Gundersen Discusses Lack of US Radiation Monitoring Data

[robdogbucky]

Fukushima Accident Severity Level Raised to '7': Gundersen Discusses Lack of US Radiation Monitoring Data

(See Video at link)

http://www.fairewinds.com/updates

Nuclear Engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discusses why TEPCO's announcement of an increased accident severity level should not be a surprise. He also discusses similarities among the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima nuclear accidents and how Governments are once again limiting public access to accurate radiation dose information. Lastly, Gundersen responds to the overwhelming number of email inquires regarding the Fukushima accident.




Fukushima: A Month of Media Disinformation

By Karl Grossman

Today marks exactly a month since the nuclear power disaster in Japan began. Along with the ongoing discharges of radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear plant complex, there has been a largely outrageous flow of media coverage...

...Asked by Jeffrey Brown about "the plutonium found in the ground" around the Fukushima nuclear plants, Dr. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University, responded: "Well, there are various sources that the plutonium could have come from. But I think we're relieved that the levels of plutonium are actually very low, and actually, typical of plutonium--natural plutonium contamination in this country."

Plutonium is the most lethal of all radioactive substances. There is no level "actually very low." A millionth of a gram inhaled, a microscopic particle, is all that's needed to produce lung cancer. Furthermore, there is no "natural plutonium contamination in this country..."

...Among their schemes, too, has been using plutonium as fuel in nuclear plants for the same reason plutonium was turned to by the Manhattan Project: limits of high-grade uranium. Manmade plutonium has been seen as the fuel for what's called "breeder" reactors.
Meanwhile, amid all the disinformation about radioactivity there has been the effort by most of media to frame a debate between nuclear and coal--chpose your poison. In fact, the energy debate is between nuclear, coal and oil, on one side, and safe, clean, renewable energy technologies, led by solar and wind, on the other...


http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=626416

[robdogbucky]

1. Gunderson: Sees similarities w/how disaster is handled

This is about a thousand times worse than Chernobyl, none of the nuclear industry planners foresaw this scope of disaster.

Another couple of similarities is the immediate supression of the story and the delays in making evacuations, both so as to manage public reactions, etc.


This and more at the video link above.

[RC]

2. What nuclear disaster?

For starts, Fukushima was not an accident. It was the result of magnitude 9 earthquake and many after shocks, several magnitude 7. Therefore it was a natural disaster, not an accident.
Those reactors were almost 40 years old and designed for magnitude 5 earthquake, not the 9 that hit it. Modern designs are even safer.
And then there was that little matter of the record breaking tsunami that killed almost 30,000 people and washed away entire towns much further inland than the nuclear power plants.

Did you know there was an oil-fired plant a little ways up the coast from Fukushima, that got totaled out by the tsunami? The plant caught fire the same day as the massive earth quake. Three days later, another fire broke out after the heavy oil that leaked out of the storage tanks, ignited. Lots of fire and smoke. But that's OK as the smoke was safe to breath, right? Why is nobody talking about that?


The only rational conclusion anyone can draw from all this is that an industry which can have an accident at the extreme top of its possible internationally agreed upon disaster scale, 2 magnitudes above its design rating and with 40 year old design technology, without killing a single person, is already so safe that it probably deserves to relax its costly precautions quite a bit.
Pretty good I'd say.

BTY, Wind and solar can at best be local stop gaps. Solar takes up way too much land mass to be feasible as primary power sources for cities with all if its apartment houses and office buildings. Wind is too unpredictable and quite often doesn't even blow when power is needed the most. Using pumped storage has its own set of problems and can only be utilized in limited areas.
Neither wind nor solar has the oomph for heavy industry.
And since we are running out of oil and will eventually run out of coal, what's left? Cover the earth with solar panels, held up by windmills towers, doesn't seem to be much of an option.

[buddysmellgood]

3. How much plutonium and cesium can a person safely ingest?

[RC]

8. How much cycloalkanes and alkanes can a person safely ingest?

As much on subject as your question.

[buddysmellgood]

13. This is why I no longer support nuclear. Too many refuse to speak

seriously about the risks.

