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Fukushima Still Plagues Pacific Ocean Fishery, Government & Industry See No Evil

At right, Harrison, British Columbia, where some soil and salmon were found to be contaminated with radioactivity from Fukushima last March. Harrison is 4,600 miles from Fukushima.
By John LaForge

The Japanese fishing community and nuclear watchdog groups are raising alarms over government plans to dump into the Pacific over 1-million tons of highly contaminated waste water from three devastated nuclear reactors at Fukushima.

The London Telegraph reported last October that Japan’s “plan to release the approximately 1.09 million tons of water currently stored in 900 tanks … has triggered a fierce backlash from local residents and environmental organizations, as well as groups in South Korea and Taiwan fearful that radioactivity from the second-worst nuclear disaster in history might wash up on their shores.”

Greenpeace issued a report Jan. 22, 2019 condemning the plan, reminding the public that the owners/operators of Fukushima — Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) — admitted in 2018 that its waste water treatment system (the Advanced Liquid Processing System or ALPS) had failed. “Despite the much-vaunted Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) plant at Fukushima, Tepco has confirmed that levels of strontium-90 are more than 100 times above legally permitted levels in 65,000 tons of water that have already been through the ALPS system,” the South China Morning Post reported last January.

Outrage within the fishing community was palpable during a series of public hearings last year which were designed to convince skeptical observers that pouring more radiation in the Pacific is a good idea. The magnitude-9 earthquake, and the tsunami it caused on March 11, 2011, left more than 27,500 people dead or missing in northeast Japan, and triggered the largest release of radioactivity to the ocean in history.

Dumping Radioactive Water Poisons Fish

Since Fukushima’s triple catastrophe — earthquake, tsunami, and radiation plumes — there has been relentless news of seafood contamination. On Feb. 2, 2019, the Japan Times reported that radioactive cesium far above the legal limit was detected in fish caught off Fukushima, according the Fukushima Prefecture’s Fishery Cooperative Association. Skate, a variety of ray, that was caught over 180 feet deep, was found with 161 Becquerels-per-kilogram of radioactive cesium-137, exceeding the allowable limit of 100.

However, since cesium-137 is a reactor-borne element not found in nature, the established 100 Bq/kg limit is arbitrary. None whatsoever should be “permitted” because any internalized cesium-137 can potentially cause health problems. Any cesium that we eat and which is not excreted, adds to previously ingested radioactive materials. Radioactive water is continuing to flow into the Pacific Ocean from the site of three mangled reactors at a rate of around 2 billion Becquerels a day, according to a 2018 Japanese study, the Japan Times reported March 29, 2018.

Cesium-137 has been found in Canadian fish as well. The Haida Gwaii Observer in Queen Charlotte, B.C. reported last March 16, 2018 on a press release issued by Krzysztof Starosta, a chemist at Simon Fraser University’s nuclear science lab. Starosta reported that in his study, cesium-137 “levels found in both the salmon and soil samples remained below Canada’s safety guidelines, posing minimal health risk to B.C.’s salmon and human populations.” The use of the word “minimal” by Starosta is a trivialization of “some” risk, especially when considered in view of the cumulative effect of eating contaminated fish over a lifetime.

Likewise in the United States, in April 2014 the Oregon Statesman Journal reported on a study by Oregon State University that found that Fukushima radiation in albacore tuna caught off the Oregon coast tripled after the 2011 meltdown. “You can’t say there is absolutely zero risk because any radiation is assumed to carry at least some small risk,” said lead author, Delvan Neville, in OSU’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics. In October of 2012, Albacore tuna caught off Washington and Oregon and Blue fin tuna off of California were also found contaminated with Fukushima cesium.

Since 2016, TEPCO has repeatedly claimed — and news reports repeatedly noted — that its “advanced [ALPS] processes had reduced the cancer-causing radioactive contaminants” such as strontium-90, iodine-129 and ruthenium-106 in the water “to non-detectible levels.” Then, last October, the Telegraph noted, “[T]he ALPS has consistently failed to eliminate a cocktail of other radioactive elements, including iodine, ruthenium, rhodium, antimony, tellurium, cobalt and strontium.” According to the Telegraph, “Iodine 129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years and can cause cancer of the thyroid; ruthenium 106 is produced by nuclear fission and high doses can be toxic and carcinogenic when ingested.”

“In late September [2018], Tepco was forced to admit that around 80% of the water stored at the Fukushima site still contains radioactive substances above legal levels…” the Telegraph said.

