Japan Denies Withholding Evidence of Massive Radiation Release

[nadinbrzezinski]

Japanese authorities on Tuesday attempted to deflect criticism for withholding over a period of weeks indications of significant radioactive material leakages from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the New York Times reported (see GSN, April 12).

(Apr. 13) - A perimeter fence, shown on Tuesday, restricts access to Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Tokyo last month did not release calculations pointing to major radioactive material releases from the severely damaged facility due to concerns over their accuracy, officials said this week

Japan on Tuesday upgraded the plant's incident level from 5 to 7, a classification reserved for the most severe nuclear crises. The government took the action in large part in response to calculations showing that extreme quantities of radioactive iodine and cesium had escaped from the six-reactor facility in the first week after it was crippled by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and devastating tsunami that hit Japan on March 11. The confirmed death toll from those events now exceeds 12,000 people.

Uncertainty over the calculations' accuracy held up their release, Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission official Seiji Shiroya said. In addition, the official suggested the government was concerned the measurements could exacerbate public fear over the atomic crisis.

“Some foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to be little risk,” Shiroya said. “If we immediately decided to label the situation as level 7, we could have triggered a panicked reaction.”

http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20110413_4365.php

[Electric Monk]

1. It wouldn't surprise me if it's been a 7 since mid March. They just didn't want mass panic.

I think there are a lot of people here who owe you an apology, Nadin.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Cute photo

as to apology, I don't expect it, at all.

[Raschel]

16. We had good reason to surmise that they were lying and withholding with all of the

contradictory information.

I'd like to know why there were some on DU who ridiculed those of us who were concerned.

[Ignis]

19. There will always be those sorts in anonymous discussions.

The real question is why they were allowed to continue with impunity.

[Selatius]

3. The Japanese are going to have to make TEPCO account for what has happened.

Also, the people of Japan are going to have to sit down and seriously re-examine the issue of nuclear power in a land vulnerable to tsunamis and horrible earthquakes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. And poor in energy sources

if Japan needs or wants to be an advanced economy it needs power. This is why Japan went to war in the 1930s and 40s...

I get it why they decided to go Nuke... I suspect they should look into many an alternative source that might work from sea, even space. Or go back to an agrarian economy.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. Nucler power many need to be questioned..

anywhere on the surface of the Earth.

It will have a place in spacecraft never designed to touch down on a planet.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Or... the moon

[Ozymanithrax]

8. Chemical rockets can only do so much.

But if they solve the technical issues they could build a beanstalk (space elevator) from the surface of the moon to a geosynchronus orbit, and from the surface of the earth to a geocynchronus orbit.

[Raschel]

18. The most horrible part is that the people inside the thirty mile range were the collateral damage.

The US advised a larger evacuation and Japan kept it at the 12 mile range to reassure its citizens and the world that the problem was not that severe.

[Selatius]

20. Well, now the Japanese government will hopefully pay for the medical/funeral expenses.

Because a lot of people are going to get doses of radiation that will surely give them cancer and cut many years off their lives.

[flamingdem]

7. How big will the class action lawsuit be? nt

[JuniperLea]

17. People of Earth vs. TEMCO

Would be the way to go.

[Aerows]

9. This is the same type of lying we saw with BP

This just happens to be on much worse scale. Who, other than the nuclear apologists, ever thought they were telling the truth from the beginning? I never did.

You could take one look at the damn buildings and see that the damage was catastrophic. They didn't want to trigger a panic that would have crashed their financial markets, however, I have no doubt that in the future there will be some horrific health consequences for many thousands of people in Japan, not to mention all of the radioactive material they are continuing to dump into the sea.

They've never acted like they had a credible plan to contain this.

[gratuitous]

10. They didn't withhold any evidence

You all would have found out soon enough. Say, within 25 years or so. Unexplained (and unexplainable) "clusters" of odd diseases and syndromes. Tumor outbreaks. Deformed babies. The usual stuff. But "withholding evidence"? Perish the thought! Just protecting the big boyz until they can (1) achieve enough geographical distance to avoid capture and (b) achieve enough temporal distance that their denials have a grain of plausibility. "Withholding" implies that nobody would ever find out. But that's simply not the case, as we all well know.

