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From Kilotons to Millisieverts: Japan’s Nuclear Legacy
In recent weeks, radiation levels have spiked at the Fukushima nuclear power reactors in Japan, with recorded levels of 10,000 millisieverts per hour (mSv/hr) at one spot. This is the number reported by the reactor’s discredited owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., although that number is simply as high as the Geiger counters go. In other words, the radiation levels are literally off the charts. Exposure to 10,000 millisieverts for even a brief time would be fatal, with death occurring within weeks. (For comparison, the total radiation from a dental X-ray is 0.005 mSv, and from a brain CT scan is less than 5 mSv.) The New York Times has reported that government officials in Japan suppressed official projections of where the nuclear fallout would most likely move with wind and weather after the disaster in order to avoid costly relocation of potentially hundreds of thousands of residents.
“Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.” While those words could describe how the Japanese government has handled the nuclear catastrophe, they were said by atomic scientist Edward Teller, one of the key creators of the first two atomic bombs. The uranium bomb dubbed “Little Boy” was dropped on Aug. 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the second, a plutonium bomb called “Fat Man,” was dropped over the city of Nagasaki, Japan. Close to a quarter-million people were killed by the massive blasts and the immediate aftereffects. No one knows the full extent of the death and disease that followed, from the painful burns that thousands of survivors suffered to the later effects of radiation sickness and cancer.
The history of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is itself the history of U.S. military censorship and propaganda. In addition to the suppressed film footage, the military kept the blast zones off-limits to reporters. When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Weller managed to get in to Nagasaki, his story was personally killed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett managed to sneak in to Hiroshima not long after the blast and reported what he called “a warning to the world,” describing widespread illnesses as an “atomic plague.” The military deployed one of its own. It turns out that William Laurence, The New York Times reporter, was also on the payroll of the War Department. He faithfully reported the U.S. government position, that “the Japanese described ‘symptoms’ that did not ring true.” Sadly, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his propaganda.
Greg Mitchell has been writing about the history and aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for decades. On this anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing, I asked Mitchell about his latest book, “Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made.”
“Anything that nuclear weapons or nuclear energy touches leads to suppression and leads to danger for the public,” he told me. For years, Mitchell sought newsreel footage shot by the U.S. military in the months following the atomic blasts. Tracking down the aging filmmakers, and despite decades-old government classification, he was one of the journalists who publicized the incredible color film archives. As part of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, the film crews documented not only the devastation of the cities, but also close-up, clinical documentation of the severe burns and disfiguring injuries suffered by the civilians, including children.
In one scene, a young man is shown with red, raw wounds all over his back, undergoing treatment. Despite the massive burns and being treated months late, the man survived.
Now 82, Sumiteru Taniguchi is director of the Nagasaki Council of A-Bomb Sufferers. Mitchell found recent comments from Taniguchi in a Japanese newspaper linking the atomic bombing to the Fukushima disaster:
“Nuclear power and mankind cannot coexist. We survivors of the atomic bomb have said this all along. And yet, the use of nuclear power was camouflaged as ‘peaceful’ and continued to progress. You never know when there’s going to be a natural disaster. You can never say that there will never be a nuclear accident.”
In a poignant fusion of the old and new disasters, we should listen to the surviving victims of both.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
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10 Comments so far
Show AllIf only it were as easy for governments to sanitize nuclear waste as it is for them to sanitize the news.
Good one!
The Fukushima disaster will eventually make Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem to be rather minor events,,, which of course ther were not.
The major difference is the radiation poisons discharged from the two atomic bombs was not close to the amount which has and continues to spew out form the three melted down reactor cores at Fukushima... Nobody knows when that will cease... There is little if anything TEPCO can now do to stop it in any timely manner and the poisons circle the globe daily and accumulate on the land and waters daily.
The most serious issue at the present time is any who inhale ANY of the microscopic isotopes of cesium-137, even a single speck, which are too small to be trapped by cloth or paper masks....
After the two atomic bombs were exploded over the two Japanese cities, people were able to live and work there and rebuild the cities, grow crops in the area and most lived normal lives even though the Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium bomb.. Many didn't live normal lives there however as we all realize... The Fukushima meltdown has steralized hundreds of square miles of land (so far) where it will be unsafe for any to live or grow crops... (So far) are the key words, as the dead zone (will expand) as more of the deadly poisons release and accumulate in the soil and waters there... How bad will it eventully become is just a guess but it's already bad enough... It will not surprise me if Japan loses a quarter or more of it's land... Actually land and time is all of real importance they have.
How bad will the Fukushina disaster effect the people of the US, Canada and beyond? No one knows as yet, we can only guess, assume, argue and wonder, but we will learn someday in the not too distant future.... Of course the "safe" limits of radioactive poisons present can be raised by governments, as has been done by the Japanese... There are NO "safe" limits for inhaling cesium or other radioactive poisons... None!
http://www.naturalnews.com/032048_radiation_milk.html
"The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to release new data showing that various milk and water supply samples from across the US are testing increasingly high for radioactive elements such as Iodine-131, Cesium-134, and Cesium-137"
"As far as the water supplies are concerned, it is important to note that the EPA is only testing for radioactive Iodine-131. There are no readings or data available for cesium."
Thank you Amy Godman for your fine and informative article.
WayneWR wrote:
'The most serious issue at the present time is any who inhale ANY of the microscopic isotopes of cesium-137, even a single speck, which are too small to be trapped by cloth or paper masks....'