TEPCO has admitted for example that in several of the storage tanks, levels of deadly, long-lived strontium-90 are 20,000 times the allowable limit levels set by the government. Pouring this carcinogenic brew into the sea is reckless endangerment of the commons. There ought to be a law.

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Nuclear Power Can’t Survive, Much Less Slow Climate Disruption

By John LaForge
French protestors march against water-wasting reactors. The placard reads: “Nucleocrats, stop your shenanigans, we are scared!”
Donald Trump: “America will never be a socialist country.”

Too late. We already have socialism for the rich, with the nuclear power industry as a prime example.

On a level playing field, nuclear power would go bust. Those owners get financial supports or subsidies that safe renewables like solar power, geothermal, and wind power don’t get. Two particularly large government handouts keep the reactor business afloat, and without them it would crash overnight.

1) In a free market, the US Price Anderson Act would be repealed. The act provides limited liability insurance to reactor operators in the event of a loss-of-coolant, or other radiation catastrophe. The nuclear industry would have to get insurance on the open market like all other industrial operations. This would break their bank, since major insurers would only sell such a policy at astronomical rates, if at all.

2) The US Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) would also be repealed. NWPA is the government’s pledge to take custody of and assume liability for the industry’s radioactive waste. Without NWPA the industry would have to pay to contain, isolate and manage its waste for the 1-million-year danger period. The long-term cost would zero the industry’s portfolio in a quick “correction.”

Jeremy Rifkin: “From a business perspective, it’s over”

Even if the industry retained the above two subsidies, economists say the reactor business is finished. Jeremy Rifkin — the renowned economic and social theorist, author, political advisor to the European Union and heads-of-state, and author of 20 books — was asked his view of nuclear power at a Wermuth Asset Management global investors’ conference.

Rifkin answered:

“Frankly, I think … it’s over. Let me explain why from a business perspective. Nuclear power was pretty well dead-in-the-water in the 1980s, after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It had a come-back. The come-back was the industry saying: ‘We are part of the solution for climate change because we don’t emit CO2. It’s polluting, but there’s no CO2.’

“Here’s the issue: Nuclear power right now is six percent of energy of the world. There are only 400 nuclear power plants. These are old nuclear power plants. But our scientists tell us [that] to have a minimum impact on climate change — which is the whole rationale for bringing this technology back — nuclear would have to be 20 percent of the energy mix to have the minimum, minimum impact on climate change — not six percent of the mix.

“That means we’d have to replace the existing 400 nuclear plants and build 1,600 additional plants. Three nuclear plants have to be built every 30 days for 40 years to get to 20 percent, and by that time climate change will have run its course for us. So I think, from a business point of view, I just don’t see that investment. I’d be surprised if we replace 100 of the 400 existing nuclear plants which would take us down to 1 or 2 percent of the energy [mix].

“Number 2: We still don’t know how to recycle the nuclear waste and we’re 70 years in. We have good engineers in the United States. We spent 18 years and $8 billion building an underground vault in Yucca Mountain to store the waste for 10,000 years, but we can’t use it. It’s already no good because there are cracks in the mountain. But any geologist could have told them we live on tectonic plates and you can’t keep underground vaults secure.

“Number 3:  We run into uranium deficits according to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] between 2025 and 2035 with just the existing 400 plants. So that means the price goes up.

“Number 4: We could do what the French generation of new plants is doing and recycle the uranium to plutonium. But then we have plutonium all over the world in an age of uncertainty and terrorism.

“Finally, and this is the big one that people don’t realize: We don’t have the water. Over 40 percent of all the fresh water consumed in France each year goes to cooling the nuclear reactors. It’s almost 50 percent now. When it comes back [when reactor cooling water is returned to the lakes and rivers] it’s heated and it’s dehydrating our ecosystems, and threatening our agriculture. We don’t have the water, and this is true all over the world. We have saltwater nuclear plants but then you have to put them on coastal regions and you risk a Fukushima because of tsunamis….

“So it’s no accident Siemens [Corporation] is out [of reactor business], Germany is out, Italy is out, Japan is now out… I’d be surprised if nuclear has much of a life left. I don’t think it’s a good business deal.”

Rifkin is not alone in his assessment. William Von Hoene, Senior Vice President of Exelon Corp., said last April 16 at the annual US Energy Association’s meeting, “I don’t think we’re building any more nuclear plants in the United States,” Platts reported. “I don’t think it’s ever going to happen,” Von Hoene said. “I’m not arguing for the construction of new nuclear plants. They are too expensive to construct.”

