Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan

Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan
Lifting the Veil of Nuclear Catastrophe and cover-up

by  Keith Harmon   Snow
     
Global Research, March 18, 2011 
ConsciousBeingAlliance.com - 2011-03-17 


 Email this article to a friend
 Print this article 


0diggsdigg 
  228Share 
    


As the sun set over quake-stricken Japan on Thursday 17 March 2011, we learned 
that four of six Fukushima nuclear reactor sites are irradiating the earth, that 
the fire is burning out of controlat Reactor No. 4's pool of spent nuclear fuel, 
that there are six spent  fuel pools at risk all told, and that the sites are 
too hot to deal  with. On March 16 Plumes of White Vapor began pouringfrom 
crippled Reactor No. 3 where the spent fuel pool may already be  lost. Over the 
previous days we were told: nothing to worry about.  Earthquakes and after 
shocks, tidal wave, explosions, chemical  pollution, the pox of plutonium, 
contradicting information too obvious  to ignore, racism, greed -- add these to 
the original Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:Conquest, War, Famine and Death. 
The situation is apocalyptic and getting worse. This is one of the most serious 
challenges humanity has ever faced.

  


 
A Japanese child on the eastern shores of Japan. 
Photo c. keith harmon snow, 1993.
 

The U.S. nuke industry is blaming Japanese  experts, distancing itself from the 
monster it created. Instead of  sending nuclear or health experts to assistance 
the Japanese people in  their time of desperate need, US President Barack Obama 
first sent teams  of intelligence agents and FEMA trained military grunts with 
special  security clearances. The Pentagon floated a naval strike force led by  
the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan off the coast of Japan: 
advertised as a 'humanitarian' operation, the  strike force was repositioned 
after it was partially irradiated. Can we  trust officials and the corporate 
news media to tell us what is  happening in an honest, timely, transparent 
manner? Are there precedents  to the nuclear crisis in Japan? What is the U.S. 
defense establishment  really concerned with here?

Humanity now faces a deadly serious  challenge coming out of Japan -- the 
epicenter of radiation. Intentional  efforts to downplay or dismiss this 
catastrophe reveal the immaturity  of western civilization and some of our most 
acute human pathologies,  including our worship of technology and our 
psychopathology of denial.  The widespread distortion and cover-ups to protect 
private profits,  national and corporate interests, to fool and betray the 
people, are  unacceptable. Here are some of the deeper whats and whys and hows 
--  some technical issues and the kinds of questions people need to ask --  
about the nuclear apocalypse unfolding on planet earth. Prayers are not  enough. 
It's time to question everything, to put politics aside, to take  personal 
action to halt nuclear expansion and defend ourselves from  this industrial 
juggernaut.

  
PRO-NUKE ANTI-NUKE NO NUKES

 
I know something about technology, and science: I  have Bachelor's and Master's 
degrees in Electrical Engineering -- with  honors -- from one of America's top 
Engineering schools. Before 1990 I  worked in classified programs for General 
Electric -- the maker of the  nuclear reactors now irradiating Japan. I worked 
at GE Aerospace  Electronics Laboratories: low-level classified government 
programs in  communications, radars and missile guidance systems for Ronald 
Reagan's  infamous Star Wars (Strategic Defence Initiative) programs. 


From 1990 to 1993 I taught English at Japan's big Soga Shosa (trading houses) 
like Mitsubishi and Sumitomo Corporations, and  meanwhile I biked the rivers, 
swam the beaches, hiked the mountains and  studied the culture of Japan. 
Japanese corporations were paving the  shorelines and rivers with concrete, 
sinking giant tetrapods off shore.  One corporation even developed these giant 
rubber bladders -- the size  of football-fields -- sunk offshore, which could be 
pumped full of  seawater to provide a giant barrier against tsunami's. Of 
course, the  profit margins for these corporations supplying these bags were 
huge,  but I wonder what happened to the technology, if these were ever  
deployed, and where.

For the first 34 years of my life I was in  favor of nuclear power. This changed 
when I saw young people in the  United States put their bodies on the line to 
protest the Watts Bar  Nuclear Power Station operations in Tennessee (1994). The 
commitment and  integrity of these young people made me rethink my nuclear bias.

  


The giant sea walls of concrete tetrapods used off the eastern coast of Japan to 
protect 

smaller sea ports and fishing villages from waves. Photo c. keith harmon snow, 
1994.



I  began my career as a journalist by looking deeply into the rabbit-hole  of 
nuclear power from 1993 to 2000. I visited the Nuclear Regulatory  Commission's 
(NRC) Public Document Rooms -- which have since been closed  in many places -- 
where I read thousands of microfilms and scanned  microfiche records and 
excavated document after document in search of  truth. I visited nuke plants in 
New England and industry conferences. I  interviewed officials and I attended 
the most boring and sometimes  secretive public meetings with the most stifling 
and unimaginative  bureaucrats and with engineers (like me) so dry they 
squeaked. And then I  reported on regulatory corruption, technical failures, 
undemocratic  initiatives to betray the public trust, and the accumulating 
radiation  and nuclear poisons -- and the many ways that the mass media 
supported  and perpetuated the mythology. 
THE ARROGANCE OF HUMANISM

"I  repeat, there was and will *not* be any significant release of  
radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors," wrote Massachusetts  
Institute of Technology professor Dr. Joseph Oehmen on March 13. "By  
'significant' I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would  receive 
on -- say -- a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer  that comes 
from certain areas with high levels of natural background  radiation." 

So begins a recent U.S. business sector article titled You Can Stop Worrying 
About A Radiation Disaster in Japan -- Here's Why,  published four days after 
the earthquake struck in Japan. It has  already proved false. Properly 
understood for what it is -- a childish,  myopic, arrogant attempt to belittle 
the truth and influence public  opinion -- the article provides an apt example 
of the rampant industry  disinformation that is sweeping aside rational and 
compassionate and  precautionary assessments with irrational jingoism, 
simplistic emotional  appeals, and wrong-headed thinking. The post went viral 
and was  republished widely.

How do we define apocalypse?  EARTHQUAKE +  TSUNAMI  + AGED NUKE PLANT  + 
LOSS-OF-COOLANT ACCIDENT + PLUTONIUM +  FIRES + DISINFORMATION + GREED + DENIAL 
+ FEAR + POLITICS = APOCALYPSE. 


