PR Nuke Flacks Do The Kashiwazaki Quake Death Spin
As you read this, swarms of extremely well-paid PR flacks are spinning the Kashiwazaki nuke quake into an argument for building more reactors. They will deploy utter absurdities and personal attacks, followed by the sound of media-complicit silence.
But the news coming from Japan—and not being covered here—makes it clear the realities of this latest reactor disaster are beyond catastrophic. Seven reactors were put at direct risk, with four forced into emergency shut-downs while suffering numerous fires and emitting unknown quantities of radiation. Most importantly, the quake exceeded the design capabilities of all Japan’s 55 reactors, and worse seismic shocks are expected.
To counter these inconvenient realities, expect to soon see more of Patrick Moore, the alleged ex-Greenpeace founder.
Moore has called the disaster at Three Mile Island a “success story.” Moore claims to be a scientist. He’s obviously not an accountant.
His face stays straight while calling the transformation of a $900 million asset into a $2 billion liability a “success story.” It testifies to a mentality that never saw a polluter’s check that couldn’t be cashed.
On January 28, 1986, I debated a spokeswoman from Cleveland Electric Illuminating who termed the earthquake fault near the Perry Nuclear Plant a “geologic anomaly.”
As we spoke, the Challenger space shuttle blew up because NASA “scientists” said warnings from their own staff about O-rings in cold weather were not “compelling.” The shuttle was shot off to coincide with a planned presidential performance by Ronald Reagan. Seven astronauts died while the whole world watched in horror.
Three days later, a non-anomalous earthquake cracked pipes and pumps at Perry, knocking out roads and bridges. Apparently, neither the O-rings nor the fault line had read the industry’s spin.
Today the nuke flacks say Kashiwazaki was a “success story” because four reactors SCRAMmed into emergency shutdown and three more were damaged, but no apocalypse resulted (yet).
Since this is only the world’s largest nuke complex, with only seven reactors on site, and only several hundred barrels of nuke waste tipped over, and far fewer had their lids fly off, and the gas emissions the utility lied about were only tritium, which is less deadly than plutonium, the fact that all of Japan was not engulfed in a catastrophic radiation release (yet) will be used to sell more reactors.
Expect phrases like these:
“The reactors withstood the worst nature could throw at them.”
“The SCRAMs went off perfectly.”
“The shut-downs will be temporary.”
“American reactors are far stronger than Japanese ones.”
“This was a once-in-a-century fluke, and no one was hurt.”
“Even so, we must have nuke power to fight global warming.”
“The media has distorted the utility’s good-faith attempts to inform the public.”
“Those rad-waste barrels were tipped over by eco-terrorists.”
“Tritium is good for you.”
“Nuke power is a ‘zero emissions’ technology, therefore the reported leaks could not have occurred.”
“Those anti-nuke so-called scientists have been discredited.”
But most importantly, expect a tightly enforced media blackout.
It starts when all who question the industry are automatically “discredited.”
Dr. John Gofman, universally acknowledged as one of the world’s leading nuclear and medical researchers, was once in charge of health research for the old Atomic Energy Commission. When asked to determine how many people would be killed by radioactive emissions from “normal” reactor operations, he found it would be about 32,000 Americans per year.
The AEC demanded he revise his findings. Gofman refused. So he was forced out of the AEC and “discredited” despite credentials that continue to dwarf those who replaced him.
The list of physicists, engineers, medical researchers and others similarly purged for fact-based reporting is too tragic to reconstruct here.
But it even includes a park ranger at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore who noticed in the spring of 1986 that the number of live bird births had plummeted compared with the previous ten springs. The only logical link was to radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, brought down by a California rainstorm ten days after the explosion.
The ranger soon found himself out of a job.
On the other hand, the industry still falsely asserts that no one died at Three Mile Island. It even produced a “doctor” who traveled through Europe asserting that the enormous radiation releases spewed by the explosion at Chernobyl would ultimately save lives.
Predictably, the Kashiwazaki catastrophe has disappeared from the American media. But in Japan, the news has transcended the truly horrifying.
According to Leo Lewis in The Times, talk is rampant of a “Genpatsu-shinsai,” defined by Japan’s leading seismologist, Katsuhiko Shibashi, as “the combination of an earthquake and nuclear meltdown capable of destroying millions of lives and bringing a nation to its knees.” Shibashi warns that the recent 6.8 magnitude shock exceeded the design capabilities of the Kashiwazaki nuke by a factor of three. A Kobe University research team is reported as saying that if the quake had been 10km further to the southwest, a “terrible, terrible disaster” would have resulted.
