Wednesday, December 28, 2011



In his infamous 1925 book "Mein Kamptf" Adolpf Hitler coined the term "the big lie". This lie, he said, should be so "colossal" that no once could believe anyone quote "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."


On December 16th, Prime Minister Noda announced all reactors at Fukushima had reached the safe and stable state of "cold shutdown". The accident is over, he said, and carry no further signficant danger to the public of Japan or the world.

We'll talk to nuclear industry expert Arnie Gunersen about this lie, and the truth of Fukushima.





So much to hear, to absorb, to know deeply.






In this Radio Ecoshock program I interview Arnie Gundersen, a long-time nuclear industry executive, who left the field after blowing the whistle on unsafe reactors. We talk about what "cold shutdown" means, and whether that applies to Fukushima.


I also ask Arnie whether there is still a possibility of another explosion at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Gundersen explains the operator, TEPCO, must constantly pump nitrogen into the reactors, because there is a bubble of hydrogen at the top. The nitrogen is to keep out oxygen, which could lead to another massive explosion, and

Gundersen has done calculations on the remaining mass of fuel, now called "corium" because it is a mixture of metals, mostly around 100 tons of hot uranium, but also all the metals used in the fuel rod containers and other inner parts of the reactor, which melted down together.

A serious question: could one of these three reactors experience a "China Syndrome"? That is where molten fuel melts through the last of the containment concrete, burning down to the water table below, and then suffering a massive radioactive steam explosion. Arnie calculates that a China Syndrome is unlikely now at Fukushima. There just isn't enough heat piled in the right way to burn all the way out, so long as water is circulated around it. Listen to the interview for his full explanation, and watch this video.

[Radio Ecoshock Arnie Gundersen interview - 22 minutes, audio only]



As you have heard, to paste the idea of "cold shutdown" into the triple melt-down at Fukushima Dai-ichi required a series of sub-lies. According to a report of the Japanese announcement by Tim Hornyak at CNET, TEPCO said "cold shutdown," meant, quoting Hornyak, "the reactors can be safely kept cool and that radiation exposure is limited to 1 millisievert per year at the site's boundary."



During a real state of "cold shutdown" there should be no radioactive leaks into the sea either. Japan needs another big lie to make that possible. As our favorite Fukushima blogger at writes:


From Tokyo Shinbun [(via Asyura, so that the link doesn't disappear;][December 16, 2011] 12/16/2011):
'NISA considers the amount of contaminated water into the ocean to be zero





Both domestic and foreign research institutions have disputed TEPCO's estimate as 'too low'.




According to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shinbun "462 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium have leaked to the Pacific Ocean since the March."

So Fukushima is still leaking tons of highly radioactive water into the Pacific, even in December 2011, and plans more intentional dumping into the ocean, but declares their emissions to be "zero" due to the technicality of declaring it "a state of emergency".

It is hard to imagine a bigger lie.

The government has no guages to measure the escaped and melted nuclear fuel, dripping somewhere below the reactor. They don't know where it is, and cannot approach it with anything to find out.



Even the timid Japanese press isn't buying this latest announcement. For example the Asahi Shinbun newspaper ran a series of articles with titles like "Few believe assertion that Fukushima crisis is over" (December 17th). That article reveals some of the real reasons for saying Fukushima is over: the economy.



Local mayors, in cities and towns still evacuated, expressed severe doubts about the government's announcement of "cold shutdown". Even Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato said ""The accident has not been brought under control..."

The German press Deutche Welle roasted the "cold shutdown" announcement, saying the reactors are "far from cold".


But the nuclear power structure in Japan has important allies. US Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides was in Japan for the announcement. Nides said the U.S. is happy to hear about the "cold shut down" and congratulated Japan. Nides is part of an American business delegation seeking new contracts for decontamination. Of course, America doesn't like to officially discuss the weaknesses of the U.S. design for the Mark I General Electric reactors which blew up at Fukushima. Or the military personel exposed, and still exposed to radiation from this on-going disaster.


Likewise Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency congratulated Japan on reaching cold shutdown. The IEA's Director Generla Amano was previously a Japanese bureaucrat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.




His talk was titled ""German nuclear phase-out has given the world hope!" Find links to the video and audio below.

A German friend of Radio Ecoshock writes:




Kazuhiko Kobayashi:




And during those five to ten years they act as agents of plutocrats corporate interests to the same government Ministries where they had been working before.