How  many nuke plants are involved? We don't really know. Not that we have  not 
been told, we have. There are six reactors at the Fukushima site,  one reactor 
at the Tokai nuclear facility and three reactors at the stricken Onagawa nuclear 
complex.  There are toxic chemical spills, petroleum refinery fires, gas fires,  
dangerous debris and human pathogens from the thousands of dead people  and 
animals. The place is an apocalyptic nightmare, to be sure, but from  the 
beginning the most important facts regarding the status of the  nuclear pants 
and their components, their functioning or failing  systems, the operability of 
the control rooms or integrity of the  reactor containment structures, were 
being denied to the public. Now we  are seeing some damage control by the U.S., 
the Nuclear Regulatory  Commission and the media. 


It is simultaneously as though we are  believed to be incapable of even the most 
rudimentary understanding of  what is going on, while also being denied the 
truth in keeping with more  than sixty years of secrecy and denial by the cult 
of the atom and its  incestuous cult of intelligence.


 

The  question is: what can we believe to be true? Look at the photos of the  
explosion. Are we stupid enough to believe that no radiation has been  released 
from this reactor's primary or secondary containment systems?  On Wednesday 
March 16 we were finally told that Tokyo Electric Power  Company (TEPCO) had 
ordered its remaining staff to evacuate areas of the  Fukushima plant after 
radiation levels spiked and plumes of white  vapour "were seen pouring from what 
authorities identified as [emphasis added] the station's No. 3 reactor.

The language about white vapors "seen pouring from what authorities identified 
as the stations No. 3 reactor"  does not inspire confidence that 'authorities' 
had any clue about the  status of things. Indeed, they are not in the control 
room, obviously,  or anywhere near it, or anywhere near 'the station's No. 3 
reactor'  because they are standing back trying to identify what they are 
seeing,  to see what is going on, and where it is going on. The reactor's are 
too  hot: this is radiation: this is the nightmare scenario we were told  could 
not happen. Radiation is contaminating air, soil, ocean, people.

The You Can Stop Worrying "article" first appeared as a reader's comment posted 
following the Business Insider journal story Japan Death Toll Climbs 
Astronomically As Nuclear Crises Intensifies, which was itself a republished and 
retitled New York Times feature of Monday March 13. At first glance, the two 
Business Insider stories couldn't be further apart in their general themes: You 
Can Stop Worrying,  which translates to, calm down, don't get hysterical, pay no 
attention  to those anti-nuclear fanatics who think that even microwave ovens 
will  kill you, versus the Death Toll Climbs Astronomically feature, which for 
all practical purposes we can translate to Holy shit, brother! Run for your 
life! Duck and Cover!

However,  both stories serve as part of the unraveling global media  
disinformation campaign about the ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan.  The 
primary imperatives of this campaign are economic. In other words,  most of the 
reportage out there about what is happening in Japan -- so  far -- has been 
anchored in western epistemological frameworks based in  money, greed, private 
profits and loss. The loss should not be  interpreted to mean that people 
(mostly we are talking about people NOT  affected by the apocalypse in Japan) 
care about who lives or dies, but  rather that their primary concerns are their 
financial balance sheets,  their corporate images, their personal retirement 
portfolios, and the  fall of the Nikkei Index and Dow Jones trading they drool 
over. 


Sadly,  the attitudes of many "news" writers (and their readers), government  
officials, energy consultants, corporate executives, nuclear experts and  
technicians, western humanitarian relief professionals (such as World  Vision 
careerists), or of environmentalists for nuclear power --  like  scientist James 
Lovelock -- and many other people who, for one reason or  another, have had 
something to say about the nukes crisis in Japan, or  about how Japan's nuclear 
misfortune can never become a Chernobyl, or  how Three Mile Island didn't kill 
anyone, or why the events in Japan, no  matter how alarming, should not be 
allowed to interrupt the "nuclear  renaissance" touted by U.S. President Barrack 
Obama, or something about  the beauty of some nuke somewhere else, are all based 
in self-interest,  not the altruistic and compassionate concerns of all 
humanity, of  environmental stewardship or the preservation of all life on 
earth, but  in a self-righteous, arrogant and ignorant selfishness of the kind 
that author David Ehrenfeld elaborated in his monumental work, The Arrogance of 
Humanism.

Japanese  are technical geniuses. The rail system and subways were precise: you  
could set your watch by them. In 2003, their advanced magnetic  levitation 
Shinkansen bullet trains performed at 581 kilometers  per hour (361 mph). If the 
Japanese can't do, no one can. Yet today  Japan is on fire -- the epicenter of 
deadly radiation now emanating out  of that sizable island. This is not about 
Japan, folks, or national  borders: its about all of us, everywhere.

SPENT FUEL POOL FOOLS

While  the absence of cooling water facilitated the nuclear crises in Japan,  
most likely some major reactor components (proven unsafe) also failed  under the 
seismic stresses of the 9.0 quake. Key components likely  cracked or shattered. 
The tsunami and huge aftershocks advanced the  chaos. These factors were 
complicated by the loss of offsite electrical  power (an electrical BLACKOUT), 
the failure of emergency diesel  generators, and the subsequent loss-of-coolant 
(water).

Embrittlement  of nickel-based superalloys that comprise reactor internals was 
flagged  as a major safety issue as early as the 1960s, yet such problems were  
bureaucratically dismissed, covered over, buried in paperwork and  regulatory 
studies produced by the NRC ("NUREG" documents), and ignored.  Intergranular 
stress corrosion cracking of BWR core shrouds (the core  shroud is next to fuel 
rods deep inside) is another major safety issue  in GE designed BWRs built by 
Hitachi at Fukushima, and these plague  every BWR reactor in the U.S.

We don't know, however, and for  many days we were offered the standard industry 
refrain: no need to  worry, no threat to public health and safety. BWR core 
shroud cracking  (NUREG-1544), reactor pressure vessel cracking (NUREG-1511), 
embrittled  components and aging (NUREG/CR-5939), cooling system failures  
(NUREG/CR-6087), reactor containment isolation systems failures  (NUREG/CR-6339) 
-- all thoroughly documented. 


The redundancy and  ever-touted 'defense-in-depth' systems failed at Fukushima. 
All over  the U.S. such systems have been routinely disabled to minimize  
electricity-generating outages, increase output power and maximize  corporate 
profits. There are as many possibilities of failures outside  what we have been 
spoon-fed -- the official sequence of events -- as  there are dead people.