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Allies Move to Block High-Level Radioactive Waste Targeted for New Mexico: HOLTEC Proposes World’s Largest Nuclear Dump and Nationwide Shipment of N-Waste

By Diane D’Arrigo, Nuclear Information and Resource Service and Leona Morgan, Nuclear Issues Study Group

In this photo from the 1970s, barges from KPS Construction help in the construction of the Kewaunee nuclear reactor on Lake Michigan. Federal plans envision the use of barges like these to move hundreds of tons of highly radioactive waste fuel rods from the now closed Kewaunee reactor to the port of Milwaukee. Photo by Power Engineering online.

[Albuquerque, NM]  Ten organizations* and two industry groups** blasted Holtec International’s application*** to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to build and operate the world’s largest nuclear waste dump in New Mexico. The waste, from commercial nuclear power is currently at the reactor sites where it was produced. Opening a high-level waste dump, if licensed, would lead to tens of thousands of ongoing high level radioactive waste shipments on rail, truck and boat for decades. Deadly containers would pass through nearly 90% of U.S. Congressional districts including neighborhoods, cities, farmlands, lakes, rivers and ocean-fronts. The waste is the hottest, most concentrated atomic waste from the nuclear fuel chain, misleadingly dubbed “spent” fuel.  This radioactive waste can cause death in minutes if unshielded, and remains radioactive for literally millions of years; it is one of the most deadly materials on Earth.

The organizations are demanding that the NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board halt the Holtec licensing because it is illegal. The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, only allows the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to take ownership of irradiated nuclear fuel at an operating permanent geologic repository. Such a title and liability transfer to DOE at the “interim” site proposed by Holtec, is not allowed. The wise precaution was included in the law to safeguard against an “interim” surface site becoming de facto permanent in the absence of a permanent repository. The Holtec site  would not be suitable for long-term isolation and, in the view of those challenging Holtec, it is also not suitable for short-term storage.

The Holtec license application says the lethal waste at the site would be owned by either the Department of Energy (DOE) or the nuclear utility companies that made it. But at the hearing, Holtec’s lawyer, Jay Silberg, admitted that under current law DOE cannot take title and ownership of the waste at an “interim” centralized storage site. This makes the proposal unrealistic.

Diane Curran, attorney for Beyond Nuclear, said “We should not even have to argue this hypothetical case. We call on the licensing board to dismiss the application.”

Attorney Terry Lodge, representing seven organizations from California to New York and Michigan to New Mexico charged that, “The Holtec proposal is a corporate welfare trough that will make the nuclear waste problem in this country worse, putting millions of people along transport routes at unnecessary risk.”

Sierra Club lawyer Wallace Taylor, argued against the segmented licensing stating that, “It is irresponsible and illegal to grant a license for 20, 40 or 60 years and ignore that the waste will be dangerous for centuries longer with no plans to continue managing and isolating it.”

Holtec admitted they do not have a way to repair cracked storage and transport canisters but stated that since they are not expecting cracked canisters they don’t have to prepare to deal with them.

Major questions were raised about how waste would get to New Mexico (which has no commercial nuclear power reactors); how long it would stay (forever?); who would pay; and who would be liable for the statistically-inevitable accidents and radioactive releases, both in transit and at the site.

Alliance For Environmental Strategies (AFES), based in southeastern New Mexico, is charging that the siting violates principles of environmental justice and that Holtec’s Environmental Report is totally inadequate in this regard.

Given admissions by Holtec, it seems that nuclear power companies would have to keep title, pay to transport the waste and remain economically and legally liable, which they will not be willing to do. This makes funding for the Holtec dump operation and eventual closure highly questionable.

Diane D’Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director at Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said “New Mexico could end up holding the bag, threatening the thriving industries already in the region including dairy, pecan farming and ranching. Mixing high-level radioactive waste with the booming Permian Basin oil and gas industry is a recipe for disaster. Everyone along the transport routes would be at personal and economic risk because all insurance policies expressly state they will not cover radioactive accidents or incidents. Check your own auto, renters and homeowners policies,” she advised.

Approximately 40 objections were filed, including environmental racism/injustice; danger of contaminating water; inadequate radioactive waste containers and storage systems; no ability to inspect, monitor or repackage damaged fuel and containers; condition of the waste after extended storage; eventual decommissioning costs and funding; next destination of the waste when the temporary storage license expires and unnecessary transport dangers.

