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Russia Can Get In Line: Investigate U.S. Atrocities First

On April 23, 1999, the U.S. rocketed the central state broadcasting corporation in Belgrade, destroying the building, killing 16 civilian employees and wounding 16. Human rights groups around the world said the attack was a war crime.

 

By John LaForge

Before the International Criminal Court confronts the criminal outrages currently being committed by Putin’s forces in Ukraine, there are scores of alleged U.S. war crimes to be investigated.

Nukewatch, CounterPunch and World Beyond War published part of this list of headlines (below) ten years ago, but in view of relentless ongoing U.S. wars and the outpouring of legitimate, agonized of grief for civilian victims of Russia’s illegal war, an updated compilation is in order.

The U.S. military has a long record of apparent atrocities during its attacks and its unprovoked wars of aggression or occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Like Russia in Ukraine today, the crimes include bombing hospitals, desecrating corpses, attacks on civilians and civilian objects, attacking allied troops, torturing and executing prisoners, and using banned cluster bombs.

But unlike todays’ wall-to-wall news coverage of Russia’s onslaught, the U.S. media mostly withdrew from reporting on U.S. military occupations and still chooses not to present many photos or film of alleged U.S. crimes. Like news censorship inside Russia, our media’s blind eye helps maintain U.S. public support for its wars-of-choice, so protests have been raised mostly by victims, survivors, human rights groups, anti-war coalitions, and international law advocates.

The most notorious and well-documented U.S. crimes have involved its torture of prisoners. “It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture,” concluded the nonpartisan 11-member panel of the Constitution Project in 2013. The group’s 577-page report found that President George W. Bush and others bore ultimate responsibility for it.[1]

While bombing Libya in March 2011, U.S. forces refused to aid a group of 72 migrants adrift in the Mediterranean. Only nine people on board survived. The refusal was condemned as criminal by the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights watchdog.[2]

On Feb. 12, 2010, in an atrocity kept secret until March 13, U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan killed a teenage girl, a pregnant mother of 10, a pregnant mother of six, a police officer and his brother, and were accused of trying to cover-up the killings by digging bullets out of the victims’ bodies, washing the wounds with alcohol and lying to superior officers.[3]

U.S. jets bombed and rocketed an allied Pakistani military base for two hours Nov. 26, 2011, killing 26 members of a force called the Frontier Corps and wounding dozens more.[4]

During the war in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, U.S. pilots deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade May 7, 1999 using five GPS-guided bombs. President Bill Clinton, CIA director George Tenet, and Defense Secretary William Cohen all claimed it was a mistake.[5]

On April 23, 1999, the U.S. rocketed the central state broadcasting corporation in Belgrade, destroying the building, killing 16 civilian employees and wounding 16. Human rights groups around the world said the attack was a war crime.[6]

In spite of international treaty law banning cluster bombs, the Unites States has used them widely its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia.[7]

The headlines below highlight U.S. conduct in the world, and provide an outline for prosecutors in The Hague to begin investigations.

Headlines allege U.S. war crime spree

 “How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria,” New York Times, Nov. 13, 2019

“U.S. Drone Kills 30 Civilians, Afghans ay, Target Was ISIS,” New York Times, Sept. 20, 2019

“U.S. Airstrikes and Raids Killed 120 Civilians in 2018, Pentagon Says,” New York Times, May 3, 2019

“U.S. and Afghan Forces Killed More Civilians in Early 2019 Than Taliban did, U.N. Finds,” New York Times, April 25, 2019

“For Afghan Civilians, 2018 Was the Deadliest in a Decade” (“Among the dead last year were 927 children” the United Nations report found), New York Times, Feb. 25, 2019

“U.S. Airstrikes Said to Kill at Least 0 Afghan Civilians,” New York Times, Feb. 11, 2019

“American Airstrikes Kill Civilians, Including Children, Afghans Charge,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 2019

“Decorated Navy SEAL Is Accused of War Crimes in Iraq,” New York Times, Nov. 15, 2018

“Report: 3,301 civilians killed in US-led strikes in Syria since 2014,” Duluth News Tribune, Sept. 24, 2018

“Study: US killed 500 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, June 3, 2018 (“Pentagon may be grossly undercounting.”)