  

 


Amongst the most troubling and most deeply underplayed questions of the entire 
crisis concern the Fukushima Spent Fuel Pools.  These basin are packed with tons 
of irradiated fuel rods that need to  be cooled. One of the major postulated 
accident scenarios involves a  Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LOCA) to the reactor 
core, but a LOCA event  can also occur with a spent fuel pool. It has. Fires and 
explosions in  Japan. The Spent Fuel Pools at the six Fukushima reactors are NOT 
inside  primary containment. They are exposed. Burning. About to burn.

Reactors  No. 4, 5, and 6 at Fukushima were shutdown when the earthquake struck.  
After the water drained and the spent fuel became exposed, the pool at  reactor 
No. 4 caught fire, and continues to burn, as of Thursday March  17, releasing 
massive amounts of radiation into the environment. The  status of the other six 
spent fuel pools at Fukushima is unknown. A  courageous U.S. journalist Rachel 
Maddow explored the spent fuel pool  issue with a former government official. 
The most important, critical point made by Princeton professor Frank  Von Hippel 
occurs at minute 14:19 -- where Rachel Maddow talks over  him: these are 
LONG-LIFE RADIONUCLIDES being emitted from the spent fuel  pool(s). Isotopes of 
cesium: Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 years and  will be around and hot for 
decades. 


How much disaster are  we talking about? The atomic bomb that exploded at 
Hiroshima created  about 2000 curies of radioactivity. The spent fuel pools at 
Vermont  Yankee Nuclear Plant (U.S.) are said to hold about 75 million curies.  
There are six spent fuel pools at Fukushima, but the numbers of tons of  fuel 
rods in each have not been made public. 


The Nuclear  Information and Resource Service (NIRS) did the math: If 
Fukushima's  Reactor No. 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of 
irradiated  fuel per year and each ton is equivalent to 24 times the amount of  
cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, then each fuel pool could  contain on 
the order of 24,000 times the amount of cesium-137 produced  by the Hiroshima 
bomb, if all the produced irradiated fuel remains in  the fuel pool.

Nuclear stupidity No. 1: the Fukushima reactor  buildings are square (not 
circular) and had to absorb the force of the  tsunami wave straight on. 
Stupidity No. 2: six reactors clustered too  close together. Stupidity No. 3: no 
shoreline protection against a  tsunami. Stupidity No. 4: reactors sited on 
earthquake faults. Stupidity  No. 5: assumptions and calculations proving that 
the reactor, prior to  its construction, could withstand anything that nature 
threw at it.  Stupidity No. 6: it didn't begin in Japan: the industry, with all 
its  corruptions, false assumptions and technological hubris, was born in  
secrecy in the United States of America. 


Stupidity No. 125:  spent fuel pools are packed too tightly, as is 
well-established by  industry documents, for economic reasons, discarding safety 
concerns.  Stupidity No. 458: the Spent Fuel Pools at Fukushima are suspended up 
high inside the reactor buildings  secondary containment -- the same buildings 
whose roofs are blowing off!  Are we to believe that the massive explosions that 
were captured on  film, and others that were not, did not damage these elevated 
time  bombs? 


How many stupidities do we need to admit before we admit  that it can happen in 
the United States and Europe and Canada too?  Imagine those courageous Japanese 
nuclear workers at Fukushima --  sacrificing their lives! -- trying to save 
their families, Japan and the  rest of us from our unprecedented stupidity! 


During World War II they were called kamikazis and we have always portrayed them 
as terrorists: they were soldiers and  pilots sacrificing their lives for the 
sake of their nation. Well,  these heroic men and women sacrificing themselves 
at Fukushima have my  deepest respect.

There is an ocean adjacent to the  Fukushima complex, and yet the reactors and 
fuel pools cannot be kept  cool. Impossible. The huge heat sink necessary to 
cool the melting fuel  is not available. This is not about earthquakes and 
tsunamis -- it is  about loss of off-site power, backup generators and emergency 
systems  that occur in a blackout. Do electrical outages and blackouts occur  
anywhere else? Blizzards? Tornadoes? Hurricanes? The world is seeing  more and 
more extreme and unpredictable weather. Claims that a serious  nuclear 
'accident' cannot happen in the U.S., Europe or Canada are  false, and nuclear 
executives know it. That is why corporations refused  at first to get into the 
nuclear power business, until the U.S.  Government indemnified them with the 
Price Andersen Act (1957).

"What  this [Fukushima] station suffered was a station blackout," says Deb  Katz 
of the Citizens Awareness Network, who helped shut down Yankee  Atomic in Rowe 
Massachusetts, "and the backup safety systems that were  supposed to keep it 
operational -- the backup diesel generators --  failed. This can happen without 
an earthquake. A midwest [U.S.] power  company caused the northeast grid to fail 
a few years ago; a flood or a  terrorist attack could do the same. We could then 
experience a similar  slow motion catastrophe though not on the grand scale of 
the Japanese  site with its 6 nukes."

A LONG HISTORY OF DECEPTION

Like  the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the International  Atomic 
Energy Agency, Japanese officials have a long history of covering  up ugly 
nuclear realities. In a recent WikiLeaks diplomatic cable,  politician Taro 
Kono, a high-profile member of Japan's lower house,  told U.S. diplomats that 
the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry  (MITI) -- the Japanese government 
department responsible for nuclear  energy -- has been "covering up nuclear 
accidents and obscuring the true  costs and problems associated with the nuclear 
industry." In 2002 "the  chairman and four executives of TEPCO, the company that 
owns the  stricken Fukushima plant, resigned after reports that safety records  
were falsified." 


Such singular but remarkable events follow a  pattern of wholesale U.S. 
cover-ups that define the industry as  secretive and criminal, and they involve 
shoddy equipment, human  incompetence, unsafe designs, inadequate safety 
measures, and economic  decisions that have occurred since the very beginining 
of Japan's  nuclear power era -- which itself was born out of the bombing of  
Hiroshima and Nagasaki with U.S.-made weapons of mass destruction. 


  

The control room at the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Station, Tennessee. 
Photo c. keith harmon snow, 1994. 


In  the 1960's, TEPCO planned to build a reactor outside Kashiwazaki city:  
nuclear officials told the local community, for example, that  radioactivity 
from the plant would increase rice cultivation and the  coloring of the carp (a 
delicacy): seven reactors were eventually built  there. In June 1973, 
radioactive waste water leaked from a storage tank  at Fukushima's reactor No. 
1. In July 1974, Kansai Electric asked  Westinghouse Corporation to replace the 
steam generator of one of  Kansai's two Mihama reactors after Mihama I 
experienced four major  shutdowns in less than four years. 


