All of Japan is contaminated; Japan responds by passing state secrets law

This post at at Energy News is from last December, and things have gotten even worse since then, especially after the recent, and epic, typhoon. But things were already horrifying -- and just as the U.S. government and Soviet government lied to their own people about the dangers of nuclear testing and nuclear power, the Japanese government is doing everything it can to hide the fact that ALL of Japan is contaminated, and quite a lot of Japan is SO contaminated that health effects -- thyroid problems, many unusual types of health problems, and even, at this very early stage, increased cancer rates -- are already showing up in the general population. What will happen over the next few decades will be far worse than the effects of Chernobyl, which has already killed about one million people. Below is the headline from the link at top; there are typically several new posts at Energy News every day; if you want to know what's happening with Fukushima and with other radioactive hot-spots (Hanford in Washington state, for instance) -- and you should, you're breathing it in and eating it in your food -- I recommend checking Energy News frequently.
 
Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen: All of Japan is contaminated, gov’t covering up enormous exposures to public; Epidemic is just beginning — Evacuee: We are in fact dying in Fukushima; What happened to us will soon affect all Japanese people (VIDEOS)
 
 
 

Comments

Lawrence M. Ludlow's picture

Thank you for posting this, Glenn. For so many years, economist such as George Reisman were advocating nuclear power while at the same time pretending to be followers of Ludwig von Mises. Anyone knows that there is no one technology that is prescribed for everything or for anything. We must remain markets agnostic, especially with creations, if such can be used as a term, of things like nuclear power, which are a complete government confabulation. They were uninsurable from the very beginning, and have been a complete lie ever since and a danger to humanity just as everything the state does is a danger to humanity. It is perilous to try to predict and support any one technology, especially for libertarians. Let's hope that that practice has been put in its grave.

Jim Davies's picture

Can't quite join you guys on this one. There is nothing evil about nuclear power. What's evil is that governments have controlled all its use, so excluding market activity.
 
You may be right in assuming that the market (insurers, primarily) would not have enabled the industry to get airborne. But that is not a proven fact, for it has never been allowed to happen. The writing of a policy on a nuclear generating plant has been forbidden. So nobody knows.
 
Meanwhile, Glen, I'm surprised that you repeat the claim that Chernobyl "has already killed about one million people." This is a total falsehood. It has killed fewer than sixty. Six-zero.
 
The Counterpunch article to which you referred us is a travesty. Author Busby scorns the UN report on the matter as "breathtaking ignorance of the scientific literature" but that scorn should apply to his own article. His "more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result" is unsupported by a single citation. There has been an elevation of cancer rates in Northern Sweden, which may or may not be a result, according to a study at the University of Linköping, which Busby manages to mis-spell as "Lynkoping." Sweden is notorious for its eco-fascist bias in all parts of public life, and all education is funded by the State. There are also 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer in Russia, according to Wikipedia, which may eventually result in some premature deaths - and which would certainly result in claims, were it a free society, for compensation for loss of quality of life.
 
Incredibly, this wildly exaggerated figure - of twenty thousand times the actual count to date - is quoted, as you did, in the past tense (have died) rather than the future tense (may possibly eventually die, given certain very broad assumptions that support our case.) This may be what the New York Academy of Sciences does, but it's not science, and certainly isn't correct English grammar. Nor does it appear to take any account at all of the hormesis effect, well explored in the book to which I referred you earlier this week: Under-Exposed. I make no such claim, and certainly don't advocate carelessness by operators of nukes, but it may be that the low-level radiation spread by the Chernobyl accident will actually extend a large number of lives.

Glen Allport's picture

Hi Jim,
 
No, not exaggerated. A few sources to check out:
 
Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen's Presentation at the WAVE conference  22 min long, gets started at about 2:30, well worth the time. You won't likely see nuclear power the same way after seeing this.
 