“More Afghan Civilians are Victims of Targeted Attacks, UN Says,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2018

“Afghan Pedophiles Get Pass from US Military, Report Says,” New York Times, January 24, 2018

“‘Killed, Shovel in Hand’: Afghan Farmers are the Latest Victims of a Chaotic War,” New York Times, March 19, 2018

“American Airstrikes in Afghanistan Stir Debate Over Who Was Killed,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2017

“US Airstrikes kill at least 13 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Nov. 5, 2017

“Airstrike Kills at Least 25 at Street Market in Yemen,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2017

“Civilian deaths from US-led strikes on Isis surge under Trump administration” (“Airwars, a UK-based watchdog group, estimates the civilian death toll from coalition airstrikes at over 3,800.”), The Guardian, June 6, 2017

“11 Afghans Killed in US Airstrike,” New York Times, Aug. 31, 2017

“3 Children Among Dead in a Raid In Somalia,” New York Times, Aug. 26, 2017

“Afghans Say US Strike Hit Civilians,” New York Times, Aug. 12, 2017

“Civilian deaths a windfall for militants’ propaganda,” AP/Minneapolis StarTribune, April 2, 2017

“US Airstrike ‘Probably Had a Role’ in Mosul Civilian Deaths, Commander Concedes,” New York Times, March 29, 2017

“US strike reportedly killed 30 Syrians,” New York Times & Minneapolis StarTribune, March 23, 2017

“US military says fight with Taliban killed 33 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Jan. 13, 2017

“US-led strikes in Iraq, Syria have killed at least 188 civilians, military says,” Duluth NewsTribune, Jan. 3, 2017

“US admits its airstrikes likely killed Afghan civilians.” Washington Post & Minneapolis StarTribune, Nov. 6, 2016

“US Drones Hit Civilians, U.N. Says,” New York Times, Sept. 30, 2016

“Residents Say US Strike Killed Civilians” (killed at least 15 civilians), Wall Street Journal, Sept. 29, 2016

“Pentagon: Errors led to hospital strike,” (“which killed 42 people”), New York Time & Minneapolis StarTribune, May 1, 2016

“A Moral Debt for Bombing a Hospital” (“killing 42 innocent people”), editorial, New York Times, April 30, 2016

“Airstrike on Afghan hospital stirs fury,” New York Times, & Minneapolis StarTribune; and “19 die in apparent US airstrike on Afghan hospital,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 4, 2015

“Afghanistan Says NATO Airstrike in East Killed Civilians,” New York Times, April 16, 2014

“U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes,” New York Times, April 16, 2013

“US marine pleads guilty to urinating on corpse of Taliban fighter in Afghanistan,” The Guardian, Jan. 16, 2013

“US troops posed with body parts of Afghan bombers,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2012

“Drones at Issue… Raids Disrupt Militants, but Civilian Deaths Stir Outrage,” New York Times, March 18, 2012

“G.I. Kills 16 Afghans, Including 9 Children In Attacks on Homes,” New York Times, March 12, 2012

“NATO Admits Airstrike Killed 8 Young Afghans, but Contends They Were Armed,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2012

“Informer Misled NATO in Airstrike That Killed 8 Civilians, Afghans Say” (“seven shepherd boys under 14”), New York Times, Feb. 10, 2012

“One of the U.S. Marines who was caught on video urinating on the corpses of suspected Taliban fighters [in July 2011] has said that he’s not sorry for what he did and he’d do it again.” –ABC News
“Video [of Marines urinating on dead fighters] Inflames a Delicate Moment for US in Afghanistan,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 2012

“Commission alleges US detainee abuse,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Jan. 8, 2012

“Six Children Are Killed by NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan,” New York Times, Nov. 25, 2011