Porous filters can trap particles as small as 1 nanometer; much much larger
particles are still considered microscopic. But let's be realistic; we are all constantly being exposed to ionizing radiation, both internally and externally. Externally, it comes from cosmic rays from above, from radium in the ground, and from radon in the air. And if we shield ourselves in a room with thick lead walls, we should realize that lead itself emits gamma rays. Internally, we all ingest/inhale radioisotopes. Plants (especially those grown using super-phosphate fertilizers) take up polonium and radium from the ground. Humans therefore intake the radionuclides either directly or via grazing animals. The average man has about 250 billion billion atoms of radioactive potassium in his body, in addition to intake from the above-mentioned sources. It's all in the numbers. The Fukushima disaster did indeed release radioactivity into the Earth's atmosphere (which has a mass of 5 billion billion kilograms). But any air sample taken currently in mainland US would surely not show any evidence of the incident.
John
And remember that Lady Hillary just went to India to sell more poisonous reactors to the unsuspecting peasants in India who will have to pay with their money and their health in order to enrich the already rich in the US and India.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/0719/During-Hillary-Clinton-s-India-visit-nuclear-power-is-front-and-center
The US will never stop its destructive ways. Even if a nuclear power plant were to blow up and wipe out an entire state, the US would insist that it is safe.
Complete madness.
“Nuclear power and mankind cannot coexist."
-------------------
That about says it all, and I agree.
Thanks Amy for the article. I've noticed that you are doing what all of our so called media should have been doing - keeping Fukushima in the news, and thinking through the implications.
Manysummits
=======
The data you are quoting (www.naturalnews....) were gathered during the first weeks of the accident, 4 months ago. Since that time the releases have declined significantly and contamination in the US is virtually below detectable amounts with our most sensitvie instruments. Even the datum that Amy Goodman points to (10,000 mSv/hr) is a single reading that was taken by remote inside a ventilation shaft inside a reactor building. It doesn't represent the dose rate accessible to plant workers, nor is it even referenced as to whether the radiation dose rate is from penetrating (gamma ray) or superficial (beta ray). No doubt probes can be inserted into the interior of the damaged nuclear plants that will produce alarmingly high numbers if people were in these locations. But those are not dose rates to which plant workers much less members of the general public are experiencing at this time. Your posting is thus hyperbole designed to frighten readers for no good reason other than to promote panic and an irrational response to this accident. None of your doomsday predictions will come true, in my opinion.
RFinston>>>>> The article in the link I posted fully explains how the EPAs information of radiation levels here in the US is flawed to the max, argue that information.
TEPCO officials have stated they have no idea of when they will have the plant under control except to say it may be decades, their goal is next January, NEXT JANUARY!,, OMG... They don't know how to get it under control... They have zero knowledge of how high the radiaton levels are there where the three cores have melted down below the plant, they just know it's (*off scale*) on the meters... The workers there are doing clean up work around the plant, little else, they are not stopping the melted down cores from spewing out radioactive poisons,,, they can't.
The three melted down cores continue to spew out radioactive poisons....There is very little current news available about Fukushima, the Japanese govt and TEPCO have managed to quash it.
Here is a link for a more current atrticle dated August 2, 2011 and comments from that article.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43982727/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/
From the atricle>>> ("Meanwhile, more than a dozen regional governments in Japan announced Monday, (that's August 1,2011), that they would conduct tests to determine whether locally grown rice contains too much radioactive caesium..... Excessive levels of radiation have already been found in beef, vegetables, tea, milk, seafood and water")..... Ya got that RFinston?
You are calling Amy Goodman a liar, she honestly stated in her first paragraph, ("In recent weeks, radiation levels have spiked at the Fukushima nuclear power reactors in Japan, with recorded levels of 10,000 millisieverts per hour .")....That "recent weeks" IS (*current*) information RFinston)....... Your comments are those of a pro nuclear shill and are designed to spread misinformation... You ended your comments with ,,,("None of your doomsday predictions will come true, in my opinion.")... I sincerely do hope your biased and under educated (opinion) is correct about that.
RFinston>>>> A news article posted here on Common Drmeams today titled ("Citizen Group Tracks Down Japan's Radiation") Shoots your arguments down in flames.
Two paragraphs from that article.>>>("Jyunichi Tokuyama, a specialist with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, said he was shocked to find radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, more than 300km from the stricken Fukushima nuclear site.")."Sunday [August 7], we found ground contamination of 20,000 cpm," said Bonner, referring to counts per minute, a method he believes is more accurate in analysing radiation than measuring mSv......("It was about 28km from the plant.").... Perhaps you could read that very CURRENT article and get yourself educated on the subject before you sound off again.
WayneWR wrote:
'Two paragraphs from that article.>>>("Jyunichi Tokuyama, a specialist with the Iwate Prefecture Agricultural and Fisheries Department, said he was shocked to find radioactive hot spots in his prefecture, more than 300km from the stricken Fukushima nuclear site.")."Sunday [August 7], we found ground contamination of 20,000 cpm," said Bonner, referring to counts per minute, a method he believes is more accurate in analysing radiation than measuring mSv......("It was about 28km from the plant.")....'
Ground contamination canNOT be measured in CPM. Nor in mSv, for that matter. Appropriate units would include curies/square centimeter or becquerels/square meter.
John