/NEWS/ARCHIVES/FEB97/WING.HTML
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences , Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment
Review by Karl Grossman, HTTP://WWW.GLOBALRESEARCH.CA/CHERNOBYL-THE-CONSEQUENCES-OF-THE-CATASTROPHE-FOR-PEOPLE-AND-THE-ENVIRONMENT/23745