“American Soldier Is Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians for Sport,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2011

“US Drone Strike Kills Brother of a Taliban Commander,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 2011

“G.I. Killed Afghan Journalist, NATO Says,” New York Times, Sept. 9, 2011

“Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2011

“Civilians Die in a Raid by Americans and Iraqis,” New York Times, Aug. 7, 2011

“NATO Strikes Libyan State TV Transmitters,” New York Times, July 31, 2011

“NATO admits raid probably killed nine in Tripoli,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 20, 2011

“US Expands Its Drone War to Take On Somali Militants,” New York Times, July 2, 2011

“NATO airstrike blamed in 14 civilian deaths,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 30, 2011

“Libya Effort Is Called Violation of War Act,” New York Times, May 26, 2011

“Raid on Wrong House Kills Afghan Girl, 12,” New York Times, May 12, 2011

“Yemen: 2 Killed in Missile Strike,” AP, May 5, 2011

“NATO Accused of Going Too Far With Libya Strikes,” New York Times, May 2, 2011

“Disposal of Bin Laden’s remains violated Islamic principles, clerics say,” AP, May 2, 2011

“Photos of atrocities seen as threat to Afghan relations,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 22, 2011

“Missiles Kill 26 in Pakistan” (“most of them civilians”), New York Times, March 18, 2011

“Afghans Say NATO Troops Killed 8 Civilians in Raid,” New York Times, Aug. 24, 2010

“‘A dozen or more’ Afghan civilians were killed during a nighttime raid Aug. 5, 2010 in eastern Afghanistan, NATO’s officers said.” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 6, 2010

“Afghans Say Attack Killed 52 Civilians; NATO Differs,” New York Times, July 27, 2010

“Afghans Die in Bombing, As Toll Rises for Civilians,” New York Times, May 3, 2010

“Marines Used ‘Excessive Force’ in Afghan Civilian Deaths,” Washington Post, April 14, 2007

See you in court.

Notes:

[1] “U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes,” New York Times, April 16, 2013

[2] “NATO Failed to Aid a Boat of Migrants Off Libya Last Year, Rights Group Says,” New York Times, March 30, 2012

[3] Times of London, Mar. 13, 2010; & “US Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women,” New York Times, April 4, 2010

[4] “NATO Strikes Kill Pakistani Forces, Raising Tensions,” New York Times, Nov. 27, 2011

[5] The Guardian, “NATO bombed Chinese deliberately: Nato hit embassy on purpose,” Oct 16, 1999, https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans

[6] Amnesty Int’l, “NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: ‘Collateral damage’ or Unlawful Killings? Violations of the Laws of War by NATO During Operation Allied Force,” June 6, 2000, p. 40

[7] Human Rights Watch, “US Using Cluster munitions in Iraq,” April 1, 2003, https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/04/01/us-using-cluster-munitions-iraq#; The Lancet, “Pressure groups condemn US use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan”, Nov. 3, 2001,

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(01)06627-2.pdf; UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, “Cluster bombs were used by NATO forces during the bombing campaign,” https://www.icty.org/en/press/final-report-prosecutor-committee-established-review-nato-bombing-campaign-against-federal

 

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 “End war, build peace” by Ray Acheson

RAY ACHESON, 1 MARCH 2022

Ray Acheson is an activist for peace, justice and abolition, director of the Women’s Int’l League for Peace & Freedom disarmament program in New York City, WILPF representative on the steering committee of ICAN, and author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy (Roman and Littlefield 2021).

Russia’s war in Ukraine is intensifying, with cities and civilians being targeted with missiles and rockets and a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding. The threat of nuclear war, the billions of dollars being promised to militarism, racist border crossing restrictions and ideas about conflict, and the ongoing climate crisis are intertwined with the already horrific violence in Ukraine. To confront these compounding crises, war and war profiteering must end, nuclear weapons must be abolished, and we must confront the world of war that has been deliberately constructed at the expense of peace, justice, and survival.

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report, finding that human-induced climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly. “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of an IPCC working group.

