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Superior Refinery Blast and Fire Raise Persistent Questions

Beyond the Berm: liquid asphalt gushed from a tank that was punctured by shrapnel from an explosion at the Husky Energy oil refinery in Superior, Wis., last April 26. The oil and other chemicals then burned for 9 hours. (Robert King/Duluth News Tribune/Reuters)

Following last April’s Husky Energy oil refinery explosion, fire, and resulting evacuations, it took a year for Husky to officially declare its intention to continue the use of hydrogen fluoride (HF) at its Superior, Wis. operations. In its Apr. 3rd announcement, the Canadian company said it would keep using the deadly chemical and upgrade some safety features.

HF is a contact poison capable of causing blindness, cardiac arrest and even death from fluid buildup in the lungs. Swallowing only a bit may be fatal. HF burns through skin, eyes, lungs and the GI tract, and seeks the bones. HF even interferes with nerve function, so symptoms of exposure may not be immediate, and HF burns may not initially be painful.

The April 26, 2018 explosion “was felt for miles” according to the Mpls StarTribune. The blast was so violent that shrapnel from the explosion was blown 200 feet, according to an August 2, 2018 Factual Update by the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, “puncturing the side of [a] steel tank and spilling over 15,000 barrels of hot asphalt into the refinery.” How much “over 15,000” the update didn’t say. This liquid asphalt caught fire around 12:15 p.m. and burned for nine hours.

An evacuation order covering a 3-mile radius around the refinery, and a 10-mile down wind rectangle to the south, was imposed to get people away from the fire’s plume of toxic smoke and from a possible leak of the HF. Luckily, no HF was dispersed by the explosion and fire, and the evacuation order was lifted at 6 a.m. the next day.

The evacuation order extended for a 3-mile radius around the refinery and a 10-mile rectangle downwind.
Fire Fighters Used Toxic Chemicals Too

To extinguish the asphalt blaze, fire retardant containing dangerous compounds was used in large quantities. Consequently, “Water has shown trace amounts of perfluoralkyl sulfonate, a chemical found in firefighting foam…,” the Duluth News Tribune reported on May 7, 2018. Exactly what water, the paper didn’t say. Was it in St. Louis Bay, firefighting runoff, the sewer system, nearby Newton Creek, all of the above?

Perfluoralkyl sulfonate is one of some 3,000 infamous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. PFAS are a kind of poison known as “forever” or “persistent” chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment. Under the title, “Risk Management for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)”, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it is “particularly concerned” about PFAS chemicals because they “are persistent in the environment, bio-accumulative in wildlife and humans, and are toxic to laboratory animals and wildlife, producing reproductive, developmental, and systemic effects in laboratory tests.”

Nevertheless, EPA still allows widespread use of PFAS contaminants even though Harvard scientists say in a 2015 study that an infinitesimal amount — “one part-per-trillion (ppt)” — is likely to be harmful to human health. The study reported that “existing drinking water limits … may be more than 100-fold too high.” Researcher Pat Elder with CivilianExposure.org, told Nukewatch on April 23, “Trace amounts of PFAS can cause miscarriages, testicular cancer, and have been linked to liver and kidney cancers.”

Last October, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Superior Refining Company LLC for eight serious violations of OSHA’s process safety management procedures including failing to control the use and release of highly hazardous chemicals. The company was fined $83,150. The fine adds to a long record of bad faith by the refinery: in 2008, then owner Murphy Oil paid a $179,000 fine for safety violations including the switching off of hazard alarms; in 2015 new owners Calumet was fined $16,500 for breaking rules regarding flammable liquids, hazardous waste and emergency response.

That Was Then: Officials Once Demanded Alternatives to Hydrogen Fluoride

Not much attention has been paid to PFAS since it was found in the water. The focus of EPA, OSHA, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, and the cities of Superior and Duluth has been Husky’s hydrogen fluoride danger. On May 1 last year, Superior Mayor Jim Paine and Duluth Mayor Emily Larson both called on Husky Energy to stop using the HF. US Rep. Betty McCollum, D-MN, chimed in last May 9, calling on Marathon Petroleum in St. Paul Park to stop using HF. Husky waited until this month to say it’s sticking with HF.

