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Child Cancer Cases Soar in Fukushima Contamination Zone

Thyroid Cancer Rates 20 to 50 Times Higher Than Average in Area Surrounding Reactor Meltdowns
Excerpted from the Toronto Star, October 8, 2015

A new study says children living near the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer at a rate 20 to 50 times that of children elsewhere.

“This is more than expected and emerging faster than expected,” lead author Toshihide Tsuda told the Associated Press during a visit to Tokyo. “This is 20 times to 50 times what would be normally expected.”

Most of the 370,000 children in Fukushima prefecture (state) have been given ultrasound checkups since the March 2011 meltdowns at the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant. The most recent statistics, released in August, show that thyroid cancer is suspected or confirmed in 137 of those children, a number that rose by 25 from a year earlier. Elsewhere, the disease occurs in only about one or two of every million children per year by some estimates.

The study was released online this week and is being published in the November issue of Epidemiology, produced by the Herndon, Virginia-based International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.

Right after the disaster, the lead doctor brought in to Fukushima, Shunichi Yamashita, repeatedly ruled out the possibility of radiation-induced illnesses. The thyroid checks were ordered just to play it safe, according to the government.

But Tsuda, a professor at Okayama University, said the latest results from the ultrasound checkups, which continue to be conducted, raise doubts about the government’s view.

David J. Brenner, professor of radiation biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center, agreed. He said in a telephone interview that the higher thyroid cancer rate in Fukushima is “not due to screening. It’s real.”

Nearly 40 Percent of Fukushima Crisis Responders Received Over One Year’s Dose of Radiation

Some 38 percent of those involved in the emergency response operations at the Fukushima complex in March 2011 suffered radiation exposure exceeding the amount permitted to the public by the government, Japanese authorities in Tokyo announced October 28 after surveying nearly 3,000 workers.

The new government-run study revealed that 38 percent of the Self-Defense Forces, police officers and firefighters involved in the immediate operations following the triple reactor meltdowns in March 2011, were exposed to radiation levels higher than the annual public limit.

“The new survey comes as a surprise to the public as they were made to believe that the workers assisting in evacuation efforts suffered zero exposure as they were wearing full-body radiation suits and masks,” Tokyo’s daily Mainichi Shimbun/Reuters reported October 28.

Deadly Amount of Radiation Near Damaged “Containment”

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said October 29 that extremely high radioactivity levels—enough to kill a human being after 45 minutes of exposure—were present in a building connected by a pipe to the so-called containment vessel of reactor No. 2, the Japan Times reported October 30. The reactor was nearly demolished by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami-caused station black out. The loss of coolant caused the uranium fuel in three out of Fukushima’s six reactors to run out of control and melt down. Radiation levels inside the devastated reactors are too ferocious for monitoring even by remote controlled robots, which have repeatedly malfunctioned in the harsh radiation environment. The paper reported, “Extremely high radiation levels and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for the utility to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors at the plant.”

 

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Fukushima Radiation Plume in Pacific Reaches West Coast 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2015-2016
By John LaForge

Officials from Fukushima’s owners, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., have said leaks from the destroyed reactor complex with “at least” two trillion Becquerels of radioactivity poured into the Pacific between August 2013 and May 2014. Yet this nine-month period isn’t the half of it.

“[W]e should be carefully monitoring the oceans after what is certainly the largest accidental release of radioactive contaminants to the oceans in history,” Dr. Ken Buesseler, researcher with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said September 27.

Instead, the US EPA halted its emergency radiation monitoring of Fukushima’s radioactive plume in May 2011, only three months after the disaster began. Japan isn’t even monitoring seawater near Fukushima, according to the September 28 Ecologist: “Japanese government and IAEA ignore radiation risks to coastal population.”

The amount of cesium in seawater that Buesseler’s researchers found off Vancouver Island is nearly six times the concentration regularly recorded in the Pacific—cesium lingers in the oceans after being deposited in fallout from nuclear bomb tests that ended in 1963. The six-fold increase in Pacific cesium is a stunner and indicates that increases have steadily been accumulating since the Fukushima disaster began pouring contaminated water into the sea in 2011. Cesium-134 concentration in the same waters was only about twice the long-standing (bomb test fallout) average in November of last year, the International Business Times reported.