The IPCC report was released five days after Russia launched an imperial war of aggression against Ukraine—a war that itself is fossil-fueled and wrapped up with energy and economic interests, and that will contribute further to carbon emissions. Furthermore, this report comes one day after the Russian president ordered his country’s nuclear forces to be put on “combat duty,” escalating the risk of nuclear war and threatening climate catastrophe.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has already seen violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, including Russian forces using banned weapons such as cluster munitions and using explosive weapons in populated areas, hitting hospitals, homes, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. The conflict has also already involved severe environmental impacts, including pollution from military sites and material, as well as from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, radiation risks from fighting at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility, groundwater contamination, and more.

Now, it risks becoming nuclear, putting the entire world at risk. The use of even a single nuclear bomb would be absolutely devastating. It would kill hundreds of thousands of people, it would destroy critical infrastructure, [and] it would unleash radiation that will damage human bodies, animals, plants, land, water, and air for generations. If it turns into a nuclear exchange with NATO or the United States, we will be facing an unprecedented catastrophe. Millions of people could die. Our health care systems, already overwhelmed by two years of a global pandemic, will collapse. The climate crisis will be exponentially exacerbated; there could be a disastrous decline in food production and a global famine that might kill most of humanity.

In this moment, everyone must condemn the threat to use nuclear weapons, as well as the ongoing bombing of civilians, the war in general, and the Russian government’s act of imperial aggression. Providing humanitarian relief, ending the war, and preventing it from turning nuclear are top priorities. But we must also recognize what led us here. This crisis is the inevitable result of building a world order based on militarism, just as the nuclear dimension is an inevitable result of the possessing nuclear weapons and claiming they are a legitimate tool of “security”.

READ THE FULL POST HERE:

End war, build peace

 

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“Most, if not all” US Reactors Dangerously Operating Using Counterfeit Parts

By John LaForge

The lead paragraph from Reuters was originally correct: “Most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants contain counterfeit or fraudulent parts, potentially increasing the risk of a safety failure…”

This hair-raising news is just one of the shocking findings in a set of seven reports released February 10 by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Office of Inspector General (OIG), now headed by Robert J. Feitel.

Among the findings of the first of the seven reports were: 1. “Counterfeit, fraudulent, and suspect items (CFSI) are present in operating plants”; 2. “The extent of CFSI in operating plants is unknown because the NRC does not usually require licensees to track CFSI” … “if done at all, tracking is voluntary and methods and data quality vary among licensees”; 3. The questionable “termination of [some] rulemaking in 2016 that addressed CFSI oversight concerns”; and 4. “Department of Energy staff identified more than 100 incidents involving CFSI in FY 2021 alone, including 5 incidents involving safety-significant components.”

“Counterfeit parts are safety and security concerns that could have serious consequences in critical power plant equipment required to perform a safety function,” the OIG report says in its understated bureaucratese. And, “According to the Electric Power Research Institute, counterfeit parts have been found in valves, bearings, circuit breakers, pipe fittings, and structural steel, and can be difficult to spot.”

The antiseptic euphemism “serious consequences” resulting from the failure of critical but counterfeit “safety function” parts, means, in plain-spoken terms, nuclear reactors going out-of-control, suffering loss-of-coolant meltdowns, and causing massive radioactive releases with its acute and long-term damage to environmental and human health.

The finding that “most, if not all” of the country’s 94 operating reactors are more dangerous than we thought is potentially so devastating to the environmentally toxic and financially bailed-out nuclear power sector (Reuters said the OIG’s reports are “a blow to a US nuclear industry”), that public relations agents and industry allies in the media must have run headlong to the phones and demanded retractions. Somehow, they were rewarded almost immediately with a so-called “correction” which misstates and weakens the OIG findings — a “correction” that was placed at the beginning of most follow-up reports.

The retraction misleadingly states that it, “Corrects lead paragraph to say many counterfeit parts are in U.S. nuclear plants instead of most, if not all, plants contain counterfeit parts.”

