On April 25, 2016, Dr. Timothy Mousseau again reports that "Much like human survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, birds and mammals at Chernobyl have cataracts in their eyes and smaller brains. These are direct consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation in air, water and food. Like some cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy, many of the birds have malformed sperm. In the most radioactive areas, up to 40 percent of male birds are completely sterile, with no sperm or just a few dead sperm in their reproductive tracts during the breeding season.
"Tumors, presumably cancerous, are obvious on some birds in high-radiation areas. So are developmental abnormalities in some plants and insects."
"There are currently more than 400 nuclear reactors in operation around the world, with 65 new ones under construction and another 165 on order or planned. All operating nuclear power plants are generating large quantities of nuclear waste that will need to be stored for thousands of years to come. Given this, and the probability of future accidents or nuclear terrorism, it is important that scientists learn as much as possible about the effects of these contaminants in the environment, both for remediation of the effects of future incidents and for evidenced-based risk assessment and energy policy development."
Nuclear power is one of the most important issues now facing our planet, on the same level as the climate crisis. Radioactive waste is the most toxic poison made by humankind. Greenpeace says "Nuclear waste is produced at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining and enrichment, to reactor operation and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Much of this nuclear waste will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years, leaving a poisonous legacy to future generations." Plutonium 239 remains hazardous for 240,000 years, Uranium 235 for 7.13 billion years.
There is no safe place to store radioactive waste, 95% of which comes from commercial nuclear power, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) reminds us. In its new campaign, "Stop Mobile Chernobyl -- No Fukushima Highways," NIRS says, "An 'interim' storage site would begin the transport of tens of thousands of casks of lethal high-level nuclear waste across the entire United States, potentially affecting 100 million Americans who live within a mile or two of likely transport routes--our nation's roads and railways.
"Each truck-sized container would hold up to 40 times the long-lasting radioactivity released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The much larger train/barge containers would each hold over 200 times Hiroshima's long-lasting radioactivity [emphasis mine]. These shipping containers are vulnerable to severe accidents. Even a fraction of a single shipping container's radioactive cargo escaping into the environment could prove catastrophic for an entire area downwind and downstream. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not even require them to undergo full-scale physical safety testing! The containers are also vulnerable to terrorist attack, making them massive 'dirty bombs on wheels.'"
In an extensive and detailed 2011 report by The Associated Press, we learn that 75% of nuclear power plants leak radioactivity. It must be worse by now in 2016. Npp's leak radiation 24/7 - into our air, water, soil, food, bodies, everything. Beyond Nuclear cautions that there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation.
Again, from Caldicott: "Nuclear reactors are so unsafe that no insurance companies will insure them. Only public subsidies can sustain their construction.'The good news,' Caldicott asserts, 'is that there is no need to build new nuclear power plants to provide for the projected energy needs of the future. Indeed, it would be possible, using other forms of electricity generation, to close down most of the existing nuclear reactors within a decade. There is enough wind between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River alone to supply three times the amount of electricity that America needs.' At the March 18 news conference Caldicott quoted Einstein as saying, 'The splitting of the atom changed everything but [humans'] mode of thinking.'"
"A group of engineers within the U.S. nuclear power regulator is concerned that a design flaw in nearly all U.S. nuclear plants could endanger emergency core cooling systems. The group has urged the regulator to order power station operators to either fix the problem or face mandatory shutdowns." This article is posted on Reuters, March 1, 2016.
Arnie Gundersen on CCTV, (video and transcript) about his February 2016 Japan trip says, "We had one woman who ran from her house to evacuate carrying her dog. About a day after the accident, they realized that she needed to be evacuated. And so she runs barefoot to her car, gets in her car, drives to the resettlement community. She's highly radioactive. They make her -- especially her feet -- they make her take her socks off and take showers, wash her down before they let her in. And her feet were black for 3 years from radiation damage. And that's not being spoken about in any of the medical journals."
Whether we say 300 tons of radiated water have been flowing into the Pacific Ocean every day since Fukushima, March 11, 2011, or whether we say 83,000 gallons/day of radiated water - an incomprehensible amount of poisoned water is flowing into our one ocean.
"'The environmental impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster will last decades to centuries, warns a new Greenpeace Japan report. Man-made, long-lived radioactive elements are absorbed into the living tissues of plants and animals and recycled through food webs, and carried downstream to the Pacific Ocean by typhoons, snowmelt, and flooding.
"'The government's massive decontamination program will have almost no impact on reducing the ecological threat from the enormous amount of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Already, over 9 million cubic metres of nuclear waste are scattered over at least 113,000 locations across Fukushima prefecture,' said Kendra Ulrich, Senior Nuclear Campaigner at Greenpeace Japan."
"The environmental impacts are already becoming apparent, with studies showing:
"High radiation concentrations in new leaves, and at least in the case of cedar, in pollen; apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees with rising radiation levels; heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations and DNA-damaged worms in highly contaminated areas, as well as apparent reduced fertility in barn swallows; decreases in the abundance of 57 bird species with higher radiation levels over a four year study; and high levels of caesium contamination in commercially important freshwater fish; and radiological contamination of one of the most important ecosystems -- coastal estuaries."
"The Indigenous World Under A Nuclear Cloud" exposes nuclear injustice and some horrific details of the health, ecological and cultural consequences of nuclear power.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
1
