Fukushima nuclear disaster

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Buddhika Weerasinghe / Getty Images (Left) Anti-nuclear protesters in Osaka, on March 11 anniversary of Fukishima nuclear power station disaster.

In 2007, a worldwide study of 400,000 nuclear industry workers in 15 countries found a “significant association” between protracted, low-dose, ionizing radiation exposure and cancer. The average length of nuclear industry employment was 10.5 years with a total exposure of 19.4 mSV over that time span. The average yearly dose was only 1.95 mSV.

This is less than one-tenth of the “allow­ able” amount for Fukushima residents, who will be getting much more as long as the radioactivity persists in the environ­ ment. Radiation researchers have found that slow, low doses can cause even more harm than the fast, high ones, as in the case of the atomic bomb explosions.

Contamination of ecosystems

Not only are all the agricultural lands irradiated, but the forests as well. It is so extreme that when the male cedar flow­ ers open this spring, their budding will unleash another wave of radioactive ce­ sium into the environment. Populations of 14 bird species native to both Northern Japan and East Europe have experienced a decline two times higher in the Fukushi­ ma radiation zone than in Chernobyl’s, pointing to the much greater severity of the more recent accident.

Due to favorable winds last year, about 20 percent of the fallout from the radioactive plume fell on the Jap­ anese mainland, 78% into the Pacific Ocean and 2% on North America, particularly the Cascades region. However, cedar buds in California proved positive for two cesium isotopes last year.

With millions of gallons of radioactive coolant de­ liberately discharged into the sea, researchers have found fish and crustaceans near Fukushima contain­ ing 10,000 times levels deemed “safe” by the govern­ ment, and micro-algae at 19,000 times those levels.

Last summer, scientists from Woodshole Oceano­ graphic Institution, investigating four months of ra­ dioactive discharges, discovered cesium levels in the Pacific at 45 million times pre-accident levels, mean­ ing the ocean was not diluting the radiation as author­ ities claimed it would. Although it has leveled off since the peak discharges, it is believed that radioactivity is still flowing from groundwater and coastal sedi­ ments into the sea. As a remediation effort, TEPCO has begun pouring tons of concrete from ships onto the seabed to retard the spread of previously dumped radionuclides, turning the marine ecosystem into an utterly lifeless parking lot.

The sea provides a vast pathway for the spread of radioactivity via powerful ocean currents. In addition, it bioaccumulates up each chain in the food web. De­ spite widespread ocean contamination, the Japanese fishing industry continues to take large catches from near shore and out in the open sea, as do other na­ tions, and to export seafood.

To ensure that Japan can function at a “full-scale” economy, Secretary of State Clinton promised the prime minister that the U.S. would continue to sup­ port its enterprises and not reject contaminated products. Both Canada and the U.S. are accepting Japanese imports, and our governments conveniently halted all radiation monitoring last spring to keep the lines of commerce running smoothly as well as to maintain public ignorance of how much radioactivity is in the environment. There is also the concern for North American consumers of the radiation levels in our migratory fish, such as salmon and tuna.

The tsunami generated 25 million tons of debris, a good portion of which (a quarter to a third) was sucked out to sea at least 24 hours before the radia­ tion releases from the nuclear power plant. The stuff has begun arriving on the Pacific Northwest Coast, cluttering beaches, creating navigation problems, and spreading plastics and other toxins an entire year ahead of the predictions. It is expected that some of it will join the Northern Pacific garbage gyre, where it will pollute the marine habitat for years.

The horrors of the Japanese nuclear disaster are due to decades of perpetuating the cruel myth of the “ab­ solute safety” of nuclear power. The propaganda from both industry and one subservient government after (continued on page 7, in “Contamination will last for generations”)