After initially noting some disappointment, Mayor Paine told Nukewatch over the phone that he was now satisfied with assurances made by Husky that planned improvements will make its use of HF safer. Mayor Larson issued a statement around April 3 saying she was frustrated and angered by the decision. “I recognize that alternatives to [HF] may be more complicated, and more expensive, but those reasons pale in comparison to the potential devastation this choice can cause” which, Larson wrote, “unacceptably elevates danger to our environment and our people.”

Local activists with the group Twin Ports Action Alliance have planned several events this weekend marking the shocking event’s first anniversary. Many questions still demand answers: How many wells were tested? To what depth were the wells tested (600 feet may be clear, while 150 feet may not). Where were the testing wells? What amounts of PFAS were found? Did the equipment detect 1 ppt, or does not find less than 100 ppt? Were individual homeowners’ wells tested? Has a plume of PFAS extended from the source? How Far? What is the direction of groundwater flow? Is the municipal water supply system tested for PFAS?  Was the sewer system contaminated? Is the sludge being tested for PFAS? Inquiring minds want to know.

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Chernobyl’s Deadly Effects Estimates Vary

By John LaForge

April 26 marks the 33rd anniversary of the 1986 radiation disaster at Chernobyl reactor Number 4 in Ukraine, just north of Kiev the capital. It is still nearly impossible to get scientific consensus on the vast extent of the impacts. The explosions and two-week long fire at Chernobyl spewed around the world something between one billion and nine billion curies of radiation — depending on whose estimates you choose to believe. The accident is classified by the UN as the worst environmental catastrophe in human history.

Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) acknowledges only 56 deaths among firefighters who suffered and died agonizing deaths in the disaster’s immediate aftermath. However, the IAEA’s officially chartered mission is “to accelerate and enlarge the contributions of nuclear power worldwide.” Because of its institutional bias, one can dispute nearly everything the IAEA says about radiation risk.

Also on the low-end of fatality estimates is the World Health Organization which has to have its radiation studies approved by the IAEA! In 2006, the WHO’s “Expert Group concluded that there may be up to 4,000 additional cancer deaths among the three highest exposed groups over their lifetime (240,000 liquidators; 116,000 evacuees, and the 270,000 residents of the Strictly Controlled Zones).” The WHO added to this 4,000 the estimate that “among the five million residents of areas with high levels of radioactive cesium deposition” in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine” predictions suggest “up to 5,000 additional cancer deaths may occur in this population from radiation exposure…”

Alternately, Ukraine’s Minister of Health Andrei Serkyuk estimated in 1995 that 125,000 people had already died from the direct effects of Chernobyl’s radiation. Serkyuk said a disproportionate share of casualties were among children, pregnant women and rescue workers or “liquidators.” Liquidators were soldiers ordered to participate in the removal and burial of radioactive topsoil, heavy equipment, trees, and debris, wearing no protective clothing, respirators or radiation monitors.

On January 10, 2010 The Guardian reported that “reputable scientists researching the most radiation-contaminated areas of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine” dispute the IAEA estimates that only 56 firefighters died “and that about 4,000 will die from it eventually.” The paper noted for example, that, “The International Agency for Research on Cancer, another UN agency, predicts 16,000 deaths from Chernobyl; an assessment by the Russian academy of sciences says there have been 60,000 deaths so far in Russia, and an estimated 140,000 in Ukraine and Belarus.”

The Guardian further noted that, “Meanwhile, the Belarus national academy of sciences estimates 93,000 deaths so far and 270,000 cancers, and the Ukrainian national commission for radiation protection calculates 500,000 deaths so far.”

The Los Angeles Times reported in 1998 that, “Russian officials estimated 10,000 Russian ‘liquidators’ died.” The article quoted health officials who said “close to 3,600 Ukrainians who took part in the cleanup effort have died of radiation exposure.” In 2001, the BBC upped the estimate and reported, “More than 30,000 Russians have died from radiation, half of whom were involved in dealing with the immediate aftermath….”

An August 4, 2003 New Yorker magazine article noted vaguely that, “Thousands of people died of cancers and other diseases in the years after the Chernobyl disaster,” while The New York Times said April 23, 2003, “Thyroid cancer, leukemia and other cancers have skyrocketed in the area around the reactor.” Around the 10th anniversary, under the headline, “Genetics: Chernobyl’s burst in mutations,” The Washington Post reported that, “Studies indicated that people … living near Chernobyl are giving birth to offspring with a higher number of genetic mutations.” In her April 27, 1996 dispatch for the Associated Press, journalist Angela Charlton noted “a hundred-fold increase in the incidence of childhood thyroid cancers in the affected region.”