Now their successors are in their old positions and listen exactly why their former bosses are saying, because they know if they do what they are being told by the corporations, once they retire they will get the same fantastic posts. In their last decade they can make just as much money as in their entire career.





That was Kazuhiko Kobayashi, translated from the German speech.

Find the audio of the full 42 minute Kobyashi speech (38.8 MB) in Gronau (10/20/2011) (in German) here.




Before we return to the fight to shut down unsafe nuclear power plants in the United States, and lessons from Japanese activists, I want to investigate the stunning new study claiming 14,000 Americans have already died from radiation floating over from the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.


Joseph J. Mangano, the Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project at, co-founded by Dr. Ernest Sternglass. Mangano has published scholarly articles and books like "Low Level Radiation and Immune System Disorders: An Atomic Era Legacy", and "Radioactive Baby Teeth: The Cancer Link."

On December 19th, Joseph Mangano, with co-author Janette Sherman, issued a press release about their newest medical article titled "14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor Disaster Fallout".

This caused a storm of criticism and alarm.



Let's talk with Janette Sherman.

[Sherman interview]

Our guest has been toxicologist and internist Janette Sherman. She is adjunct professor, at Western Michigan University, and contributing editor of "Chernobyl - Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Download or read that huge report, consisting of translations from articles and reports from the Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe, here.

Janette is also the author of the book "Chemical Exposure and Disease and Life's Delicate Balance - Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer." Find out more here.


Did an extra 14,000 Americans dies from Fukushima?

The sub-title of the December 19th Press release reads "Impact Seen As Roughly Comparable to Radiation-Related Deaths After Chernobyl; Infants Are Hardest Hit, With Continuing Research Showing Even Higher Possible Death Count."




Reading further from the RPHP press release:



Radio Ecoshock ran an interview in the Spring of 2011 with a Canadian scientist, Dr. Krzyztof Starosta at Simon Fraser University, who also measured elevated levels of radioactivity on Canada's West Coast. Hear that interview in this Radio Ecoshock program "Fear and Loathing in Fukushima" (1 hour 14 MB)

The RPHP press release says, quote:








"This is Joseph Mangano... Any statement, such as the one you just mentioned, i.e. the levels of radiation exposure are too low to cause harm, are in conflict with the agreement of expert scientists.




The first article that this raised childhood cancer risk to the foetus took place in the late 1950's. It was met by a huge wave of opposition by obsteticians, by radiologists, by the nuclear industry. More articles came out about that. And finally, in the late 1970's this practice was discontinued.

The second example was the fallout from atomic bomb tests in Nevada in the 1950's and 60's. For years years government officials declared no harm, until 1997, when the National Cancer Institute put out a report

The third one is the case of workers in nuclear weapons plants, which again for years the government measured their doses and declared that they were below 'safe and permissable limits'. In the year 2000 the

In summary, there is a basic dynamic here which starts with an assumption of low doses being harmless - only to find out that after study, in fact the opposite is true.

So I think we must maintain an open mind here when studying Fukushima."

Find a .pdf of the BEIR 7 report here.

The Wiki article on ionizing radiation says this:


That does support what Mangano and Sherman are saying.




"Correction, we haven't said that Fukushima DID in fact cause these excess cancers, but MAY have caused. I want to make that quite clear. It's really a call, a clarion call, for more extensive research."


Given that doubt, I find the headline for the study press release misleading. We don't know Fukushima fallout caused 14,000 American deaths.

But the thrust of the study seems valid. A big impact of fallout over a large population is possible. It happened during atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and again after Chernobly. The American government has made no effort to find out why more people died after Fukushima. If they have an alternative cause, let's hear


long-lived radioactive particles through food and water.




Fukushima teaches us to seek cleaner energy options.




Listen for Eileen Miyoko Smith on stage. She is a Japanese activist who fought against using deadly plutonium as a fuel called MoX at the Fukushima reactors. Now she worries California reactors on quake fault lines, like Diablo Canyon and San Onofre could go the same way. They should be shut down.

And you also hear one of the original Americans fighting dangerous nuclear power, Harvey Wasserman. He started in New England in the early 19070's. Wasserman's latest book is "SOLARTOPIA: Our Green-Powered Earth, AD 2030", introduced by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and with the song "Solartopia" by Pete Seeger. Watch and listen to that Pete Seeger "Solartopia" song on You tube here.

Long-time folkie turned rocker Bonnie Rait was one of the MC's at the Musicians for Safe Energy concert.

I'm your host, Alex Smith.

Thank you for listening, and for caring about your world.

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