Prof. Mitsuhei Murata of Tokai Gakuen University is quoted as warning that a quake at the Hamaoka nuke could bring “24 million victims and the end for Japan.” Japan’s earthquake experts assume the probability of an 8.0 quake within the next 30 years to be 87 percent.
As in the US, Tokyo Electric has long denied that its seven Kashiwazaki reactors were sited atop a fault line, only to have it turn out to be true. As at Three Mile Island, vital data has already disappeared from the Kashiwazaki disaster, and the exact quantities of radiation released are unknown. Radiation at both sites escaped well after the reactors were shut down.
As in the United States, Japanese earthquake experts have warned since the 1960s about the dangers of reactor construction, only to be ignored and “discredited.”
Undoubtedly the Japanese PR nuke spinsters will continue to attack and ignore them.
Here, 2400 central Pennsylvania families will still be denied a federal trial on the death, disease and mayhem spewed upon them by Three Mile Island nearly thirty years ago. And the seven dead Challenger astronauts are not available for comment on the “perfectly safe” O-rings that killed them just prior to the “non-credible” earthquake that struck the Perry nuke.
Any possible problems with a new generation of reactors are equally non-credible. Just ask a flack.
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
Release the hounds!
And Billy___y4 will be here later to tell us why nuke plants are safe and this article and the author are full of baloney. He will write it in a pleasant and soft manner. He writes like the best authority on the subject ever, very professional. His un-informed cheering section will be here too.
And the beat will go on until we experience a massive nuclear accident here in the United states. It will happen, we just don’t know where or when. We will know,__ we will. Oops!
There is no way to mine and process uranium without contaminating people and property.
Nuke power plants themselves become radioactive after their short life span and are considered radioactive waste.
Then the spent fuel can be recycled at great expense to all involved or dumped in a hole in the ground. (France used to dump 55gal. Drums in the ocean by the thousands!)
You can point to a nuke power plant and say, see it’s clean! That’s is it’s the cleanest part of the whole industry! It starts killing the moment you dig it out of the ground. It’s not “clean” it’s a killer!
I just read a scientific report that states the ocean’s pytoplankton are suddenly declining at an alarming rate. Those tiny plants are the foundation for all life on the planet and supply us with 60% of our oxygen.
In 1975 it was 70%. Since that time the de-foresting all over the globe has more than doubled. That problem was bad in 1975, so we can estimate we may have lost at least another 10% of our oxygen supply with the loss of trees by now. Wonder how much more we can lose before it starts to gets difficult to breathe? I’m gonna open a bottled oxygen facility.___ Actually, it isn’t a fun or a funny subject.
I believe this problem of the ocean life dying off could be partially due to dumping atomic waste, especially since we have spread so much DU all over the planet in the past few years.
Nuclear power is without a doubt, the second stupidest thing humanity has ever done. The first was splitting the atom. The third was not dropping Bush Sr. on his head when he was born.__ Twice.
It’s not pytoplankton, it’s (phy). Scuse me, hope Big Nose Kate or Ron don’t read it.
Hi Evelyn,
I posted a comment to the LA Times article instead but I should have posted here. This one is sillier.
I’m not sure how this author wants to score accidents: In money or lives.
Fermi-1: 0 lives lost. No one significantly irradiated.
TMI-2: 0 lives lost. No one significantly irradiated.
Perry: 0 lives lost. No one significantly irradiated.
Brown’s Ferry: ditto
Davis-Bessie: ditto
Kashiwazaki: ditto
All of these accidents and near accidents were or will be very expensive to the owners of the plants.
Depending on how you want to score it, they were disasters or successes.
Y0, Y4, why for doth thou hot air blow so hard with all the radiation so “proudly” radiating in the twilight’s last glare was so brilliantly fatal/but the hot air keepeth coming/gave proof to the night and the day/hot air burneth up the Ozone/Oh “hep me”/”Good God”/”work through it.” Where is Robin Williams when we need him?
Impeachment now, then beginning the trial.
However, the trial will take time that is true.
It will be interesting for the American public to see the evidence presented in the prosecution and again in the defense during the trial.
Perhaps we will get to see the US government more clearly.
We have all the time in the world to advance the principles of democracy and work on practicing them.
One thing that ought to keep the Democrats from pursuing impeachment is that we may find that they were very willing collaborators in the crimes of the administration. It thus will make it just as hard to vote for a Democrat as a Republican
So let’s have an impeachment and a trial and then let’s clean house and find human beings to represent Americans in the Congress and Executive Branch
Chernobyl is a success story–it’s been successfully forgotten.
