Radioactive Pollution, Part 1. Japan
Monitoring Trends in Medicine and the Nutrition Industry
Slowly Losing its Future Generations?
Background
This report was compiled in response to a number of unusual and persistent health conditions being reported following the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan. Slow-to-heal sores, digestive problems, sore throats, rashes and hives, appear more commonplace.
What at first seemed an isolated event in Japan is shedding light on an emerging challenge to human survival that strikes mostly directly at those who are youngest and most vulnerable.
How Did it Begin?
On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, a seismic event occurred deep in the ocean off the east coast of Fukushima, Japan. As in the beginning stages of a war, early problems inside the reactor facility were badly underestimated. Many months later, we are beginning to see the long-term impact facing Japan and the United States.
World wars take years to unfold, and the early promises of a quick and clean resolution are soon forgotten. And so it appears to be now as Fukushima unfolds. But the strange, tangled web of secrecy and disinformation following the accident is drastically slowing recovery and increasing the damage.
The denials began almost as soon as the first waves struck the six-reactor facility. Built perilously on shifting landfill extending out into the ocean, and protected from the open sea by only a short wall, Fukushima Daiichi was built like a balancing act, with hundreds of highly-radioactive spent-fuel rods perched on the roof, as though nothing could ever go wrong. The entire facility, in fact, was built on the gamble that it would have an uninterrupted supply of electricity — forever.
On August 27th, Naoto Kan, Prime Minister of Japan for just fifteen months, gave his resignation speech. Predictably, Japan’s command and control structure has been crumbling in the face of the daily reports of bad news.
Early on, Mr. Kan had invoked the Japanese Emergency Law, Article 15, ordering a clamp-down on all government agency news releases. Japan, like the United States, has a law that allows government censorship when threatened. Even so, it could not save Mr. Kan’s career.
Despite the suicidal efforts of hundreds of emergency workers and technicians, TEPCO (the utility that owns the nuclear power plant) has not been able to contain the prodigious amounts of radiation pouring into the air and sea. As satellite images and computer models confirm, eventually we all share the same air and water. And we, in the United States, share them with Japan much sooner than most other countries.
Of the 31 radioactive isotopes identified in Fukushima fallout, iodine 131, cesium 137, strontium 90, uranium 235, and plutonium 239 are widely known.
At first we were told the cesium fallout from Fukushima was less than the fallout from the bombing of Hiroshima. However, on August 26th, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency conceded that the cesium fallout had been equal to 168 atomic bombs… so far. However, this may be conservative, scientists point out, because each of the melted cores contained enough material for 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. This means the total amount of nuclear fuel at the plant was 1,814 metric tons, or about 4 million lbs.
This is important to know because the radioactive clouds passing over the United States and settling into our cities, pastures, food, and water carry small but significant amounts of radioactive iodine 131 and cesium 137. Following the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986, radioactive iodine and cesium were responsible for the greatest damage to human health and life, bringing suffering to children being born even today.
In Fukushima, part of the challenge in containing the radiation is confusion. No comprehensive plan now exists for lack of information. Neither robots nor humans seem to be capable of getting close enough to the problem, deep in the bowels of the reactor buildings, and underground, to diagnose the on-going damage. Robots currently are being used on a daily basis, but both robots and humans have limits.
The nuclear industry ran into those limits in 1986 after the explosion at Chernobyl. On the morning of April 26th, when fires and explosions demolished reactor 4, Ukraine firemen went in, knowing the danger they faced. Many died that very day from radiation. Their boots and gloves and jackets still remain scattered on the floor of a small, on-site underground hospital that was incapable of taking care of them.
Later, when the USSR paid Germany a small fortune to send in robots to inspect the damage, the robots failed, too. Under such intense radiation, both electronics and biological systems fail.
One single accident of this intensity and magnitude can ruin a nation. In fact one of the more seminal events that brought down the Soviet Union was Chernobyl. Both directly and indirectly, over a span of just two years, Chernobyl crippled the Soviet economy and, by way of the international community, forced openness and accountability upon a formerly secretive and coercive government. In Japan, the financial impact of such sad events is only just beginning.
Mineral Supplements and the Radioactive Isotopes in our Air, Water and Food
Your body cannot distinguish between radioactive iodine and safe iodine, so radioactive iodine 131 readily migrates to your thyroid gland and begins mutating cells. Thousand of the victims of Chernobyl contracted thyroid cancer from the fallout and had their thyroid surgically removed.