In September 1974, following  the emergency shutdown of 21 of the then 55 U.S. 
reactors due to  radioactive leaks at the Illinois Dresden Reactor No. 1, 
Japanese  officials inspected their six Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), similar 
to  the Dresden BWR, and they found similar defects at Fukushima I and  Hamaoka. 
Ditto, 1975: emergency shutdown's in the U.S. prompted  inspections that 
discovered Emergency Core Cooling System  (ECCS)  problems at the Fukushima I 
and Tsuruga BWR reactors. Japan's Mihama  reactors were plagued with radioactive 
'leaks' and faulty equipment that  prompted Kansai officials to demand a refund 
from U.S. contractor  Westinghouse Corporation. The Mihama Pressurized Water 
Reactors (PWRs)  have been scrammed and shutdown and leaked. The accident at the  
Mihama Reactor No. 3 on 9 August 2004 was previously considered Japan's  worst 
nuclear accident: there was no tsunami, and no earthquake.

Japan's  fleet of white elephant nukes only grew more problematic. From April to  
September 1977, six of Japan's fourteen reactors were shutdown.  Japanese 
corporations joined with Westinghouse and General Electric in  the 1980's to 
export their destructive technology to other countries,  mostly targeting the 
so-called Third World. Before 1979 there were some  25 reactors under 
construction or completed in Japan, and until last  week there were 55 operating 
reactors. In 2006, GE and Hitachi  Corporation teamed up to create three joint 
venture nuclear companies to  expand nukes in North America. 


One fact is certain: we  have already been massively lied to about a massive and 
still unfolding  nuclear disaster. The radiation releases from some four to six 
nuclear  reactors in collapse are already known to be excessive, described by  
reputable experts as "worse than Three Mile Island but not as bad as  
Chernobyl." It may be worse than Chernobyl yet.

Additional  radiation has been reported at the Onagawa complex, but this was  
explained away as wind-blown radioactivity from the Fukushima complex.  
Meanwhile, in the same reports, officials said that radiation was not  leaking 
from Fukushima, or it was minimal, and there was no cause for  alarm. 


  

The core of the nuclear reactor at Tennessee Valley Authority's Unit 2 
Pressurized 

Water Reactor (PWR) prior to irradiation. Photo c. keith harmon snow, 1994.
  

After several days of lies and distortions and official government censorship, 
reports appeared under the headlines Japan radiation leaks feared as nuclear 
experts point to possible cover-up.  Reports also began citing partial meltdowns 
of nuclear fuel rods. The  threat of meltdown is real, it has been happening to 
some degree, and it  has already occurred far more than we have been told. The 
physical and  thermonuclear states of materials and systems and the spread of  
radioactivity at Japan's reactors remains shrouded in disinformation and  
silence.

THE CLEAN AND GREEN PROPAGANDA
 
Of course, technology gurus and corporate executives  and financial consultants 
are hysterical, claiming there were no deaths  from Three Mile Island and that 
deaths at Chernobyl are exaggerated by  the mass media. These claims are false. 
The new book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the 
Environment provides irrefutable evidence of massive loss of life. 


"The  book is solidly based -- on health data, radiological surveys and  
scientific reports -- some 5,000 in al," says journalist Karl Grossman.  "It 
concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people  died, mainly 
of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is  between when the 
accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it  projects, will follow."  
 
James Lovelock, author of the renowned GAIA Hypothesis, is a celebrated 
environmentalist for nuclear energy peddling nuclear power as a clean, green, 
renewable energy source of  the future. However, Lovelock has a long history 
working for NASA -- the  outer-space division of the Pentagon -- and is deeply 
enmeshed in the  western epistemological framework. 


Commenting on Japan's nuclear crisis,  Lovelock said that people were 
'prejudiced' against nuclear power  unreasonably. "It is very safe," he said. 
Chernobyl, for instance, was  "an idiotic mess-up that could only have occurred 
in the Soviet Union",  and according to UN estimates had killed only about 56 
people. More  people are routinely killed in oil refineries and coal mines, he 
pointed  out."

James Lovelock's Chernobyl statement should immediately  discredit him as a 
quack: Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is  unwilling to go on record 
claiming anything less than many, many deaths.  Further, Lovelock's comment 
about the 'idiotic mess-up' by Russians is  inherently racist: the Russians were 
the first to put a satellite  (Sputnik) into orbit, for example, and NASA 
collaborated with the  Russian MIR Space Station, which broke all kinds of 
records. 


Lovelock  suggests that nuclear reactors are our only hope to curtail global  
climate change, and that this may involve, for example, the 'suspension  of 
democracy'. However, democracy has been long since suspended for many  of the 
earths people and species -- forced to live and die with our  burgeoning wastes, 
consumption and exploitation. Lovelock's analysis is  patently false -- 
contaminated by his own inability to see beyond his  privilege and 
self-interests. 


Not convinced? Lovelock has also  reportedly stated, wrongheadedly: "One of the 
striking things about  places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is 
the richness of  their wildlife. This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the 
bomb test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the United States' Savannah River 
nuclear weapons plant of the Second World War."

Tell  this to the mutant babies, weak-spined and deformed children from the  
Chernobyl killing zones, chronicled in Russian filmmaker Vladimir  Kuznetsov's, 
"While We Are Still Alive, and to the people of Bikini Atoll whose stolen island 
is officially acknowledged to be highly contaminated. Savannah River is another 
SUPERFUND site.

The  nuclear power cycle involves disease, despair and death from the  uranium 
mining to daily operations to the nuclear waste "'dumping'.  Uranium mines in 
Niger that have built France's entire nuclear complex  are toxic wastelands 
spreading radiotoxins across north and sub-Saharan  Africa. The Tuareg and 
Toubou nomads have been completely shattered by the confiscation, exploitation 
and irradiation of their lands by the  nuclear complex. Native Americans 
continue to suffer massive epidemics  of disease, contamination and confiscation 
of lands in the Secret Nuclear War at the American Ground Zero:  the nuclear 
complex has compounded the native American genocide begun  in 1492. Daily 
contamination releases into water, soil and air occur at  every operating 
nuclear reactor in the world. There is no 'disposal' of  deadly nuclear toxins 
that now exist to perpetuity, and yet wastes are  typically dumped on poor 
communities like Barnwell, South Carolina, or  native American lands. 