In fact, the report from the OIG — based on confidential testimony from several industry and NRC whistle-blowers — says that “well placed NRC sources” allege that “most, if not all” nuclear reactors operating in the United States today have counterfeit or faulty, substandard parts essential for preventing disasters.

The lead paragraph in The Energy Daily improved on the Reuters report by including the word “operating” before “nuclear plant” — a salient point considering their increased potential for radiation disasters compared to the 23 shuttered units.

The “most, if not all” bombshell follows from the fact, as OIG found, that “the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may be underestimating the number of CFSI in plants and their impact because it does not require licensees [reactor operators] to report CFSI except in extraordinary circumstances” like “the failure of equipment that performs a significant safety function.”

One such fraudulently manufactured, purchased and installed part identified after it failed was a “service water pump shaft” that was found to be counterfeit after if snapped. The loss of cooling water circulation, either inside a reactor vessel, or in the deep pool of ferociously hot waste fuel rods, has caused some of the industry’s worse radiation release disasters.

Inspector General Savages ‘Misleading’ NRC Actions, Thanks Comley

The depth of deliberate malfeasance or deception by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is justifiably savaged in the OIG report. The investigation found that NRC staff had for more than 10 years dismissed, ignored and even misfiled so as to hide allegations regarding FCSI. “This investigation revealed that the alleger communicated CFSI concerns to the agency staff via letters, e-mails, phone calls, and discussions at public meetings over 10 years. Most of the alleger’s concerns involved Seabrook Station.”

“… we found that the NRC did not investigate or pursue any substantive actions regarding an alleger’s concerns about the presence of CFSI, nor did the NRC process any of the information provided by the alleger over the last 10 years through its Allegation Review Boards.”

Indeed, the NRC’s Office Allegation Coordinator was found to have classified the alleger’s charges as “non-allegations,” and then kept secret the details of how such a designation is applied. The OIG politely condemned the agency’s action, writing, “Such missing information regarding the NRC’s approach to reviewing allegations could be construed as misleading to the public.”

“The alleger” is a reference to Mr. Stephen J. Comley, Jr., of the national whistle-blower protection organization We the People, in Rowley, Mass. In a February 10 cover letter to Comley accompanying the reports, OIG head Feitel wrote appreciatively, “Thank you for taking considerable time to bring your concerns to the OIG,” and noted that “my staff has completed its investigations” into “your allegations that CFSI are present in most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants.…”

Feitel confirmed to Comley that “OIG investigators interviewed several individuals you identified.” They are some of the over two-dozen whistle-blowers who have spoken with We the People, and who are referred to in the OIG reports as “a well-placed NRC principle” or “an NRC source.”

As I reported last October in Steve Comley has for 35 years been haranguing the NRC and its inspectors, demanding that they take the whistle-blowers’ charges seriously. So the OIGs’ damning and alarming February findings (too many to report on in one or two articles) are the long-awaited validation and vindication of Comley’s steadfast work that goes back almost four decades.

Feitel’s letter to Comley speaks to his group’s repeated warnings to the NRC about the impossibility of safely evacuating the Seabrook, New Hampshire reactor site during an emergency, and, beyond this, to the whistle-blowers’ allegations that they as first responders — State Patrol and National Guard forces — have been gag-ordered by state authorities not to discuss the endangerment caused by the lack of a feasible evacuation plan. (Nuclear reactors are the only industrial operations required to earn the approval of an emergency evacuation plan prior to startup.)

“The OIG also investigated your allegation that Seabrook Station’s evacuation plan is inadequate,” Feitel wrote. This report is complete, but a response from the NRC is pending, and only after the response is filed with OIG can the public “request a copy of the report via the Freedom of Information Act,” Feitel advised.

