As the Fukushima world disaster continues to unfold, we have learned that the strontium levels are 240 times over the legal limit near the plant, which has become an uninhabitable land area. The nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government recently explained that roughly 966 square kilometers (km), or 600 square miles, around Fukushima are now uninhabitable due to the unfolding disaster. This massive dead zone area is equivalent in size to 17 Manhattan Islands placed next to one another. Unfortunately, the latest readings taken approximately 20 miles out to sea from the site showed radioisotope levels from all the radioactive particles were ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas after the massive Chernobyl disaster.
"Given that the Fukushima plant is on the ocean, and with leaks and runoff directly to the ocean, the impacts on the ocean will exceed those of Chernobyl, which was hundreds of miles from any sea," said Ken Buessler, Senior Scientist in Marine Chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, several months back. It has also been revealed that reactors 1, 2, and 3 have all experienced "melt-throughs." This means the radiation materials have burnt through and gone directly into the ground and water. This is considered to be the worst possible scenario in a disaster of this nature.
"Dangerous levels of radioactive iodine and cesium have already contaminated the sea, the soil, groundwater, and the air," said reporter Mark Willacy of the Australian Broadcast Corporation in a recent Lateline interview. "This week plutonium was detected for the first time outside the stricken plant, and Strontium-90, known as a ‘ seeker’ , because it can cause bone cancer and leukemia, has now been found as far away as 60 kilometers (37+ miles) from the facility."
Various atomic experts now agree that the unfolding situation is truly "as serious as it gets in a nuclear disaster." Fukushima presently has 20 nuclear cores exposed, and it has 20 times the potential of Chernobyl to be released. This is without a doubt the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen.
"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan," said Arnold Gundersen, a former industry senior vice president with 39 years of nuclear engineering experience.
The average number of infant deaths caused by the Fukushima radiation exposure multiple meltdown was 37 deaths in 4 weeks (an average of 9.25 per week), ending March 19th (prior to the disaster) and after 10 weeks, ending May 28th (post disaster), the number of deaths was 125 (an average of 12.60 per week). This is a 35% increase of perinatal mortality in infants under a year old, in 8 cities in the Northwest (Boise, Seattle, Portland, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley). According to Joseph Mangano, Epidemiologist and Executive Director of Radiation & Public Health Project, the perinatal mortality rate in Philadelphia rose 48% 10 weeks after the meltdown.
The bad news, of course, is that this is an ongoing disaster, and the governments, for whatever unexplained reasons, don’ t seem interested in sealing it off. Even though this ongoing radiation exposure and disaster is not being noted in the newspapers, and one cannot see it, smell it or detect it easily, it is still there and getting worse.
Evidence of the ongoing danger of U.S. nuclear plants is the report by the Associated Press citing 48 out of 65 of the facilities reported leaking tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. In other words, 75% of U.S. nuclear plants are leaking. It is confirmatory to hear that the U.S. commission blames many of the leaks on corroded buried piping. The significance of the leaking is that in 37 of the 48 sites, there was found to be contamination of the ground water that exceeded the federal drinking water standard. The good news is that no public water supplies are known to be contaminated, but it was found in private wells in Illinois and Minnesota. In New Jersey, tritium was found in a discharge canal feeding Barnegat Bay. This is not a recent phenomenon. In 2007 cesium-137 was found, along with tritium, at the Fort Calhoun plant near Omaha, Nebraska, and strontium-90 was found near New York City and the Indian Point nuclear site. All this just supports how important it is not only protect yourself against all forms of radiation with our supplement program, but also to attempt to create some reforms to protect the American public.
The threat that nuclear power poses to our nation is alarming, as our government recklessly moves to re-license old reactors and use tax dollars to help finance new plants. Even more frightening is the lack of evacuation plans for more than 111 million Americans who live within 50 miles of a reactor. Unfortunately, the U.S. government isn’t learning the critical lessons from these nuclear energy disasters. Incredibly, our nation’ s evacuation plans only include areas within 10 miles of reactors—despite clear evidence from Chernobyl and Fukushima that serious radiation impacts extend much further. And our emergency medical capacities fall short of what’ s needed to meet a major nuclear catastrophe. These dangerously inadequate emergency response plans put major U.S. urban areas at risk—including New York City, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.
The significance of this censored news further supports the unsustainability and dangers of nuclear plants in the U.S. compounded by lax federal regulation. This is a dangerous situation that unfortunately is just waiting to happen. I suggest for the protection of our family, children, and the U.S. population that we exert every possible effort to follow the German example of making a commitment to dismantle all nuclear reactors by 2020 and certainly not to build new ones. That is the least we can do to put common sense and values of human safety above the interests of economic investment and profit of the nuclear industry. This dangerous nonsense is only going to be stopped if enough people complain. I urge you to support all the anti-nuclear groups nationally and locally, such as Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, etc. Your active support on local and national levels can help to:
- End loan guarantees for new reactors and implement a nationwide moratorium on new reactor licensing and design certification;
- Suspend operations at reactors similar to those at Fukushima—as well as those on geological fault lines—and reject renewed licensing for existing reactors until all of the lessons of the current crisis are fully understood; and
- Deal with the dangerous radioactive waste by upgrading spent fuel pools and hardening onsite fuel storage for all operating reactors.
Blessings to your health and radiant wellbeing,
Gabriel Cousens, M.D.