Chernobyl’s health effects were felt much further away than the area around the reactor. The Los Angeles Times reported July 25, 1996, that radiation from Chernobyl was “linked to leukemia cases in Greece.” Epidemiologic Reviews in Oxford Journals for March 30, 2005 reported, “The releases of radioactive materials were such that contamination of the ground was found to some extent in every country in the Northern Hemisphere.” In its 1988 Report to the General Assembly, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation found, “The accident at the Chernobyl … resulted in radioactive material becoming widely dispersed and deposited … throughout the northern hemisphere.”

In 2001, Alex Kuzma, executive director of the Children of Chernobyl Relief Fund, documented an 80-fold increase in cancers in Belarus and Ukraine, and reported that 50 million people, including 1.26 million children, are affected. Eugene Cahill of the Dublin-based Chernobyl Children’s Project reported in the Irish Times in 2005 that, “Nine million people in Belarus, the Ukraine and Western Russian have been directly affected by the fallout.”

Thirty-six hundred deaths, or 125,000? Nine million people affected, or 50 million? The health effects of exposing everyone in the hemisphere to Chernobyl’s radiation (and Windscale’s, and Santa Susana’s, and Fukushima’s) — effects that are often delayed for decades — are quite incalculable. Got cancer?

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Courts Hide Facts from Juries to Protect the Bomb

US Appeals Court Circuits
By John LaForge

Seven nuclear weapons protesters are facing up to 25 years in prison for a nonviolent protest at the nuclear submarine base Georgia. The “Kings Bay Plowshares 7” snuck into the base April 4, 2018, recalling the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Three of the 7 have spent a year in jail, and four are out on house arrest, awaiting trial. Considering the suppressive legal history of US anti-nuclear cases puts the courage of these seven into stark relief. They have a long row to hoe.

Between 1980 and 2005 at least seven US Circuit Courts of Appeal have ruled that trial judges may prevent juries from hearing a legitimate defense in political protest cases — even if nuclear weapons are illegal. The Appeals Courts have declared for example that defendants, “should not be excused from the criminal consequences of acts of civil disobedience simply because the acts were allegedly directed at international law violations” (US v. Allen, 1985), and, “Even if it were contrary to international law for a nation to possess nuclear weapons, domestic law could properly and does make it a crime ‘to correct a violation of international law by destroying government property’” (US v. Urfer & Sprong, 2002).

After their October 6, 2002 disarmament action at a Minuteman missile launch site in Colorado, Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson were convicted of “sabotage” and of “depredation against government property.” (jonahhouse.org/archive/space_plowshares.htm)

Before trial, their convictions were guaranteed inevitable by court an order that prohibited them from presenting trial evidence, or jury selection questions, or jury instructions, or opening or closing statements regarding the outlaw status of nuclear weapons. The trial judge mined every previous weapons protest case for any and all available defenses, in order to quash them. In an order that was later upheld by the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals, the trial judge used this all-encompassing exclusion of such evidence, so the jury wouldn’t hear:

any defense based on necessity or violation of international law or that impugns the … legality … of the Minuteman III missile system, including” [the defenses of] “necessity; duress; choice of evils; privilege; justification; ‘Nuremberg’; mistake of law; international law violations; US Army Field Manual violations; International Court of Justice judgment violations; Treaty violations; UN Charter violations; Vienna Convention violations; … Geneva Convention violations; and/or Tokyo Judgment violations.

There have been objections to such orders. In “Towards a Recognition of the Necessity Defense for Political Protesters,” in the Washington and Lee Law Review, Prof. Matthew Lippman wrote that, “Civil resisters typically … claim that their criminal act was a justified attempt to halt an ongoing governmental illegality.” The government is, they assert, “intentionally engaging in illegitimate criminal conduct” — nonchalantly called “deterrence” — which is the public, open-ended terroristic threat to commit massacres the world over.

Most of the court rulings forbidding necessity rely on the US v. Allen case which found, “Although their purpose may have been to uphold international law, their action disobeyed the wholly independent federal law protecting government property.” Independent it may be, but it is not superior or controlling. This blatant error or subterfuge is obvious, in view of five Supreme Court cases where US treaties are declared the “supreme law of the land” — controlling all other law.