[Rex]

4. Propaganda.

[RC]

9. You must mean the OP.

[Junkdrawer]

7. Fukushima must be really hard for nuclear die-hards n/t

[RC]

10. Not if you know the facts.

[Junkdrawer]

11. Yep...Fukushima had way too many safety systems....

that's the problem. :eyes:

[uppityperson]

12. "What nuclear disaster?" I agree it's not an "accident" but a disaster following a natural disaster,

but to blithley say "without killing a single person" is very demeaning to those who lived within the 10 or 20 miles of it who will never be able to go back home due to the radiation.


"Wind is too unpredictable and quite often doesn't even blow when power is needed the most. " What. The. Fuck? That is like saying hydro is too unpredictable and quite often doesn't flow where power is needed the most.

If you can not see the difference between the damage Fukushima disaster and a oil-fired plant burning for either the environment or people living nearby, I do not see much need to try and talk with you as your mind is so made up that

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Highly recommend all of his video updates.

[yawnmaster]

6. Here is food monitoring that is being done by UC Berkeley on CA food...

oh...
I'd have to drink 12,000 liters of milk (as of 4/11/2011) to receive a radiation dose equal to what I would receive on a coast to coast flight.

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/2525

Some leafy vegetable info there too...
I'd have to eat about 800 pounds of spinach.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[robdogbucky]

15. Dr. Chris Busby: Fukushima Now 72,000 Times Hiroshima Radiation

Dr. Chris Busby verified today in an email that three spent fuel pools are totally blasted away and burned up. That puts the approximate radiation levels at 24,000 HIROSHIMAS x 3 = 72,000 times the radiation of Hiroshima now in the atmosphere. Remember, this is JUST from the spent fuel pools. Radiation escaping from the reactors is another story altogether.

We have now all had time to evaluate what we believe is the truth behind the Japanese Nuclear Incident (or should I say disaster) and it has become clear that we have all been deceived by the Japanese Authorities, their nuclear establishment, the IAEA, the international pro nuclear groups and more importantly the so called experts that are invited onto the mainstream media channels to blast us with nothing more than total spin. We have heard from nuclear experts from Chatham House (the NWO voice box) and such people as Prof. Gerry Thomas from Imperial College London.

They all keep playing down this disaster without themselves fully understanding the implications on human health and the antiquated testing methods used in the assessment of potential victims. It is only when one listens to such people as Dr. Chris Busby that you get to understand the true picture of the side effects of contamination by ingestion i.e. depleted uranium etc.

http://nearing.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/24/6337286-dr-chris-busby-fukushima-now-72000-times-hiroshima-radiation




Here's another link to another discussion of Dr. Busby's opinion:


http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/03/24/dr-chris-busby-fukushima-now-72000-times-hiroshima-radiation/

and an excerpt from the above-linked article:

"...“I’ve been studying overhead photographs of Fukushima. It is very disturbing,” said Robert Alvarez, formerly a senior policy adviser at the Energy Department under Clinton and now a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies.

“The steel wall of the pool seems to show damage. All the surrounding equipment, including the two cranes, has been destroyed. There is smoke coming from reactor No. 3, and steam coming from the spent fuel pool next to it. That indicates that the water in the pool is boiling. And that means the spent fuel rods are getting hot and could start burning.”

If the spent rods start to burn, huge amounts of radioactive material would be released into the atmosphere and would disperse across the Northern Hemisphere.

Unlike the reactors, spent fuel pools are not—repeat not—housed in any sort of hardened or sealed containment structures. Rather, the fuel rods are packed tightly together in pools of water that are often several stories above ground..."




About Dr. Busby (Source: Wikipedia):

Christopher Busby (born 1945) is a British scientist and activist known for his work on the health effects of ionising radiation. In addition to his academic appointments he is the director of Green Audit, an environmental consultancy agency, and scientific advisor to the Low Level Radiation Campaign which he set up in 1995. Busby was also the National Speaker on Science and Technology for the Green Party of England and Wales, and the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks, based in Brussels.