Daniel,
Chernobyl is not and will never be forgotten. In addition to the tragic loss of life and health, it was very instructive in what not to do and how not to design reactors.
Some of the water/graphite reactors of the Chernobyl design are still in operation unfortunately. The only one outside Russia has been committed to decommissioning by 2009.
Some of the Soviet era more conventional PWR type reactors in the old Soviet Union are also operating without containment buildings.
The cost savings of not having containment is not worth it. All the power reactors without containment, including the water/graphite ones should be shut down.
Running without containment is too high of a risk. It has saved our *ss on some of our accidents from extensive offsite contamination.
Hi Billy
Here is another death score due to the use of nuclear power.
Iraq: Everybody who lives there or has been there in the last fifteen years or so, from inhaling microscopoic DU dust. The insane use of atomic power plants discarded
“depleted” uranium in weapons, will eventually kill everyone there and anyone who goes there for the next four million years.
Afganastan: A repeat of the above. Everyone.
Planet Earth: Will eventually be destroyed by nuclear power plants deadly wastes.
Of course it will take a few more years for all of the dead to be counted. The sensless killing and dying has already begun however.
However anyone wants to score it, those are disasters.
BTW, on another site here, someone reports that Cindy Sheehan has been arrested in DC.
The value of the energy from nuclear power plants is far greater than the deficite of any fancied risk. Far more people die in coal mines and from coal smoke then even the worst case nuclear accident.
Wasserman and Greenpeace want half the world’s population dead.
Oh my gosh, I just clicked onto Google and read a report about nucler power plants. I had no idea nuclear energy was so safe. I apologize, I was mis-informed.
I feel like a damn fool now__ and I should.
EVELYN: I think you found your calling & issue. I apprciate your not tiring of being a voice of conscience in the Nuclear energy/war/weapons “game” of not only Russian roulette. If we could fast forward 80 years and view those who survive on earth, imagine a population with genetic defects born from these “gifts that keep on giving” as was said about depleted uranium, byproduct of nuclear energy reactors, correct? Who said that man is the ONLY beast that fouls his own nest? Maybe 80 years from now they won’t need airport detectors as the people may glow from internal sources.
Hi there Sue, I hope you are correct about the eighty years, I honestly believe it will be far less for all of mankind. Hope I’ll be checked out and piloting a spaceship by then though. If so, I’ll pick you, Kathy, Paul and Billy here up and we can fly to a clean water planet and do some real fishing, or maybe help seed a new one. Might see if Ron would like to come along and try a char broiled steak.
Evelyn,
Nuclear power and DU munitions are separate issues. If we shut down all nuclear plants in the world tomorrow, there is enough depleted uranium already available to keep our army and most of the rest of the armys of the world in DU munitions for 100 years.
I know that Bill, I just emphasize the point, by usng DU as a prime example, that nuclear power produces deadly by products that last forever. DU is just one of several.
Nuclear power plants were and are approved__ on the premise___ that every single microbe of nuclear waste will be safely stored, forever if necessary. That was the stipulation and agreement made to all of humanity, before the first one thru the last was constructed in the United States.
It is proven that it is not possible to safely store muclear waste. As long ago as 1975, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, grudgenly ackowledged, that tons of highly controlled plutonium was missing and unaccounted for; it was “presumed” to have been lost. LOST?? TONS OF IT!!___ There is enough poison in a single cup full of plutonium to kill five billion people if it is administered equally. One single microscopic speck, if inhaled, will kill anyone. Exploded DU is just as bad in that respect and the thousands of tons of DU is not lost, we used the damn stuff because the power plants could give it away and not have to pay to safely store it. We should trust the words of nuclear power plant official or the NRC?___ I think not.
Earth is the only planet in our solar system with any appreciable ammount of water. Water is essential for life and we must protect that most precious gift. We must protect our rivers, our lakes and oceans from pollution and that includes pollution from burning coal, from chemicals, oil and nuclear waste pollution. We are and have been failing to do that on a grand scale. We have very little time left, if we are going to give a home to our future generations.
I have several issues Siouxrose, right now DU is top of the heap, nuclear power second and phytoplankton third. They all fit into a grim ball of horror though.
I really love to write humor and stories of love of life and of hunanity with some opinions about who we are, where we came from and why we are here. I wonder about so much of life and of what each of our purposes are and how we will live them to the best of the ability that God granted us.
I wish Billy could see that clean energy is viable and if we put half of the money we use for nuclear energy into developing it, we would have it and not have to believe the other was crazy.