Prof. Lippman says, “By denying protesters the use of the necessity defense, courts merely are…abdicating their constitutional duty to permit criminal defendants to introduce a defense.” Nowadays, most federal juries are prohibited from learning objective facts about nuclear weapons: either about their uncontrollable, long-term, and indiscriminate effects, or about what treaty law says about individual responsibility for planning and preparing massacres. Federal juries only hear what military officers and weapons contractors testify to about the Bomb. Their biased, self-interested testimony, from the perpetrators of the weapons crimes being protested, becomes the only “evidence” the jury is allowed to consider.

Easy to prove nuclear weapons are unlawful

Because of these court orders, federal juries never hear any expert testimony that rebut or refute the military’s or contractors’ claims about their weapons. The reason for the exclusion of these facts is obvious. Defense testimony can easily disprove the presumption and assertion that nuclear weapons are legal. The courts know this. Judges know how easy it is to show that H-bombs are outlawed.

Binding international Treaties in general — and Air Force, Navy and Army Field Manuals in particular — all “impugn the legality” of nuclear weapons. In view of nuclear weapons’ poisonous, indiscriminate and long-term effects, US military manuals and Treaty Law place them in a class along with cocaine, land mines, cluster munitions, biological weapons, and poison gas. For some reason federal courts can’t tolerate this. These prevailing laws can’t be explained to juries. It’s as if the judges believe the courts to exist in a vacuum, where even the tiniest bit of fresh air would smash their bubble.

The court system is so frightened of such a puff of air, that in one fantastic case, where a federal judge in Arizona agreed to hear a necessity defense (in a 1985 nuclear weapons protest case), the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rushed in before trial to prevent it. In US v. the Hon. Richard M. Bilby, Arizona’s US Attorney acted against the judge, are warned that allowing the defense of necessity would, “divert the focus of the trial”, “transforming routine criminal prosecutions [in]to broad-ranging and time-consuming inquiries concerning the wisdom of nuclear … policies…”  Indeed, “If left uncorrected, the … order will … possibly result in the defendants’ acquittal…” A frightening prospect indeed. The 9th Circuit ruled against judge Bilby, forbid the use of the defense, and got its conviction.

Prof. Lippman notes that, “The judiciary, in ruling on necessity, must concede that the harm created by nonviolent protesters is minor when compared to the potential consequences of a nuclear…war…”  But the judiciary absurdly pretends otherwise, and listens to federal prosecutors instead, one of whom even claimed that if a necessity defense were allowed, “the harm to the government … would be substantial.”

Dozens of lower courts have permitted necessity defenses by political resisters, and juries have often returned acquittals, as Prof. Lippman points out. “In my rather extensive experience,” he wrote, “in civil resistance cases in which defendants have been permitted to rely upon the necessity defense, a significant percentage have been acquitted by a jury of their peers.”

“It is time,” says Prof. Lippman, “to tear down the ‘Berlin Wall’ that prevents civil resisters from pleading the necessity defense…” Unfortunately for the seven Kings Bay Plowshares defendants, that wall of silence is still high and mighty.

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Fukushima Recovery a Vexing Radiation Colossus

By John LaForge

Over 19 million tons of radioactively contaminated soil have been collected in 1-ton bags and stacked in thousands of places in Japan, since the triple meltdowns of March 2011. Eleven million tons could be incinerated. KYODO photograph.

On its 8th anniversary, a brief rundown of Fukushima’s triple reactor catastrophe and the failed recovery schemes is in order.*

Fukushima caused the worst dump of radioactivity to the Pacific Ocean in history. “This event is unprecedented in its total release of radioactive contamination into the ocean” wrote Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for PBS News Hour in March 2016. Buesseler has been recording Fukushima’s Pacific Ocean contamination since it started 3/11/11. While Fukushima is often called the “2nd worst” radiation accident behind Chernobyl, Buesseler said, “More than 80% of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific — far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl.” Buesseler reported this radiation gusher continues. “It is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks, caused by groundwater flowing through the site and enhanced after storms,” he wrote.