For now, the NRC can continue to hide behind its PR hacks that manage major news services with bald-faced lies. An NRC Public Affairs Officer named Scott Burnell told Reuters, “Nothing in the report suggests an immediate safety concern.” And Burnell has a point. The report doesn’t “suggest” anything. While using more polite language then me, it directly condemns the deceitful, bogus, unscrupulous, immoral, deceptive, dodgy, and duplicitous chicanery of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when dealing with its own whistle-blowers, and warns against the reckless endangerment of operating counterfeit, substandard nuclear power reactors.

published at CounterPunch, Feb. 18, 2022: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/18/us-reactors-dangerously-operating-using-counterfeit-parts/

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Point Beach Courts Disaster, Sirens Off

By John LaForge

A change has been made to the “emergency response” protocol at the old Point Beach nuclear reactors on Lake Michigan, south of Green Bay. The operator, NextEra Energy Point Beach, has replaced the site’s disaster warning sirens.

No more will the familiar wail warn of potentially catastrophic radiation releases or spills from the two reactors — which are 51 and 49 years old, respectively, well past their originally licensed maximum of 40 years.

The siren system has been replaced with an “Integrated Public Alert and Warning System” (IPAWS). NextEra says on its website that emergency alerts will be broadcast on public radio and through cell phone alerts, but not sirens.  They assure us: “If you have functional needs or do not own a cell phone, contact your emergency management agency to be registered for notification and assistance.”

That is, the system will send disaster warnings only to radios and cell phones. Are yours always on all night? The lack of sirens to wake sleeping nearby populations assumes that nuclear accidents only happen in daytime.

In fact, the Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, partial meltdown in 1979 started at 4 a.m.; the 1979 Churchrock, New Mexico, uranium mine waste spill broke at 5:30 a.m.; and the 1986 Chernobyl explosions and meltdown began at 1:23 a.m.

“I sure hope everyone has their TV, radio, computer or cell phone on in the middle of the night when the [IPAWS] alarm is sounded,” Michael Keegan of Don’t Waste Michigan, a watchdog of Point Beach and the 28 other operating reactors on the Great Lakes, wrote in an email.

Paul Gunter, at Beyond Nuclear in Takoma Park Maryland, specializes in reactor hazards and operations. He wrote in an email, “Removing the audible stationary sirens from within the emergency planning zone will significantly diminish the reactors’ early warning notification system and the radiological defense-in-depth strategy.”

Gunter points to the “bathtub curve” (pictured) depicting failure rates in every technology from toasters to nuclear reactors. “At startup, high rates of failures result from design flaws, mis-assembly and defects. A period of stable operations ensues, but over time, the aging of systems, structures and components leads to material degradation and a steeper rate of failures,” Gunter wrote.

In 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted NextEra’s request to give Point Beach reactors 20-year license extensions, letting it produce radioactive waste for 60 years. Adding more risk to the reactors’ “golden years,” NRC in 2011 approved a 17 percent increase in power output from both units. The approval seems like dear old gramps gunning the engine of his jalopy, racing down main street and running red lights with the whole family involuntarily along for the ride.

Germany’s recent deadly flooding event, which killed at least 210 people, provides a tragic example of how retiring the sirens can be catastrophic. As the Los Angeles Times reported on July 24, 2021,“Residents of flood-stricken German towns say they got inadequate warning of deluge”; sirens in some towns failed when the electricity grid crashed; elsewhere there were no sirens at all. The Associated Press reported July 25 that Germans said warning systems failed and “At least 132 people were killed in the Ahr Valley alone.”

After nuclear waste, emergency and disaster response have always been the bane of nuclear reactors — our only industrial machines required to have evacuation plans before start-up. Taking down warning siren systems only increases the likelihood of catastrophe. It amounts to reckless endangerment. ###

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Fukushima at Ten: Aftershocks, Lies, and Failed Decontamination

Image at “Mechanics of a Nuclear Meltdown Explained”, by Jenny Marder, PBS News Hour, March 15, 2011: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/mechanics-of-a-meltdown-explainedP8

 

By John LaForge

It’s now 10 years since the catastrophic triple meltdowns of reactors at Fukushima in Japan. As Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health project put it three years ago, “Enormous amounts of radioactive chemicals, including cesium, strontium, plutonium, and iodine were emitted into the air, and releases of the same toxins into the Pacific have never stopped, as workers struggle to contain over 100 cancer-causing chemicals.”