Out of sight, out of mind: nuclear poisons are colorless, odorless, and deadly. 

START WORRYING, HERE'S WHY

The writing You Can Stop Worrying About A Radiation Disaster in Japan -- Here's 
Why is packed full of disinformation and technical jargon, masked as  scientific 
expertise, meant to confound, confuse and scientifically impress the 
un-technical (concerned) reader. The author at first did not  identify himself, 
which is a tactic many people use so that they do not  have to take 
responsibility, or worry about being held accountable.  Appended as a sort of 
disclaimer to the article that morphed out of the  comment we find the 
statement: "Since posting this, we have learned that it was written by Dr. Josef 
Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT."

In the nuclear arena, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is known 
for the infamous Nuclear Reactor Safety Study (WASH 1400), chaired by MIT 
nuclear scientist Norman P. Rasmussen (commonly known asThe Rasmussen Report),  
that whitewashed the massive flaws and safety failures of a burgeoning,  
secretive, incestuous nuclear power industry, even while it exposed  them to 
some degree.

According to a Nuclear Information and Resource Service fact sheet on Fukushima, 
in 1986, Harold Denton, then the NRC's top  safety official, told an industry 
trade group that the GE "Mark I [BWR]  containment, especially being smaller 
with lower design pressure, in  spite of the suppression pool, if you look at 
the WASH 1400 safety  study, you'll find something like a 90% probability of 
that containment  failing."

Produced at the height of the United States'  anti-nuclear movement in 1974, the 
Rasmussen Report downplayed the risk  of nuclear accidents and polished the 
image of a technologically  diseased industry. The stridently pro-nuclear MIT 
has spent billions of  taxpayers dollars on secretive and highly biased research 
programs of  all things nuclear. MIT is also a known hotbed of the Central  
Intelligence Agency (CIA), with a revolving door from MIT to government  to the 
CIA.

"I have been reading every news release on the  incident since the earthquake," 
wrote MIT's Dr. Josef Oehmen in his  initial post of March 12. "There has not 
been one single report that was  accurate and free of errors... By 'not free of 
errors' I do not refer  to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism - that is quite 
normal these  days. By 'not free of errors' I mean blatant errors regarding 
physics  and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an  
obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear  reactors 
are build and operated.  I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single 
paragraph contained an error."

Turns  out Dr. Oehmen's report had so many errors, and yet was so widely  
regurgitated, that it was taken over by MIT's nuclear experts. Dr.  Oehmen 
employs the standard ruse of claiming that the press, which can  very easily be 
shown to as stridently pro-nuclear as MIT itself, is  instead plagued by 
"tendentious anti-nuclear journalism -- that is quite  normal these days." He 
then explains nuclear power (wrongly) arriving  at last at his definitive 
statement that, "I repeat, there was and will  *not* be any significant release 
of radioactivity from the damaged  Japanese reactors."

  

 

  
Pollution off the coast of Japan caused large scale fishkills. 
Photo c. keith harmon snow, 1992.
 

"The first 'type' of radioactive material is  the uranium in the fuel rods," 
wrote Dr. Oehmen, "plus the intermediate  radioactive elements that the uranium 
splits into, also inside the fuel  rod (Cesium and Iodine). There is a second 
type of radioactive material  created, outside the fuel rods. The big main 
difference up front: Those  radioactive materials have a very short half-life, 
that means that they  decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. 
By fast I mean  seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the  
environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not  dangerous, at 
all. Why? By the time you spelled  "R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E", they will be 
harmless, because they will have  split up into non radioactive elements..." 


It takes about five  seconds to spell R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E and it takes about 
the same  amount of time to read a chart (below) which shows the actual 
lifetimes  and half-lives of radioisotopes that people need to be concerned 
about  today.

Not only does Dr. Oehmen intentionally misinform people  about the inherent 
design flaws and potential failures of nuclear  reactors and subsystems, but he 
knowingly disinforms about the potential  for serious health consequences and 
the radioactive contaminants that  are typically released during a nuclear power 
accident. While millions  of people in Japan are suffering the personal 
psychological terror of a  possible nuclear holocaust, the fears and horrors of 
life and death from  a natural disaster, starvation and thirst, and radioactive 
poisoning.  Dr. Joseph Oehmen -- safe in Boston Massachusetts -- has been been  
boasting about his blog post -- equally popular with people who hate it and love 
it -- which spread like a virus on the Internet.

During  nuclear fission, the uranium from the fuel rods splits into many  
radioactive fission products that can then escape during a nuclear power  
'event'. These include dangerous Noble Gases (xenon and krypton); Hallogens 
(including iodines and bromines); Alkali Metals (including cesium 137); Alkaline 
earths (including barium 133 and strontium 90) and the elements Tellurium and 
Ruthenium.  Some fissionable elements decay rapidly and are inconsequential 
during  releases, but some decay into other, more deadly nuclides. The most  
dangerous nuclides have half-lives in days (I-131 = 8 days), years  (Cs-137 = 30 
years) or centuries (Pu-239 = 24,000 years). Half-life is  the time it takes for 
one-half of the material to decay -- lest we  forget that the other half is 
still present.  


 

 
 

 
Tables 17.2 and 17.3 from: A Guide to Nuclear Power Technology (Wiley, 1984).
  

All of these fissionable products are  potentially released and they have 
varying degrees of half-lives,  mobility, migration and toxicity depending on 
factors like atmospheric  conditions, temperature of the reactor core and 
operating capacity  (megawatts) at shutdown, and the presence of coolants. The 
most  dangerous of these are iodine 131 (I-131), cesium 137 (Cs-137),  strontium 
90 (Sr-90), cobalt 60 (Co-60) and plutonium 239 (Pu-239). All  of these 
negatively affect the human body and all of these have been  released in nuclear 
power 'accidents', during venting of radioactive  steam or flushing of 
radioactive water, and other 'events'. Another  deadly isotope which seems to 
consistently 'escape' from nuclear power  sites is cobalt 60 (Co-60), half-life 
5.2 years. Co-60 accumulates and  migrates through steam generator tubes and 
other secondary coolant  processes, in core shrouds and reactor pressure 
vessels, and many of the  other components of nuclear reactors whose histories 
of failures are  thoroughly documented. 