Curran stated that “Holtec’s environmentally reckless, poorly conceived dump proposal is an environmental, economic fiasco for the State of New Mexico and for communities all across the country from nuclear power reactors to the Holtec site.”

The 3 judge panel will decide in about 45 days, mid-March to early April, 2019, who will have standing and which objections will be considered.

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*Organizations: Public Citizen, Sierra Club, Beyond Nuclear, Alliance for Environmental Strategies (NM), Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination (MI), Citizens Environmental Coalition (NY), Don’t Waste Michigan (MI), Mothers for Peace (CA), Nuclear Energy Information Service (IL), Nuclear Issues Study Group (NM)

**Industries: Faskin Oil, NAC International

*** Holtec International’s HI–STORE Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF) Project, NRC Docket No. 72-1051; Federal Register / Vol. 83, No. 95 / Wednesday, May 16, 2018

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Gerd Büntzly, Crime Fighter

Gerd Büntzly (right) with attorney in appeals court

By John LaForge

HAMBURG, Germany — I was with Gerd Büntzly, 69, of Herford, in a demonstration in Germany July 17, 2017. So were Steve Baggarly, Susan Crane, and Bonnie Urfer, all of the United States. Ours was a peaceful if covert, night-time occupation of a protected aircraft shelter or bomb bunker far inside the Büchel Air Force Base, near the beautiful Mosel River valley.

We were there to help prevent the unlawful use of the shelter in nuclear attacks or nuclear war preparations. Routine nuclear war planning by US and German Air Force personnel there, using US B61 nuclear bombs (NATO’s so-called “nuclear sharing”), violates the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and several other international treaties, all binding on the United States and Germany.

A rally in support of Gerd took place before the hearing.

In spite of our formal complaint to state prosecutors against “selective prosecution” of Gerd, and the violation of his “equal protection” rights, only he was charged, tried, and convicted of trespass and property damage (for clipping fences) in January last year. This Jan. 16, he was in court again appealing the conviction. Susan Crane from California and I travelled to Koblenz to speak on his behalf. Attorneys were quite sure that we two could testify, but ultimately were not allowed.

We wanted to explain that international law has the force of state and federal law in Germany and the United States, a fact recognized by Germany’s Constitution (Art. 25) and the US Constitution (Art. 6). According to Univ. of Illinois Law School Prof. Francis Boyle, writing recently for other nuclear weapons resisters, “International law is not ‘higher’ or separate law; it is part and parcel of the structure of federal law. The Supreme Court so held in the landmark decision in The Paquete Habana (1900), that was recently reaffirmed in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in 2006.”

Contrary to modern military strategists, there is no such thing as a “limited nuclear war.” Nuclear weapons only produce massacres. Beginning with 8 to 10 million degrees at detonation, followed by indiscriminate mass destruction from blast effects, city-size mass fires (firestorms) in which nothing survives, and uncontrollable radiation poisoning that produces genetic damage unlimited by space or time, nuclear weapons are just massacre delivery systems.

Supporters hoped to testify in the hearing.

International law has prohibited the planning and not just the commission of such massacres since 1946.

Professor Boyle wrote last November 1st: “The Judgment of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal meted out severe punishment in 1946 against individuals who, acting in full compliance with domestic law but in disregard of the limitations of international law, had committed war crimes and crimes against peace as defined in its Charter.”

The Nuremberg Charter and Principles apply to individual civilians like us and oblige individuals to disobey domestic laws that protect government crimes. And Nuremberg prohibits all “planning and preparation” of wars that violate international treaties.

The 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit indiscriminate attacks on noncombatants, attacks on neutral states, and long-term damage to the environment. The 1907 Hague Conventions forbid the use of poison and poisoned weapons under any circumstances.

Under the 1970 NPT, it is prohibited for Germany to receive nuclear weapons from the United States and for the US to transfer them to Germany. Germany and the United States are both formal state parties to all of these Treaties.

“By implication,” Boyle explains, “the Nuremberg Judgment privileges all citizens of nations engaged in war crimes to act in a measured but effective way to prevent the continuing commission of those crimes. The same Nuremberg Privilege is recognized in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice which has been adopted as a Treaty (the United Nations Charter) by the United States” [and Germany]. In my opinion, such action certainly includes nonviolent exposure and inspection of sites of ongoing war crimes.”