Dr. Buesseler announced his latest assessment after his team found that cesium drift from Fukushima had reached North America. Further, instead of assuring the public that the radiation plume is harmless, Buesseler said, “[E]ven if they were twice as high and I was to swim there every day for an entire year, the dose I would be exposed to is a thousand times less than a single dental X-ray.”

Cesium is increasing in the levels and number of samples with measurable radioactivity from Fukushima. …levels of cesium were more than 10 million times higher in 2011 off Japan than off the US and Canada today. These levels around Fukushima were a direct threat to marine life. Within months, levels remained thousands of times higher near Japan relative to pre-disaster concentrations and this led to the closure of fisheries, which is important as there is a greater health concern with ingesting these contaminants, than say swimming in the ocean at the same levels. 
—Dr. Ken Buesseler, Nov. 11, 2015

This comparison confusingly obscures important differences between external exposure (from X-rays or swimming in contaminated seawater), and internal contamination from ingesting radioactive isotopes, say with seafood.

Dr. Chris Busby of the Low Level Radiation Campaign in England explains the distinction this way: Think of the difference between merely sitting before a warm wood fire on one hand, and popping a burning hot coal into your mouth on the other. Internal contamination can be 1,000 times more likely to cause cancer than the same exposure if it were external, especially for women and children. And because cesium-137 stays in the ecosphere for 300 years, long-term bio-accumulation and bio-concentration of cesium isotopes in the food chain (in this case the sea food chain), are the perpetually worsening consequences of what has spilled and is still pouring from Fukushima.

Bags of radioactive waste piled up at a temporary storage site in Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture. Four years after the nuclear disaster began, a final disposal site for tainted debris it created has yet to be designated.

Today, globalized radioactive contamination of the commons by private corporations has become the financial, political and health care cost of operating nuclear power reactors. The International Business Times article noted: “The planet’s oceans already contain vast amounts of radiation, as the world’s 435 nuclear power plants routinely pump radioactive water into Earth’s oceans, albeit less dangerous isotopes than cesium.”

Fifty million Becquerels of cesium per-cubic-meter were measured off Fukushima soon after the March 2011 start of the three meltdowns; cesium-contaminated albacore and bluefin tuna were caught off the US West Coast only four months later; 300 tons of cesium-laced effluent has been pouring into the Pacific every day for the 4½ years since; the Japanese government on September 14 openly dumped 850 tons of partially filtered but tritium-contaminated water into the Pacific. This latest dumping foreshadows what it will try to do with thousands of additional tons now held in shabby storage tanks at the devastated reactor complex.

The fact that Fukushima has contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean must be viewed as cataclysmic. The ongoing introduction of its radioactive runoff may be slow-paced, and the inevitable damage to sea life and human health may take decades to register, but the “canary in the mine shaft” is the Pacific tuna population which should now be perpetually monitored for cesium.

Last November Buesseler warned, “Radioactive cesium from the Fukushima disaster is likely to keep arriving at the North American coast.”

Mayors in Fukushima OK Disposal of “Low-level” Rad-waste

Town leaders in Fukushima Prefecture December 2 accepted a government-proposed disposal plan for storing relatively low-level radioactive waste at an existing facility inside the prefecture. The federal plan calls for the Ecotech Clean Center, a privately run disposal facility in the town of Tomioka, near the destroyed Fukushima No. 1 reactor complex, to be nationalized. The center will then store about 650,000 cubic meters of radioactive garbage contaminated by the disaster.

Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori then met with Koichi Miyamoto, the mayor of Tomioka, and Yukiei Matsumoto, mayor of the town of Naraha, which accommodates a transportation route to the facility. All the residents of Tomioka, which is less than 20 kilometers from the Fukushima complex, are still living as evacuees because of high radiation levels in the town.

In spite of controversial radiation levels, the government is pushing to lift evacuation orders still in place throughout Fukushima prefecture. The federal government’s plan for overall disposal is to build final facilities in six prefectures that were contaminated with large amounts of the radioactive waste, but prefectures other than Fukushima are strongly opposed to the proposals.

According to an Environment Ministry report, “designated wastes”—contaminated with between 8,000 and 100,000 Becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram—exist in 11 other prefectures. Fukushima Prefecture’s acceptance may fuel calls for concentrating such final disposal there rather than having to overcome widespread opposition elsewhere.

Federal officials first presented their disposal plans to local governments in December 2013. This November, Tokyo unveiled “regional economic promotion measures”—called bribes by skeptics of the dumping, because they include a grant of $81 million—such as the creation of an industrial complex, and “additional safety measures.”