[Aerows]

11. I consider it withholding

If they knew and didn't state it as soon as they knew it, so that people could make an informed decision about what to do.

BP did the same shit, and it's sickening.

[gratuitous]

13. When you started to glow in the dark, you'd know

So, see, considered from a certain point of view (that of a craven little twerp trying to save his own miserable hide), the evidence would be there for anyone to see. Okay, too late to do anything about it, and in the ensuing confusion, maybe the twerps could skedaddle before the public turned on them in righteous wrath.

[robdogbucky]

12. And this from two weeks ago...

Washington, D.C. - infoZine - Aileen Mioko Smith ( [e-mail] ) is executive director of Green Action, a Japanese environmental group. She has been stating from the beginning of the crisis that the Japanese government has not been sharing critical information with the public. She is analyzing the situation and has been translating reports.

She said today: "We would like to have the international community sanction the Japanese government for wantonly raising the level of contamination allowed for Fukashima citizens. Up until now, it had certain standards for food from the area, but is working to change those standards to make things appear OK. What the government should be doing is broadening the official evacuation zone." http://fukushima.greenaction-japan.org link...

...Grossman added: "The claim being disseminated by media of 'no immediate danger' from the spread now worldwide of radioactivity from the ongoing nuclear power disaster in Japan is outrageous. Any amount of radioactivity can kill, as has now been widely acknowledged by organizations involved in research on radiation. The media coverage overall of the catastrophe has been barely passable to dreadful. It's been full of journalistic ignorance (the repeated reports, for example, that potassium iodide pills will 'block radioactivity' when, in fact, they block only radioactive iodine, one of hundreds of radioactive poisons) and the presentation of nuclear promoters as 'experts' (making declarations such as one 'expert' on PBS NewsHour saying the plutonium discharges in Japan are 'actually typical of natural plutonium contamination in this country.' There's no 'natural plutonium contamination' in the U.S. -- plutonium is man-made. Journalists desperately need to know the facts about nuclear technology -- and not be bamboozled, as is the current media situation."

Background: From the New Scientist: link "Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels," which states: "Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors -- designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests -- to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl."

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/46966/

[robdogbucky]

14. And this from a couple of days ago, Grossman's learned opinion

"...But the real energy choices were largely not being discussed by media through the past month of Fukushima disinformation.

The classic book on disinformation on nuclear technology is Nukespeak, published in 1982. It is dedicated to George Orwell, author of 1984, and written by Stephen Hilgarten, Richard C. Bell and Rory O'Connor.

It opens by declaring that "the history of nuclear development has been profoundly shaped by the manipulation through official secrecy and extensive public-relations campaigns. Nukespeak and the use of information-management techniques have consistently distorted the debate over nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Time and time again, nuclear developers have confused their hopes with reality, publicly presented their expectations and assumptions as facts, covered up damaging information, harassed and fired scientists who disagreed with established policy, refused to recognize the existence of problems"claimed that there was no choice but to follow their policies."

In the first month of the Fukushima disaster, there's been an explosion of Nukespeak by the nuclear power establishment aided and
abetted by a compliant media."

#http://www.karlgrossman.com

[robdogbucky]

15. Here's an example of official Nukespeak:

Fukushima: A Month of Media Disinformation

"...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."

Plutonium is a manmade substance. It was discovered by Glenn Seaborg in 1941 and used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki and almost all atomic weapons since. Plutonium-239 is what Uranium-238 can become when in the proximity of fission.

Nuclear power plants build up 500 to 1,000 pounds of plutonium every year. Indeed, the concept for nuclear power plants came from the plutonium production reactors built at the Hanford reservation in the state of Washington during the Manhattan Project crash program of World War II to build atomic bombs. Also produced in those reactors were large amounts of heat. With the war over, seeking to do more with nuclear technology than just build more nuclear weapons, the scientists, engineers and corporate contractors of the Manhattan Project--which became the Atomic Energy Commission--pushed a scheme to use that heat to boil water to turn a turbine and generate electricity.

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..."

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