Because nuclear weapons cannot be used without violating these binding international treaties; since Germany and United States at Büchel are planning and preparing war that violates these treaties; and because the Nuremberg Charter and Principles forbid this planning and preparation, and apply to civilians and military personnel alike, and hold citizens individually responsible; and require citizens to disobey illegal orders, to refuse participation in or ignore international crimes, civil resistance at Büchel is no offense but a civic duty, a lawful obligation, and an act of crime prevention.

Some of the German and international supporters from the Netherlands and United States await the trial.

In the courtroom, crowded with 40 people, the three-person “bench” (two lay volunteers and one criminal court judge) found Gerd guilty — but reduced his fine from 1,200 Euros to 750 — after making a few standard quips about “deterrence.” Prescient as ever, Professor Boyle’s latest book is, “The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence” (Clarity Press 2013).

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Appeal to be Heard in Case of German Nuclear Bomb Bunker Protest Conviction: US Activists to Testify

Gerd Büntzly (right) with anti-nuclear activists before entering Büchel Air Force Base on July 17, 2017.

An appeal court trial for Gerd Büntzly, 69, from Herford, Germany, will begin Wed., Jan. 16, 2019 at 2 p.m. in County Court Koblenz, Germany.

Büntzly has appealed a January 2018 conviction on trespass and property damage charges stemming from a July 2017 protest at the Büchel Air Force Base, in Germany’s Eifel region, which experts say deploys at least 20 U.S. nuclear gravity bombs for use by the German Air Force. Büntzly was sentenced to a fine (40 times his day’s wages) that could translate into 40 days in jail.

Büntzly, 69, who teaches German to refugees, is a retired music teacher, pianist, and an orchestral arranger, and is a founding member of Liebenslaute (Life Sounds), a German resistance orchestra that combines musical performance with social action. (Büntzly is available for interviews before and after the trial.  (+49-522-138-0866)

On July 17, 2017, Büntzly along with four U.S. activists clipped through several chain-link fences at the German nuclear weapons base, and were eventually able to occupy the top of a heavy nuclear weapons bunker known as a protected aircraft shelter. The activists say they acted, to “end our complicity with the unlawful deployment of 20 U.S. B61 nuclear bombs on the Büchel air base.” German air force pilots of the country’s PA200 Tornado fighter jets train at the base to use the U.S. nuclear bombs under a NATO program called “nuclear sharing.”

Two of the U.S. activists that joined Büntzly in the 2017 occupation of the bunker on the base, Susan Crane from the Redwood City Catholic Worker in California, and John LaForge from Nukewatch in Wisconsin, have come to Germany for the appeal trial, where they hope to testify. Susan Crane said, “We don’t want to be complicit the ongoing planning, preparation, possession, deployment, threatened use or the use of the 20 U.S. B61 nuclear bombs at Büchel. These are violations of international humanitarian law and the Nuremberg Principles. We hope the court will recognize the Treaties that forbid nuclear weapons threats, and then reverse Büntzly’s conviction.”

International law experts from the US and Germany have condemned “nuclear sharing” as a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which both the U.S. and Germany have ratified. The NPT’s first two articles prohibit the transfer of nuclear weapons to or from other countries that have ratified it. Anabel Dwyer, an international legal expert from Michigan, has submitted a formal Declaration on behalf of Büntzly, arguing that citizens are permitted to try and prevent unlawful or criminal government conduct, especially alleged violations of Treaties outlawing the planning of war crimes.

Marion Küpker, spokesperson for the German-wide campaign “Büchel is Everywhere: Nuclear Weapons-Free Now!” also said that Büntzly’s nonviolent civil resistance was justified. “In 1999, a Scottish court recognized a ‘defense of crime prevention’ under international humanitarian law, when it acquitted three women who had acted against Britain’s Trident nuclear submarine program by throwing parts of its maintenance system into the sea,” Küpker said.

Germany’s “Büchel is Everywhere” campaign has now been endorsed by 60 groups and organizations, and sponsors a nonviolent action camp outside the Büchel base from March 26 to Aug. 9. In the past two years, more than 60 individuals have joined “go-in” actions during the weeks of peace camp. In 2019, there will be another 20 weeks of nonviolent protests at the base.

In the coming years, a new U.S. B61 bomb, the B61-mod 12, is set to be built at a cost of around $12 billion, and the U.S. plans to deploy the new bomb at Büchel and six other NATO bases in Europe where the U.S. Air Force’s current B61-3s and B61-4s are now used. The other “nuclear sharing” sites are in The Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey and (two in) Italy. #####

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