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Thyroid Cancer Increase Among Children and Teens Since Fukushima

Excerpted from Hayley Halpin, in TheJournal.ie
Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2018-19

Over 180 teenagers and children have been found to have thyroid cancer or suspected cancer following the Fukushima nuclear accident, new research has found.

… As of November, the total of dead or missing from the earthquake and the tsunami stood at 18,434 people, according to the National Police Agency. In addition, more than 3,600 people—most of them from Fukushima—died from causes such as illness and suicide linked to the aftermath of the tragedy, government data shows.

The accident at the nuclear power station in 2011 has also raised grave concerns about radioactive material released into the environment, including concerns over radiation-induced thyroid cancer.

Ultrasound screenings for thyroid cancer were subsequently conducted at the Fukushima Health Management Survey.

The observational study group included about 324,000 people aged 18 or younger at the time of the accident. It reports on two rounds of ultrasound screening during the first five years after the accident. Thyroid cancer or suspected cancer was identified in 187 individuals within five years—116 people in the first round among nearly 300,000 people screened and 71 in the second round among 271,000 screened.  The overwhelming common diagnosis in surgical cases was papillary thyroid cancer—149 of 152 cases.

Pediatrician and renowned author Dr. Helen Caldicott reported to Nukewatch in a Dec. 6, 2018 email that, “The normal incidence of thyroid cancer among young people is one or two cases in a million, I looked it up.”

—TheJournal.ie (an Irish news website and member of the Press Council of Ireland), Dec. 5, 2018. With reporting by Agence France Presse.

 

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Energy Report: How Does Nuclear Survive?

World Nuclear Industry Status Report asks: Is Nuclear Power a Strategic Asset, liability, or Irrelevant?

By Kelly Lundeen

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2018-19

Global nuclear power generation increased 1% in 2017, compared to a 35% increase in solar, and a 17% increase in wind power, according to the 2018 World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Total investment in new nuclear for 2017 was $16 billion, but the total invested in wind and solar energy was $260 billion. Globally, renewables provide 19% of total installed electric generating capacity.

Without China’s steep increases in nuclear power generation, nuclear generation would have declined worldwide for the third year in a row. Nuclear made up 10.5% of electric generation worldwide, down from its peak of 17.5% in 1996. Lead author Mycle Schneider said the report shows that nuclear power is “a threatened species.”

The Danish firm Ørsted, after conducting the largest global survey of public opinion about a transition to renewable energy, found “82% believe it is important to create a world fully powered by renewable energy” that does not include nuclear.

Do nuclear weapons need nuclear power?

Considering the inability of nuclear to compete in the market (illustrated by bankruptcies at Westinghouse and Areva), a decrease in investment in nuclear, and the international preference for renewables, why do some countries continue to pour money into new reactors and into license extensions for old ones? The World Nuclear Industry Status Report asked this question for the first time.

The largest investments in nuclear power come from states with nuclear weapons programs, not from private industry.

A leaked June 2018 US Department of Energy memorandum admits what many have suspected. “The entire US enterprise—weapons, naval propulsion, non-proliferation, enrichment, fuel services, and negotiations with international partners—depends on a robust civilian nuclear industry. Without a strong domestic nuclear power industry, the US will not only lose the energy security and grid resilience benefits, but it will also lose its workforce technical expertise, supply chain, and position of clean energy leadership.”

Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) condemned the memo, writing, “For years, the nuclear industry insisted that civilian nuclear power had nothing to do with weapons programs… Now, in a desperate attempt to keep no-longer-competitive nuclear [reactors] from being shuttered, the industry claims there really has been a connection all along…. The whole point of the body of the [Energy Secretary, Rick] Perry letter is that there is a close connection between US nuclear power and our nuclear weapons programs.”

As states choose whether to invest in renewables or nuclear, they should take a lesson from the market.

—Green Citizens’ Action Alliance, Nov. 15, 2018; World Nuclear Industry Status Report, Sept. 4, 2018; The National Interest, Aug. 8, 2018; Letter to Secretary Rick Perry, Jun. 26, 2018; E & E News, Jun. 6, 2018; Ørsted, 2017

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Weaponized Insects from the Pentagon?

By John LaForge

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2018-19

The Pentagon has a laboratory project underway that envisions millions of insects spreading viruses to crops in order to strengthen their resilience against pests, droughts, and floods, etc.—and the prospect has critics crying foul. “Once you engineer a virus that spreads by insect, it is hard to imagine how you would ever control it,” Guy Reeves, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, told the New York Times. “You haven’t just released a transmissible virus—you’ve released a disease,” Reeves said. “The United States knows better than to return to a biological arms race,” he said. Biological weapons have been banned under international law since 1975. But the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency started Insect Allies research in 2016 to try and turn agricultural pests into “troops” that could deliver protective genes into plants. Reeves, lead author of a paper published Oct. 5, 2018 in Science, warns that such genetic modifications could also be weaponized, could not be controlled in the field, and could move hostile governments to launch similar programs. The project’s manager Blake Bextine acknowledged the critics’ concerns that unleashed swarms of infected insects could be put to dreadful uses, either destroying crops or spreading disease. “With any of these new technologies that are going to be revolutionary, there’s some inherent dual-use potential.”

—New York Times, Oct. 5, 2018; New Eastern Outlook online, Oct. 29, 2018

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Fukushima Disaster Film In Production

By John LaForge

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2018-19

The film “Fukushima 50,” scheduled for release in 2020, is focused on the 2011 triple reactor meltdowns in Japan. A popular Japanese movie star will portray Masao Yoshida, the superintendent on duty when the Great Northeast Japan Earthquake smashed the foundations of Fukushima’s reactors, which were then flooded and destroyed by the tsunami. Mr. Yoshida was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died in July 2013 at age 58. Yoshida and other workers who stayed on site at the 6-reactor complex trying unsuccessfully to prevent the meltdowns were lauded as the “Fukushima 50.” One obituary said he “ultimately failed to prevent the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.” The film is based on the 2014 book by Ryusho Kadota, On the Brink: The Inside Story of Fukushima Daiichi. Amazon books online notes that On the Brink claims: “the men and women at the plant succeeded in their efforts, gradually bringing the reactors under control, restoring power, and edging back, one inch at a time, from the very brink of disaster.”

—Hollywood Reporter, Nov. 19, 2018; New York Times, July 9, 2013.

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France to Scale Back Nuclear Reactor Fleet

By John LaForge

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2018-19

French President Emmanuel Macron said Nov. 27, 2018 that France would reduce its share of electricity produced by nuclear reactors from 72 percent today to 50 percent by 2035, “rather than the total phasing out planned by neighbor Germany.” Belgium, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan and Switzerland have all committed to phasing-out their nuclear power programs. In 2017, South Korea announced a halt to its nuclear power expansion. During the 2017 presidential election campaign, President Moon Jae-in said, “We will abandon the development policy centered on nuclear power plants and exit the era of nuclear energy.” President Moon—noting the 3-reactor catastrophe of March 2011, in Fukushima, Japan, which was centered about 730 miles from Seoul—said plans for new power reactors would be cancelled and that existing units would not be operated beyond their design life. He also said that the earthquake resistance of South Korea’s operating reactors—reportedly “reinforced” since the Fukushima meltdowns in 2011—would be re-examined.

—Reuters, Nov. 27, 2018; AFP, Nov. 26, 2018; World Nuclear News online, June 19, 2017

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