Sources: Japan Times & Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 3, 2015

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Former Pentagon Chief: Get Rid of Minuteman Missiles 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2015-2016

Just in time to bolster the message of Nukewatch’s newly published Revised Edition of Nuclear Heartland, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry has called for the complete elimination of the remaining Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).

Defense News reports that Mr. Perry, who was Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton, said December 3, “Today … we now face the kind of dangers of a nuclear event like we had during the Cold War, an accidental war.”

 “Nuclear weapons no longer provide for our security, they endanger it.”
—William J. Perry

“The greatest source of that danger, to Perry’s mind, are the ICBMs,” Defense News noted, “which he said are simply too easy to launch on bad information and would be the most likely source of an accidental nuclear war. He referred to the ICBM as ‘destabilizing’ in that it invites an attack from another power.”

William J. Perry was Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton.

ICBMs, Sec. Perry concluded, “aren’t necessary … they’re not needed. Any reasonable definition of deterrence will not require that third leg.” The reference is to a nuclear weapons “triad” with submarines, bombers and missiles as “legs” of a three-part arsenal.

We note likewise in Nuclear Heartland, Revised that Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, who was Vice Commander of US Strategic Command—which controls the ICBMs—has said, “The greatest threat to my force is an accident. The greatest risk to my force is doing something stupid.”

Perry’s analysis echoes that of other high-level military officials who have called for getting rid of the Minuteman IIIs.

A group of high-level military and political leaders chaired by General James Cartwright, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former Commander of US nuclear forces, published a report in 2012 which was signed by Senator Chuck Hagel who would later become Secretary of Defense. This study concluded that a total of 450 warheads deployed on submarines and heavy bombers with none left on ICBMs would constitute a massive enough nuclear arsenal.

The William J. Perry Project website notes that Secretary Perry has said, “A lifetime immersed in special access to and top-secret assessment of strategic nuclear options has given me a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons no longer provide for our security, they endanger it.”

—JL

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Don’t Bank on the Bomb

Financial Institutions Increasingly Drop the Bomb from Investment Portfolios
Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2015-2016
By PAX, The Hague, The Netherlands 

GENEVA—Fifty-three financial institutions prohibit or limit investments in nuclear weapon producers, shows “Don’t Bank on the Bomb,” a report published November 12 by Dutch peace organization PAX. The number represents a 150 percent increase over last year’s report of the same name.

The increase in divestment illustrates the growing stigmatization of nuclear weapons because of the renewed focus on the indiscriminate and unlawful consequences of their manufacture and detonation. The PAX report also identifies 382 banks, insurance companies and pension funds which have made $493 billion available to nuclear weapons producers since January 2012. Based on evidence presented in the report, activists worldwide call on financial institutions to withdraw investments in companies making weapons of mass destruction, and demand that governments ban nuclear weapons.

The PAX report shows how these stigmatizing policies result in new exclusions by a number of institutions, including Fonds de Compensation (Luxembourg) and Nordea (Sweden). PAX researcher Wilbert van der Zeijden, co-author of the report, told reporters, “No bank, pension fund, or insurance company should have financial relations with companies involved in weapons of mass destruction. In the case of a nuclear detonation, the health and environmental consequences will last decades and effective aid will not be possible. The only way to prevent this from happening is to outlaw and eliminate nuclear weapons. Stigmatizing these inhumane and indiscriminate weapons, and excluding them from investments, will help.”

Nuclear weapons are the only weapons of mass destruction not yet explicitly prohibited under international law, a legal gap that 121 countries have pledged to fill. By stigmatizing investments in Bomb building, these 53 financial institutions help pave the way toward a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.

Hall of Fame 

Investments in nuclear weapon producers are not a necessity but a choice, as is shown by 13 financial institutions listed in the report’s Hall of Fame. These institutions have outstanding policies preventing any and all investment in any company with association to nuclear weapons. These institutions are based in Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Britain. Susi Snyder, co-author of the report said, “Divestment makes it clear to producers that as long as they are involved in nuclear weapon programs, they will be considered illegitimate and a bad investment.”

Top 10 Investors All Based in the US 

The top 10 investors alone provided more than $209 billion, out of the $493 billion total, to the identified nuclear weapon producers. All of the top 10 are based in the United States.

The top three—Capital Group, State Street, and Blackrock—have more than $95 billion combined invested in the producers named in this report.