From 1987 onwards Busby has worked in particular on the health effects of ionising radiation, developing the ‘Second Event Theory’ which distinguishes between hazards from external and internal irradiation. He has studied the effects of low-dose radiation on health. Recent (2008) work by Busby, focusing on the photoelectric effect as a mechanism for cells to be damaged by ingested uranium, was covered by the popular New Scientist magazine.
“As member of the International Society for Environment Epidemiology, he was invited to Iraq and Kosovo to investigate the health effects of depleted uranium. He has also given presentations on depleted uranium to the Royal Society and to the European Parliament. He was a member of the UK Ministry of Defence Oversight Board on Depleted Uranium.” He served on the UK Government’s Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE), which operated between 2001 and 2004, ultimately disagreeing with the committee’s conclusions and publishing a “minority report” with another committee member.

If you haven’t done so, please read at least these articles:

- Japan Nuclear Meltdown: Multiple Times Worse than Chernobyl

- Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant In Japan: A Dirty Bomb Waiting To Go Off

- Japan Nuclear Meltdown: It’s Much, Much Worse Than It Looks (Thanks To The Stupidity of Nuclear Engineers!) (MUST-READ

[robdogbucky]

16. Deconstructing Nuclear Experts

Deconstructing Nuclear Experts
By Chris Busby
3-29-11

"...Why is the ICRP model unsafe? Because it is based on "absorbed dose". This is average radiation energy in Joules divided by the mass of living tissue into which it is diluted. A milliSievert is one milliJoule of energy diluted into one kilogram of tissue. As such it would not distinguish between warming yourself in front of a fire and eating a red hot coal. It is the local distribution of energy that is the problem. The dose from a singly internal alpha particle track to a single cell is 500mSv! The dose to the whole body from the same alpha track is 5 x 10-11 mSv. That is 0.000000000005mSv. But it is the dose to the cell that causes the genetic damage and the ultimate cancer. The cancer yield per unit dose employed by ICRP is based entirely on external acute high dose radiation at Hiroshima, where the average dose to a cell was the same for all cells.

And what of the UN and their bonkers statement about the effects of the Chernobyl accident referred to by Wade Allison? What you have to know, is that the UN organisations on radiation and health are compromised in favour of the nuclear military complex, which was busy testing hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere at the time of the agreement and releasing all the Strontium, Caesium, Uranium and plutonium and other stuff that was to become the cause of the current and increasing cancer epidemic. The last thing they wanted was the doctors and epidemiologists stopping their fun. The IAEA and the World Health Organisation (WHO) signed an agreement in 1959 to remove all research into the issue from the doctors of the WHO, to the atom scientists, the physicists of the IAEA: this agreement is still in force. The UN organisations do not refer to, or cite any scientific study, which shows their statements on Chernobyl to be false. There is a huge gap between the picture painted by the UN, the IAEA, the ICRP and the real world. And the real world is increasingly being studied and reports are being published in the scientific literature: but none of the authorities responsible for looking after the public take any notice of this evidence.

As they say on the Underground trains in London: Mind the Gap. Wade Allison and the other experts I refer to need to do just this for their own sake. The one place that this gap is being closed rapidly and savagely is in the courts. I have acted as an expert witness in over 40 cases involving radiation and health. These include cases where Nuclear Test veterans are suing the UK government for exposures at the test sites that have caused cancer, they include cases involving nuclear pollution, work exposures and exposures to depleted uranium weapons fallout. And these cases are all being won. All of them. Because in court with a judge and a jury, people like Wade Allison and George Monbiot would not last 2 minutes. Because in court you rely on evidence. Not bullshitting.

Joseph Conrad wrote: "after all the shouting is over, the grim silence of facts remain". I believe that these phoney experts like Wade Allison and George Monbiot are criminally irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths. I would hope that some time in the future, I can be involved as an expert in another legal case, one where Wade Allison, or George or my favourite baddy, Richard Wakeford (who actually knows better) are accused in a court of law of scientific dishonesty leading to the cancer in some poor victim who followed their advice. When they are found guilty, I hope they are sent to jail where they can have plenty of time to read the scientific proofs that their advice was based on the mathematical analysis of thin air..."


http://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2011/03/deconstructing-nuclear-experts-by-dr.html


There is a lot more in the article, 4 paragraphs does not do it justice.


rdb