This one will come and go. People will learn how many nuclear power plants that there are on the island of Japan and how close they are to fault zones. People will say “I did not know that” and then they will go back to the next celebrity scandal and forget about it all.
You know that sounds cynical, but you also sense that it is probably more true than you or anyone else wants to admit. Someone once called people “sheeple” because we graze on the latest gossip and when we sense danger, we lift our heads and then go right on back to grazing.
That is funny SJC,__ but true. I would wadger, that if we had a nuclear plant disaster in California and half of California and all of Nevada had to be evacuated forever. That las Vegas would be open for business in two days and the casinos would be jammed.
Excellent article. Try to access Canada’s CBC Radio 2 archives for the CONCERT FOR THE CHERNOBYL DEAD given by Ukrainian musicians, writers and actors. These are artists dedicated to telling the world of the CHERNOBYL CATASTROPHE…and the 500,000 dead.
No doubt Billy is using the best ‘available’ data to support his viewpoint but there is an intimation in this article that the real/vital data about reactor safety and toxic releases have been suppressed by the nuclear industry.
If this is true, it’s about time for some Forteanesque digging/collection to unearth the inconvenient data that the establishment willingly ignore.
SAMSKI: Just think by analogy how much of global warming peer reviewed data was suppressed by Bush and the oilmen.
EVELYN: Remember the lovely song, “For those who are young of heart”? YOU remind me of that because you retain what the poet Ferlinghetti recognized as a great gift: the capacity to retain a sense of wonder! Jesus said “be ye as children to enter the Kingdom.” Keep wondering, friend, and thank you for bringing much to the CD forum. As for the spaceship, you know that RON and I suffer from all the symptoms of a bad divorce, except I am still waiting for alimony payments on this one! (LOL). If he and I were on the same spaceship one of us would end up in an ORB of their own… and I’m betting on MY fortitude to NOT be THAT one.
Y4, “Why for doth thou bloweth the hot air so hard with all the pro nuclear power radiation radiating so much?” Damn it! Be kinder and gentler to the Ozone, Y4. Just give common sense a chance!
The same applies to the rest of the pro nuclear power lobby types.
Siouxrose. I was joking about Ron. He would have pilot his own, hopefully to a planet where there were no animals. The rest was not a joke.
I know for certain, when we leave here for the final time, we will be forever young__ and we will be very wise.
On another string you didn’t finish a story. You failed to tell us__ what happened after your dinner with ‘Harrison Ford’?
Siouxrose. You once asked someone if they were related to Ralph Waldo Emerson? My great grandmother on my mothers side, was a good friend and a cousin of Emerson. She was an accomplished artist and a writer of poetry.
Thank you for the nice remarks.___ I am a confirmed dreamer who began reading adult novels at the age of six. One of my first was Captain From Castile. Some portions were a bit on the erotic side. I still have some first editions of Edgar Rice Burrow’s Tarzan books.
RE: Siouxrose July 24th, 2007 12:23 pm
“You remind me of that because you retain what the poet Ferlinghetti recognized as a great gift: the capacity to retain a sense of wonder!”
***I knew it! I knew it! I suspected you were one of those damned intellectuals, SiouxRose. Who else would be familiar with Lawrence Ferlinghetti? Actually, in about ‘69 or ‘70 after speaking at a benefit for John Sinclair at the Berkeley Theater, Rod McCuen & Lawrence came up to me, asked my name, and honored me by saying, “I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from you in the future.” Made me feel kinda special, even if it has yet to come to pass. Maybe someday…
For all of you who don’t believe our government conspires to keep us ignorant of the dangers of nuclear products here’s the link. Of special interest is the part at the bottom of the link which deals with how they control the debate.
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/background.htm
Do your homework then post, ok? (and this means you too, Billy_Y4)***
RE: Billy_y4 July 23rd, 2007 7:05 pm
I’m not sure how this author wants to score accidents: In money or lives.
Fermi-1: 0 lives lost. No one significantly irradiated.
TMI-2: 0 lives lost. No one significantly irradiated.
Perry: 0 lives lost. No one significantly irradiated.
Brown’s Ferry: ditto
Davis-Bessie: ditto
Kashiwazaki: ditto
Once again, Billy_Y4, here’s the math ON JUST THE CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT:
270,000 new cancers
93,000 related deaths
438 nuclear power plants worldwide
212+ average deaths per nuclear power plant
and hundreds of square miles of land poisoned for up to 600 years
And this is a safe technology? How many deaths can be reported from use of solar or wind power generation? 0000000000000000000
And we really don’t know all the true costs & details because GOVERNMENTS COVER IT ALL UP!