Is radiation leaking in Japan? Yes and  no. The term 'leak' suggests air 
squeaking out of a balloon. In Japan we  have leaks, here and there, but we also 
have explosions, fires and  other phenomena that create massive radioactive 
emissions. To say 'leak'  is to downplay what is happening. The balloons in 
Japan have burst:  primary containment has been breached at Reactor No. 3 and at 
least one  spent fuel pool is burning up. With the walls blown out and roof 
blown  off, it seems at least one other spent fuel pool is gone or going. 


Nuclear  advocates deride and dismiss public ignorance about radionuclides like,  
for example, the noble gases. Nuclear advocates frequently state that  both 
xenon and krypton decay and disappear in a matter of seconds or  minutes. What 
they don't tell us is that these isotopes decay into  daughter isotopes that are 
extremely deadly emitters. Many credible  physicians, scientists and other 
nuclear experts -- free of the  self-interests of nuclear profits, academic 
sponsorship or career  advancement -- have outlined the absence of 
epidemiological studies of  certain radionuclides emitted or flushed at nuclear 
reactors. Dr. Helen  Caldicott has elaborated the detrimental health effects of 
the noble  gases xenon (Xe) and krypton (Kr), and she notes that these have  
appearance hundreds of miles from reactors believed to have emitted  them.

  
• Xenon 137, with a half-life of 3.9 minutes,  converts almost immediately to 
the notoriously dangerous cesium 137 with  a half-life of thirty years. 

>>• Krypton 90, half-life of 33  seconds, decays to rubidium 90, half-life of 2.9 
>>minutes, then to the  medically toxic strontium 90, half-life of twenty-eight 
>>years. 
>>
>>• Xenon 135 decays to cesium 135 with an incredibly long half-life of 3 million 
>>years. 
>>
>>• Large amounts of xenon 133 are released at operating reactors, and although it 
>>has a relatively  short half-life of 5.3 days, it remains radioactive for 106 
>>days. 
>>
>>• Krypton 85, which has a half-life of 10.4 years, is a powerful gamma radiation 
>>emitter. 
>>
>>• Argon 39 has a 265-year half-life. 
>> 
"Other dangerous noble gases include xenon 141,143  and 144, which decay to 
cerium 141,143 and 144," Dr. Helen Caldicott  reports in Nuclear Power is Not 
the Answer.  "According to the National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP 
Report  No. 60) these three cerium isotopes,which are beta emitters,are  
abundant products of nuclear fission reactions and have moderately long  
half-lives. They bio-concentrate in the food chain, and they irradiate  the 
lung, liver, skeleton, and gastrointestinal tract, where they act as  potent 
carcinogens." 


On March 14 Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) outlined the risks from 
Japan. Iodine 131 migrates in air and is  known for causing thyroid cancers, 
especially in children. Strontium 90  causes different cancers. Cesium 137 
concetrates in bone and causes  leukemia. Microscopic particles of plutonium 239 
cause lung cancer if  inhaled and Pu-239 kills instantly in any sizeble dose. 
Areas  contaminated by plutonium will have to be abandoned -- as happened at  
Chernobyl. 


"Since 2010, Fukushima Daiichi Unit-3 reactor had  been using mixed-oxide fuel 
(also called plutonium fuel or MOX)," PSR  reported, in Japan's Nuclear Crises 
Worsens,  "which is even more dangerous to the public than a severe accident 
with  uranium fuel. Plutonium fuel contains plutonium and other very toxic  
actinides that would increase the number of resulting cancers. Current  reports 
say that this fuel has been exposed to air."

"Pressure in  at least two of the reactors have reported to be well above normal  
levels," continued PSR, "and the reactor operator, Tokyo Electric Power  
Company, released some of the pressure by venting radioactive vapor from  the 
containment structure.  In addition, the radionuclide cesium has  been 
reportedly found outside the reactor, which indicates that there  has been fuel 
damage."

The proponents of nuclear power have used  all kinds of disinformation and 
tactics to protect the industry --  compelling the nuclear complex to arm guards 
to 'protect' these secrets  and to 'protect' civilian reactors. It is not only 
'terrorists' that the  nuclear establishment seeks to protect us from: the armed 
guards and  classified documents are to prevent the public from learning the 
truth  about the destruction of documents, the disappearing of evidence, the  
falsification of reports and records, the calculated fudging of risk and  safety 
assessments. There have been countless exposes, such as Daniel  Ford's 1982 book 
The Cult of the Atom: The Secret Papers of the Atomic Energy Commission.

  
FALSE STATEMENTS AND PREMATURE ASSURANCES

The original New York Times story, Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief 
Efforts Intensify (retitled by Business Insider,  commented on by Dr. Joseph 
Oehmen), follows the patterns of the media  and government begun on DAY ONE, 
wherein authorities offered false  assurances, premature evaluations, and 
outright lies. These officials --  and the media that quoted them -- repeatedly 
reiterated that there was  no cause to worry. At first, no radiation was 
released, we were told,  over and over, even though, admittedly, there were some 
slight reactor  problems here and there. Then there were explosions, but still 
the  radiation levels were normal, or, well, maybe there was a puff of steam,  
which we were told was a hydrogen blast, but radiation monitors showed  nothing, 
and there was no threat to the public health or safety. 
  
The Japanese Government soon dispatched health and  rescue teams dressed in 
white moon suits and breathing through  respirators and hauling around geiger 
counters to measure radiation  levels in frightened children, but still, no 
radiation was released,  they chanted, no cause for alarm, the media reported. A 
handful of  citizens reported to the hospital showing signs of radiation 
poising,  but still there were 'no serious radiation concerns', officials were  
everywhere quoted, or else what little radiation was released was  compared to 
what you might get riding on a school bus in the sunshine.  While evacuating 
thousands of people in the 20 kilometer zone (12 miles)  around Fukushima, on 
the one hand, the government continued to tell  people that the public was not 
at risk, on the other, and the media  continued to report the lie, as they have 
always done, and still do,  with radiation emergencies in the United States.
 
For example, on November 23, 2009, a radioactive contamination at Three Mile 
Island led to a Reuters news report titled Federal Officials: Radiation Leak At 
Three Mile Island No Threat to Public Safety.  Like the 'news reportage' coming 
out of Japan, the Three Mile Island  leak story was bereft of any discussion, 
analysis, counterpoint or  critique from anyone. Journalists who collaborate 
with the western  English-language news-consuming media have no comprehension of 
the  technological issues, the industry cover-ups, the deceptions, the  
bureaucratic inertia or the radiological poisons produced and the  concomitant 
epidemics of disease clustered around nukes. They have  swallowed the industry 
slogans and green-washing for so long that their  capacity to provide 
comprehensive, informed, investigative reportage is  less than zero. Hence we 
find innocent [sic] people like CNN's Anderson Cooper (360) reporting from 100 
kilometers north of Fukushima and then freaking out and running for their lives 
from the invisible killer: radiation. Meanwhile, CNN cuts back-and-forth from 
Cooper to Jim Walsh -- 'our nuclear expert and CNN contributor' -- who 
arrogantly reassures the increasingly anxious  Anderson Cooper that everything 
is under control and the blasts and  white smoke are of no concern.  