  • The worst airborne radiation spill in 25 years: Like the Chernobyl disaster that spread radiation across the Northern Hemisphere, Forbes reported March 28, 2011 that the US EPA recorded Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts at levels above the max allowed in drinking water. The EPA’s air monitoring also found Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and Nevada. Nothing close to this immense, hemisphere-wide radiation dispersal had happened since Chernobyl in 1986.
  • Japanese foods were tainted widely. Traces of radioactive cesium were found in popular baby formula according to Japan Today, Dec. 7, 2011. How many hundreds of thousands of babies had eaten it? The Japan Times reported April 22, 2011 that Fukushima’s iodine-131 was detected in the breast milk women living near Tokyo, 150 miles from the meltdowns. The public demanded an investigation into the impact on mothers and babies. In April 2013, Japan’s Ministry of Health reported that cesium-137 and cesium-134 found in produce and rice crackers 225 miles away from Fukushima “are high enough to cause residents to exceed the annual radiation exposure limit in just a few months, or even weeks.”
  • Fukushima is the world’s worst reactor disaster by volume of fuel melted and waste in cooling pools. Major reactor meltdowns at Santa Susanna in California (1959), Windscale in England (1957), Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania (1979), or Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), involved a single fuel inventory. Fukushima’s meltdowns involve three reactors’ full of melted and mangled fuel rods, and an additional 1,573 uranium fuel rods in damaged condition in damaged pools of cooling water. The three masses of melted fuel may never be recovered much less containerized.
  • Fukushima caused the largest evacuation in the history of nuclear power: 160,000 evacuated from the zone first set at 12, and later expanded to 19 miles. (116,000 were forced to leave Chernobyl’s dead zone.) Two weeks after the start of the meltdowns, people from between 12 to 19 miles away were encouraged to “voluntarily evacuate.” The US government recommended that US citizens stay 50 miles away.
  • Of the colossal volumes of radioactive debris produced by the catastrophe, the New York Times listed these on March 2017: 400 tons of contaminated cooling water produced every day since March 11, 2011; 3,519 containers holding 60,000 tons of radioactive mud or sludge; 64,700 cubic meters of discarded protective clothing; branches and logs from 220 acres of deforested land; 200,400 cubic meters of radioactive rubble; and 3.5 billion gallons [17 million cubic yards] of radioactive soil. According to Greenpeace, 11 million tons of this radioactive soil is to be being incinerated, spreading new airborne contamination. (Will the resultant contaminated soil itself be collected and incinerated.)
  • This most vexing of reactor disasters has seen ever-changing estimates of the amount of radiation released. The amount released to the air was “twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas,” according to a Feb. 2012 report by the Meteorological Research Institute. The volume and variety of radioactive waste is astounding. Greenpeace reported in December 2017 that while heavily contaminated towns like Iitate and Namie had topsoil scraped off from populated areas, the problem remained because the soil removal left “islands … which are surrounded by forested mountains, for which there is no possible decontamination.” Consequently, the cleaned-up areas “are subject to recontamination through weathering processes and the natural water and lifecycle of trees and rivers.” Because of how long cesium-137 persists in the environment, “this will be an on-going source of significant recontamination for … 300 years.”
  • The failed “ice wall” made to divert groundwater away from the reactors’ foundations — smashed and cracked by the earthquake — means that hundreds of tons of water keeps pouring every day into the wreckage of reactor chambers where it is contaminated by contact with the masses of melted uranium fuel, and either rushes out to sea or is collected for filtration in the failed Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS).
  • The notorious failure of the APLS, intended to partially clean up highly contaminated cooling water and groundwater, means that one-million tons of waste water now held in 1,000 giant tanks near the coast is not cleaned up at all, and must be filtered again by an as-yet-unknown method that needs to be designed and engineered from scratch. Meanwhile the tanks are vulnerable to another earth quake that could happen any time. Japan Times reported March 29, 2018, “Seven years on, radioactive water at Fukushima plant still flowing into ocean.”

*Detailed well-documented reports by Greenpeace provide some of the best background and investigative information. See:
* Reflections in Fukushima: The Fukushima Daiichi Accident, Seven Years On,” March 2018 (https://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/publication/1657/reflections-in-fukushima-the-fukushima-daiichi-accident-seven-years-on/)
* Nuclear Scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima,” 9 March 2016 (http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/publications/reports/climate-energy/2016/nuclear-scars/)
* Fukushima Fallout: Nuclear business makes people pay and suffer,” 16 February 2013
(https://www.greenpeace.de/sites/www.greenpeace.de/files/20130218-Greenpeace-Report-Fukushima-Fallout.pdf)
* “Lessons from Fukushima,” February 2012 (http://www.greenpeace.org/slovenia/Global/slovenia/Dokumenti/Lessons-from-Fukushima.pdf)

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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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