Nukewatch and hundreds of other groups and scientific journals have issued dozens of reports about the disaster. A score of books have been published on the subject, and major media have at least done annual reviews of the official evacuations, cleanups and decontamination efforts. With so much information available, it is not possible to do more than present another update on recent news and analysis.

There is news of the shortage of Fukushima health studies; big earthquakes (aftershocks) rattling reactors and waste tanks; corporate and government dishonesty about decontamination; novel radioactive particles dispersed; and renewed fish contamination.

Very few health studies

“So far only one single disease entity has been systematically examined in humans in Fukushima: thyroid cancer,” says Dr. Alex Rosen, the German chair of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Other diseases, such as leukemia or malformations, which are associated with increased radiation exposure, have not been investigated, Rosen told the German medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt March 2.

(Fie studies have focused on birth abnormalities in the areas most affected: three on infant mortality rates, one on underweight newborns, and one on declining birth rates 9 months after March 2011.*)

The one disease study of the population was a screening for thyroid cancer in 380,000 local children under the age 18. In January 2018, the journal Thyroid reported 187 cases after five years. Reviewing the study, Mangano write in the Washington Spectator that, “A typical population of 380,000 children would produce 12 cases in five years.” The increase among children is “exactly what would be expected if Fukushima were a factor, as radiation is most damaging to the fetus, infant and child,” Mangano said.

New Earthquakes Rattle Wreckage and Nerves

Another large earthquake, magnitude 7.3, struck Feb. 13, again off the coast of the Fukushima reactor complex, and the reported 30 seconds of terror was followed by14 aftershocks up to magnitude 5.

The quake was severe enough that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) and federal regulators suspect it caused additional damage to reactors 1 and 3 where cooling water levels fell sharply, the Associated Press reported. The Feb. 13 quake was felt in Tokyo 150 miles away. Japan’s meteorological agency said it was believed to be an aftershock of the record 2011 quake.

At a Feb. 15 meeting, government regulators said the quake had probably worsened existing earthquake damage in reactors 1 and 3 or broken open new cracks causing the cooling water level drop, the AP said.

“Because (the 2011 quake) was an enormous one with a magnitude of 9.0, it’s not surprising to have an aftershock of this scale 10 years later,” said Kenji Satake, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute.

There have been six major aftershocks in the Fukushima area since March 2011: April 7, 2011 (magnitude 7.1); April 11, 2011 (6.6); July 10, 2011 (7.0); Oct. 26, 2013 (7.1); Nov. 26, 2016 (6.9); and Feb. 13, 2021 (7.3).

Earthquake shocks are not the only recurring nightmare to haunt the survivors of the record quake that killed 19, 630. Typhoon Hagibis slammed into Tamura City in October 2019, and swept away an unknown number of bags of radioactive debris that had been stacked near a river.

Since March 2011, over 22 million cubic meters of contaminated soil, brush and other matter from areas hard hit by fallout have been collected in large black plastic bags and piled in temporary storage mounds in thousands of places. (“Fukushima residents fight state plan to build roads with radiation-tainted soil,” Japan Times, Apr. 29, 2018) Yet the volume is the tip of the iceberg: According to R. Ramachandran, in The Hindu, January 31, 2020, no decontamination activities are planned for the majority of forested areas which cover about 75 per cent of the main contaminated area of 9,000 square km.”

Cover-ups and disinformation

Reporting Feb. 14 about the latest quake, the AP noted that Tepco “has repeatedly been criticized for cover-ups and delayed disclosures of problems.” On June 22, 2016, Tepco’s President Naomi Hirose publicly admitted that the company’s lengthy refusal to speak of the “meltdowns” it knew of at its three reactors was tantamount to a cover-up and apologized for it.