 
"We had an explosion," MIT's Dr. Jim Walsh  reports, the Boston, Massachusetts 
skyline and the Prudential Center  skyscrapers glimmering brightly behind him. 
"It turned out that  explosion did not compromise the [nuclear] core facility," 
he guesses  (minute 29). Walsh immediately betrays his speculation a few minutes  
later (minute 59). "Hopefully [emphasis added], it's just  the outer structure, 
and has left unaffected the reactor, and unaffected  the containment vessel. 
Because if it were to affect those  things...uh... that would be bad news..." 


"The subtext here is Should I Get Out of Here?"  interrupts the alarmed Anderson 
Cooper, in the live on-the-air  broadcast. Of course, from this point on the 
western press increasingly  focuses the public's attention on the trials and 
tribulations and  death-defying escape of the courageous [white] investigative 
reporter,  Anderson Cooper.

"I hear you Anderson," responds expert Jim  Walsh, chuckling. "I want to err on 
the side of caution for you here,  Anderson." Walsh is barely able to contain 
his laughter as he sells  Cooper out. "Uh, ah, my guess is that you are O.K. But 
I don't want you  to sue me if I am wrong. But, uh, I'm inclined that you're 
O.K."

"There  have been release of..uh..uh...I guess a gas," Cooper continues, "and  
correct me, I flunked science... There have been releases out over the  
ocean...why were they doing these controlled releases?"

Dr. Jim  Walsh then pontificates that radiation releases that ostensibly drift  
out over the ocean -- releases questioned by the ill-prepared and  uneducated 
Cooper -- are 'mildly radioactive', unwanted but not  dangerous, in any case, 
that they are being screened for dangerous  radonuclides by the Japanese reactor 
experts, and "it's not going to be a  major health threat."

  
Nonsense! Here is a simultaneous catastrophe beyond  human comprehension: At 
least six nuclear reactors in various states of  collapse, out-of-control, and 
in partial meltdown, and at least one  even more deadly spent fuel pool 
overheating and burning, amidst the  apocalypse from the original Richter 9.0 
earthquake, the Richter 5.0 and  6.0 aftershocks, the Tsunami, the massive death 
toll, the lack of  emergency vehicles and spreading radioactivity, the fires, 
the melting  Spent Fuel Pools -- they are not "screening" radioactive releases 
which,  in any case, are now uncontrolled.

 
Of course, according to his own biography, CNN's nuclear consultant, Dr. Jim 
Walsh, an expert in international security  and a Research Associate at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's  Security Studies Program (SSP) -- which 
also shares U.S. special forces  as 'research fellows'. He is published and 
selected as the chosen expert  by the major U.S. and European media. Dr. Jim 
Walsh is the former  Executive Director of the Managing the Atom project at 
Harvard  University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a visiting  
scholar at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore  
National Laboratory -- one of our Department of Energy SUPERFUND sites, deep 
down the dark [nuclear] rabbit hole. Dr. Jim Walsh is another government spook.

For  another example, "[T]he most urgent worries concerned the failures at  two 
reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant," the New York Times 
wrote, in Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief Efforts Intensify,  
"where engineers were still struggling to avert meltdowns and where  some 
radiation had already leaked. An explosion at one of the reactors  on Monday did 
not appear to have harmed it, Japanese officials said."

In  one sentence we are told that a nuclear meltdown may be imminent, and  in 
the next sentence, same paragraph, Japanese officials assured the  public (the 
New York Times backed them up) that an explosion  occurred but the reactor was 
not harmed. Is this believable? When the  Japanese nuke experts took the drastic 
measure of pumping seawater into  the reactors they knew that the reactors would 
be ruined forever. Given  the economics of such a choice -- billions upon 
billions of Japanese yen  destroyed forever -- we can infer that the situation 
is beyond grave:  the Fukushima area is now a permanent sacrifice zone: people, 
wildlife,  land has been sacrificed to the Gods of nuclear technology.

"We have no evidence of harmful radiation," deputy Cabinet secretary Noriyuki 
Shikata told reporters after one of the recent reactor building explosions.

Environmental  activists in the area of the Fukushima reactors began to cry foul 
after  finding that radiation monitoring stations were not operating. At the  
top of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Monitoring Website it said 
"monitoring goes on around the clock year round" and at the  bottom it said 
"THIS SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY SHUTDOWN." Activists believed  that TEPCO was 
downplaying radioactive releases. At the same time, TEPCO  was announcing that 
it planned to vent the containment [vessel] to  relieve the pressure, which 
caused releases of radioactivity into the  air.   

On Wednesday March 16, National Public Radio reported that "the chief of the 
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that all  the water is gone from one of 
the spent fuel pools at Japan's most  troubled nuclear plant, but Japanese 
officials denied it." Of course, National Public Radio has been heavily 
subsidized by the nuclear power industry and has consistently advanced the 
nuclear industry agenda.

More nonsense: Radiation from Japan's troubled nuclear reactors has virtually no 
chance of reaching the U.S. -- the West Coast, Alaska or other locations -- the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday March 15. (Note that they don't want 
to disturb the  tourist industry, so they say nothing about Hawaii.) The 
statement from  the NRC said that "the 'small' radiation releases so far [sic] 
from the  Japanese reactors has been blown out to sea, away from populated 
areas."

On Wednesday March 16, the United Nations Comprehensive Test Ban treaty 
Organization reported that a radiation plume from Japan nukes would hit Southern  
California late Friday. Of course, health and NRC officials say it poses  very 
little risk.

DISTANCING U.S. NUKE INDUSTRY FROM JAPAN
 
NBC News on Wednesday evening (March 16) ran  several short 'news' clips about 
Japan's nuclear crises. One of these  was clearly intended to distance General 
Electric and the nuclear  Regulatory Commission from Japan, a sort of betrayal 
of the culture of  secrecy and their historically incestuous relationship. Why? 
To perform  damage control, improve investor confidence, assuage public fears of 
a  similar catastrophe at one of the 110 reactors in the U.S.