In Europe, the most heavily invested are BNP Paribas (France), Royal Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom) and Crédit Agricole (France). In the Asia-Pacific region, the biggest investors are Mitsubishi UFJ Financial (Japan), Life Insurance Corporation of India, and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial (Japan).

—PAX is a non-governmental peace group based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, working for the protection and security of civilians, and to prevent and end armed violence. 

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Parliamentarians Pushing Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2015-2016

Having joined forces with the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons (ICAN), Australian Member of Parliament Melissa Parke delivered this commanding appeal for a nuclear weapons ban treaty to Australia’s House of Representatives, November 12, 2015: 

The devastation, both human and environmental, seen in Japan in 1945 demonstrated conclusively that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist. Yet, while the threat of nuclear weapons may seem like a thing of the past, right now there are nine nations that possess more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, 1,800 of which are on high alert, with the ability to be launched within minutes.

Nuclear-armed countries spend more than $143 billion per annum on maintaining and updating their arsenals, diverting public funds from critical services such as education and health care, yet nuclear weapons are ineffective and counterproductive in addressing global and national security challenges. Effective in annihilating everything? Yes. Making the world safer? Certainly not.

The late Honorable Tom Uren, a Member of Parliament for 32 years who served as a minister in the Whitlam and Hawke Labor governments, was a passionate anti-nuclear and peace activist. A prisoner of war at the Omuta camp located 80 kilometers from Nagasaki, Uren witnessed the second US atomic bombing. He said, “I will never forget, as long as I live, the color of the sky on the day the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on that city on August 9, 1945.”

Upon returning to Japan 15 years later, Uren’s opinion, that “no nation should use nuclear weapons against any other member of our human family,” was affirmed as he witnessed the ongoing devastation. The Tom Uren Memorial Fund, created after his passing in January this year, supports the work of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN….

ICAN is an Australian civil society initiative that has been pivotal to the success of three major government and civil society conferences over the past three years—Oslo, Nayarit, and Vienna—that have put the [uncontrollable] impacts of nuclear weapons, and the need for a nuclear weapons ban, squarely on the global political agenda.… [The Dec. 2014 Vienna conference communique warned in part that the impact of nuclear weapon detonations “would not be constrained by national borders and could have regional and even global consequences,” including long-term damage to the environment, climate, and social order, and “could even threaten the survival of humankind.”]

The ICAN-commissioned Nielsen poll in 2014 indicated that 84 percent of Australians want the government to work toward a treaty banning nuclear weapons. With biological weapons, chemical weapons, land mines and cluster munitions banned, nuclear weapons remain the only weapons of mass destruction not yet explicitly prohibited under international law.

It is a matter of deep regret that at the recently concluded session of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee, which deals with disarmament and international security matters, Australia was the leader of a loose grouping of nations that worked to prevent progress toward the negotiation of a treaty prohibiting the use, production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons.

Australia refused to join the overwhelming majority of the international community in declaring that nuclear weapons should never be used again under any circumstances. It objected to the words “under any circumstances.” This raises the question: under what circumstances does the government believe that nuclear weapons should be used?

I am pleased that, despite Australia’s best efforts to undermine moves towards a ban, the UN First Committee adopted a Mexico-led resolution to establish a subsidiary body of the General Assembly that will begin discussions in 2016 on the elements for a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The Australian delegation failed in its bid … for eternal deadlock. …

Australia must remove itself from its extended nuclear deterrence policy and shift its national security strategy towards an effective and sustainable security paradigm, like the vast majority of nation states that reject any role for nuclear weapons in their defense. …

I call on the Australian government to follow over 150 governments, the UN Secretary General and the Red Cross movement, and support the complete eradication of nuclear weapons. To quote the UN Secretary-General, “There are no right hands for wrong weapons.”

Tom Uren passed away on Australia Day* this year at the age of 93. Just three years earlier, on Australia Day in 2012, nearly 800 Order of Australia recipients, including former prime ministers, governors-general, foreign affairs and defense ministers, premiers, governors, High Court judges, and chiefs of the armed forces, called on the government to adopt a nuclear-weapons-free defense posture and work towards a nuclear weapons [ban] convention.

One of those 800 Order of Australia participants was Tom Uren. … In this week of remembrance … let us commit to taking those steps towards a nuclear-weapons-free world.

*January 26 is the official National Day of Australia and marks the arrival in 1788 of the First Fleet of British ships in New South Wales.

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