The Washington Post reported March 6, 2021 that, “For years, Tepco claimed that the treated water stored at the plant contained only tritium, but data deep on its website showed that the treatment process had failed.” The tanks now hold almost 1.25 million tons of highly contaminated waste water. “In 2018, [Tepco] was forced to acknowledge that 70 percent of the water is still contaminated with dangerous radioactive elements — including strontium-90, a bone-seeking radionuclide that can cause cancer — and will have to be treated again before release,” the Post reported.

Harvey Wasserman reported for Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism’s The Free Press on a July 2007 earthquake that shook Japan and forced dangerous emergency shutdowns at four reactors at Kashiwazaki. “For three consecutive days [Tepco] was forced to issue public apologies for erroneous statements about the severity of the damage done to the reactors, the size and lethality of radioactive spills into the air and water, the on-going danger to the public, and much more. Once again, the only thing reactor owners can be trusted to do is to lie.”

Radioactive Particles Newly identified

Work just published in the journal Science of the Total Environment documents new, highly radioactive particles that were released from the destroyed Fukushima reactors. The study was led by Dr. Satoshi Utsunomiya and Kazuya Morooka of Kyushu University. “Two of these particles have the highest cesium radioactivity ever measured for particles from Fukushima,” the research found. The study analyzed particles that were taken from surface soils collected 3.9 kilometers from the reactor site.

Speaking with Science Daily Feb. 17, Dr. Utsunomiya said, “Owing to their large size, the health effects of the new particles are likely limited to external radiation hazards during static contact with skin.” The particles were reportedly spewed by the hydrogen explosions that rocked the reactor buildings and fell within a narrow zone that stretches ~8 kilometers north-northwest of meltdowns.

But Dr. Utsunomiya also said the long-lived radioactivity of cesium in “the newly found highly radioactive particles has not yet decayed significantly. As such, they will remain in the environment for many decades to come, and this type of particle could occasionally still be found in radiation hot spots.”

Smaller radioactive particles of uranium, thorium, radium, cesium, strontium, polonium, tellurium and americium were found afloat throughout Northern Japan, according to a report by Arnie Gundersen and Marco Kaltofen published July 27, 2017 in Science of the Total Environment. The radioactively hot particles were found in dusts and soils. About 180 particulate matter samples were taken from automobile or home air filters, outdoor surface dust, and vacuum cleaner bags. Some142 of the samples (about 80 percent) contained cesium-134 and cesium-137 which emit intense beta radiation and is very dangerous if ingested or inhaled. “A majority of these samples were collected from locations in decontaminated zones cleared for habitation by the National Government of Japan,” the authors revealed.

Greenpeace Reports Cleanup Failures and Deception

Greenpeace Japan released two major reports March 4 that also contradict the country’s positive decontamination and human rights claims after 2011.

“Successive governments during the last 10 years … have attempted to perpetrate a myth about the nuclear disaster. They have sought to deceive the Japanese people by misrepresenting the effectiveness of the decontamination program and ignoring radiological risks,” said Shaun Burnie, Senior Nuclear Specialist at Greenpeace East Asia and co-author of the first report.

Key findings of the radiation report Fukushima 2011-2020 are:

  • Most of the 840 square kilometer Special Decontamination Area (SDA), where the government is responsible for decontamination, remains contaminated with radioactive cesium. … an overall average of only 15% has been decontaminated. • No long-term decontamination target level will be achieved in many areas. Citizens will be subjected for decades to radiation exposures in excess of the … recommended maximum. • In the areas where evacuation orders were lifted in 2017, specifically Namie and Iitate, radiation levels remain above safe limits, potentially exposing the population to increased cancer risk.

Key findings of The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station decommissioning report are:

  • The current decommissioning plan in the timeframe of 30-40 years is impossible to achieve and is illusory. • Radioactive waste created at the site should not be moved. Fukushima Daiichi is already and should remain a nuclear waste storage site for the long term.

— This is a report is the Spring 2021 Nukewatch Quarterly soon in your mailbox. A version of the article was published at CounterPunch, March 12-14, 2021 

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