The NBC broadcast began by pointing out that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory  
Commission (NRC) has advised U.S. citizens who are within 50 miles (80  
kilometers) of the Fukushima reactors to evacuate or stay indoors. The  U.S. set 
a higher standard, and the news went on to promote the idea  that Japanese 
officialdom cannot be trusted, but U.S. officialdom can.

Then the NBC News reporter, Lester Holt, was shown being scanned for radiation 
after  returning from the Sendai area: no contamination on his body, but his  
"shoe bottoms [soles] contained slightly elevated amounts of radiation,  but of 
no danger to us," he said. Again, the standard tactic of  reporting that 
contamination has occurred -- this time it is on his  shoes -- but that it is of 
no danger. Furthering the myths about  radioactivity and its deadly means of 
spreading disease, the shoe bottom  problem was nothing a little soap and elbow 
grease couldn't fix. And  so, later in the hour, they showed the shoes being 
scrubbed and  everything being returned to [business as] normal. 


NBC followed the news tidbits about radioactive shoes with pictures of  
Fukushima reactors -- buildings with their roofs blown apart --  accompanied 
with assertions that there is a POSSIBLE breach of  containment at the Fukushima 
Reactor No. 2, and that a breach of Reactor  No. 3 containment vessel is 
CONFIRMED. 

View image

  

 
Cut to the U.S. Congress, where NBC brings us a  very, very short clip from a 
special Senate hearing held on Wednesday  March 16. Suddenly the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (NRC) is awake, and  they care, and they are telling an 
equally awake and suddenly concerned  U.S. Congress that they believe that Japan 
has covered up the extent of  the nuclear disaster. 


"Radiation levels are extremely high,"  proclaims NRC chief Dr. Gregory B. 
Jaczko. The spent fuel pools are dry.  Secondary containment at the reactor [No. 
3] has been breached, but  Tokyo is denying this." 

Finally, NBC informs its viewers,  in passing, that General Electric -- the 
designer and salesmen of the  GE Mark I Boiling Water reactors that General 
Electric dumped on  Fukushima back in the 1970s -- is a part owner of MSNBC. 
Full disclosure, of course. 


Suddenly  the 'news' shifted to big bold banners flashed across the TV screen in  
big blue fonts. These banners remind good, tax-paying and law-abiding  citizens 
-- good people watching the evening news after a hard day's  work -- that GE has 
reviewed the safety concerns that were previously  raised about GE BWR reactors, 
and so reactors in the U.S. are safe. It  was no longer news: it was a public 
relations ploy, a photo op for GE to  improve its image, right out of George 
Orwell's 1984. 


The  latest psychological operation underway is to convince and reassure the  
U.S. public and English-language speaking world that General Electric  is not 
responsible for what is happening in Japan; that U.S.-based  G.E.-designed 
reactors elsewhere, being of the same age and design, are  not going to have the 
same problems as reactors in Japan. The message is  also that the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission runs a tight ship, that  oversight is comprehensive and 
thorough, people are doing their jobs,  and that the nuclear industry in the 
U.S. is nothing like the secretive  and bungling industry in Japan. 


While the message is racist at  its [nuclear] core, nothing could be further 
from the truth. It can  happen here. San Onofre. Diablo Canyon. Vermont Yankee. 
There have been  all kinds of warning signs. It won't be a tsunami, on the back 
of an  earthquake, or maybe it will. It will be a BLACKOUT scenario of some  
kind, as it is in Japan. 


In the Congressional Hearing, Senator  Barbara Boxer was suddenly awake, and 
suddenly concerned, and suddenly  the U.S. Congress is going to straighten this 
all out and protect us.  The U.S. Senate Hearings began with some grandstanding 
by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA),  whose jabs were directed at Republicans, 
but in the end she asked a few  questions. 


The next speaker, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla) reads  a garbage speech about 
how wonderful the NRC is and how safe are U.S.  reactors. Our first and foremost 
concern is safety, he says, and we must  continue to develop and site and 
license and operate new reactors world  wide. "We've delayed for 30 years now. 
So I think that we certainly  don't want to slow down, let's keep going."

The hearing was completely corporate, one Senate official citing recent New York 
Times stories that have suddenly awoken them (the Senators) to the many warnings 
that had previously occurred. My God, we didn't know. Meanwhile, the NRC 
Chairman testified that the NRC can not attribute a  single death to the nuclear 
accident at Three Mile Island. 

A few  months ago, President Obama signed some 8.5 billion dollar loan  
guarantees for a nuclear reactor construction project for U.S. nuclear  
corporation Southern Company, in partnership with the Tokyo Electric  Power 
Company (TEPCO). 


Of course, the Price Andersen Act, passed  in 1957, indemnifies nuclear 
utilities and reactor operators from all  lawsuits, financial liability or 
related responsibility. 


Everything  suggests that it will be business as usual. Destabilization,  
destruction, war and catastrophe have always been turned into a big  business 
for the United States of America. Across the ocean tens of  thousands of people 
are protesting in Germany and France and Briton.  Here, even the discussion is 
off course. The wrong questions are being  asked and the wrong people are 
answering them. Instead of talking about  limits to growth, the focus is on 
expansion, profits, trade and  so-called progress. Why would this situation be 
any different? As  Senator Barbara Boxer eventually said: we should be humbled. 


Perhaps  the worst horror of all is that people trapped in the contaminated  
zones are now being shunned by outsiders, including aid organizations. Radiation 
fears, mingled with a sick sense of abandonment, reported the Los Angeles Times,  
as people are afraid to help them. People in the evacuation zones -  elders and 
those without fuel or transport -- are geting no help, and no  information. We 
should be humbled.

Keith Harmon Snow is a war correspondent, photographer and independent 
investigator, and a  four time (2003, 2006, 2007, 2010) Project Censored award 
winner. He is  also the 2009 Regent's Lecturer in Law & Society at the 
University  of California Santa Barbara, recognized for over a decade of work,  
outside of academia, contesting official narratives on war crimes,  crimes 
against humanity and genocide while also working as a genocide  investigator for 
the United Nations and other bodies. From 1985 to 1989,  he worked as Engineer, 
and then Manager, GE Aerospace Electronics  Laboratories, Syracuse NY. He has 
three papers published in the journals  of the Institute of Electrical and 
Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 


 Global Research Articles by Keith Harmon   Snow