Cesium 137, on the other hand mimics potassium in your body and migrates to all the same places as potassium, particularly to your muscles lungs and cardiovascular system. When those living in a fallout area notice salty tasting rain, this could be due to the cesium chloride that forms in radioactive clouds as they move over populated areas.
Strontium 90 mimics calcium in the body and migrates to your bones, bone marrow and teeth. Strontium 90 in bone is well-known to cause bone cancer, leukemia, and cancer of the soft tissue nearby. Although 90% of leukemia occurs in adults, childhood leukemia is perhaps even more tragic and harder to treat due to the rapid proliferation of mutated infantile DNA.
Following the accident at Chernobyl, the Soviet government distributed at least two supplements in the fallout areas. These supplements were later credited with a protective effect.
According to Yoichi Shimatsu, a Japanese investigative journalist, the natural disaster on March 11 was "vastly amplified" by the Stuxnet [computer] "worm," which infected and disabled reactor control systems
in the 20 minutes prior to the tsunami — the type of infection for which Stuxnet was designed.
Stuxnet, according to many sources, originally was developed cooperatively by western allies to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities and now is being used even more widely in covert operations outside the range of public or political oversight.
Whether provoked by a computer worm or not, when the earthquake knocked out electricity at the Fukushima plant, the back-up generators failed, too. As a result, pumps designed to protect the reactors from a loss of cooling also failed. In a surprising reversal, scientists concluded that the process of meltdown began even before the Tsunami reached shore.
Now, nearly everyone agrees, Fukushima will have a wider impact than Chernobyl. However, the damage is difficult to measure due to the very-long life of some radioisotopes. Even now, twenty-five years after Chernobyl, the reactor continues to leak, and children, in particular, are dying from high rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer, mostly the effect of cesium 137. Births, too, are falling below population replacement levels.
What is the Plan?
Today, a multi-story "tent" covers and quarantines reactor #1. Although the tent will not be able to stop radiation, it will be used to confine radioactive particles, so they can be vented out of enormous chimneys by powerful exhaust fans, using filters to reduce the spread of radiation.
"As radiation continues to spread for the next several years – fanning outward from Japan – we need to be more conscious of what we eat and drink and bathe with."
This should reduce the ambient radiation inside the reactor building, with the hope of allowing workers inside. However, this tent above ground will do nothing to contain the radioactive water and fuel that seems to be escaping into the ocean below ground.
Presently, aside from the inability to get too close to the melted fuel for too long, the slow pace of repair may be linked to reports from on-site technicians. Apparently, deep fissures are opening up in the ground, with radioactive steam escaping.
An unidentified Fukushima employee stated in an email, "A lot of the cracks came up in the ground. Massive steam is coming up from there. It’s too smoggy here. Can’t see a thing. It seems like a nuclear reaction is happening underground. Now, we are evacuating. Watch out for the direction of the wind."
According to Dr. Robert Jacobs of the Hiroshima Peace Institute, cracks in the earth opened up soon after two 6.0+ earthquakes hit Fukushima in July and August. Pipes may have burst and the concrete reactor buildings may have ruptured, releasing tens of thousands of tons of radioactive water and/or fuel into the soil. Once molten fuel reaches the water table, steam is produced, opening cracks in the earth as it forces its way to the surface, even as the radioactive fuel burns deeper.
Such a possibility was introduced in the 1979 movie, "The China Syndrome." A melt-through into the earth might be of lesser concern if it occurred in a remote desert. Fukushima, on the other hand, like many reactors in the United States, is built on the ocean, so there is a strong likelihood that fissures are opening into the ocean.
Where is the Radiation Going?
The United States, Canada and Mexico are directly in the path of the radioactive clouds being produced by the most badly-damaged nuclear reactors. Some of this radiation can be monitored, but most of it cannot. Much of the radiation still is accumulating within the reactors and someday will have to be released, into the air and sea.
So, what are the consequences? Most modern governments are aware of the threat radioisotopes can pose to health. Yet, social conscience often is in short supply when a country’s economy is at stake.
Following the meltdown at Chernobyl, which produced fallout over much of Europe and the Soviet Union, nations often knowingly exported contaminated produce and dairy products to their neighboring countries. Up and down the ranks, government officials simply turned a blind eye.
Things are no different today. The exporting of radiation in food and manufactured goods continues, and the exporting of toxic isotopes, in fact, has become a new form of warfare.