Busby is FAR more believable to me than the State, the nuke industry, or their apologists. The study he talks about was published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, using hundreds of papers that had not been translated into English before.  Here's part of what I quoted by Busby in my Reaping the Whirlwind:
 
"The health effects of the Chernobyl accident are massive and demonstrable. They have been studied by many research groups in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, in the USA, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. The scientific peer reviewed literature is enormous. Hundreds of papers report the effects, increases in cancer and a range of other diseases. My colleague Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published a review of these studies in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009). Earlier in 2006 he and I collected together reviews of the Russian literature by a group of eminent radiation scientists and published these in the book Chernobyl, 20 Years After. The result: more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result of Chernobyl."
 
Another source worth checking frequently is Energy News, and the Fukushima highlights at Rense.com
 
As for low-level radiation being good for you -- I don't think I addressed that at all, but I will say that MOST scientists disagree and there are, I think, good reasons for the idea that even low-level radiation, esp. chronic low-level radiation, is harmful. And INTERNAL radiation -- from inhaled or ingested hot particles -- is incredibly dangerous. But if not, then great. I do know that the levels of radiation released by even Three Mile Island have killed people (see Arnie's presentation above) despite the constant lies to the contrary. Seriously, believing those who serve the State and its corporate partners (bankers, Monsanto, the shoved-down-our throats nuke industry, etc) is not your style, Jim. Please look into the subject more deeply.
 
Again, I agree with you entirely about the market, and I've made my position clear that the incredible costs and dangers of nuclear power generation would put it far beyond anything a true market would want to make use of (huge expense, stunningly massive potential dangers, deadly waste that must be keep safe for basically all eternity but which tends to corrode or melt containers -- hey, let's start a business around THAT!). Solar and wind, and pretty much EVERY other form of power generation have far smaller downsides and lower costs than nuclear. If the State gets out of the way and the market roars in and changes that, fine, but it ain't gonna happen, any more than the market will invest zillions of dollars into hamster-wheel power generation for big cities. Sure, it's possible, but why on Earth would anyone do it?

Lawrence M. Ludlow's picture

Jim, you maybe did not read my comment carefully, or I may not have been as clear as I had hoped since I am using a dictation device. I simply said that we must remain technology agnostic and let the market test the product. I am against nuclear power in its current formation because as a government creation, it is anti market, nothing more. I am sure you have no disagreement with this.

As to the accuracy of the article he quoted, I'm not a scientist so I cannot comment on it. I only know that a friend of mine who is a decontamination expert agrees with your general assessment about the exaggeration. None the less levels of radioactive particles have increased dramatically in fish along the west coast of the United States. I have no idea what kind of danger this constitutes, if any.

You may be interested in a book called, We Almost Lost Detroit, which was written about the near catastrophic meltdown of the nuclear reactor Fermi 2 at Monroe, Michigan. This event occurred in 1967, and the liquid sodium cooled core was close to exploding because sodium explodes on contact with air, and these reactors were actually cooled by coils of liquid sodium in leaky pipes. Until you realize the magnitude of such an event as that it is best not to pronounce on nuclear power. That book contains a huge list of the deaths that have occurred, sometimes grotesquely, from nuclear incidents, which include becoming impaled on the ceiling of a reactor by the rods shooting out.

I have no doubt that if nuclear power had been a market creation, it is possible that we would all have portable nuclear power plants the size of a small radio which were safe, but this is not the case in the real world in which we live. That is why the enthusiasm of George Reisman is such an abomination. I think you will agree.

p. S.: we lost Detroit anyway. The state just found another way to kill it, by welfare dependency that destroys families, and by supporting unions, and by crony capitalism by which the lousy corporations are able to produce lousy products and rely on tariffs and import restrictions to force Americans to purchase their product.

Jim Davies's picture

Sorry Larry if I missed your point. Did Reisman favor leaving nukes under government control? - I sure hope not. If he was merely a nuke booster, it raises an interesting point: suppose a bright new technology is discovered, but the State at once sinks its fangs into its exploitation. Should a good AnCap favor development, or denounce it, or just stay clear and call for removal of the fangs?
 
I'd not heard of the Fermi 2 accident, but a quick check on Wiki says that it hasn't had one. The closest call was a tornado in 2010, which caused an automatic shutdown. Big power outage, but nothing untoward at the plant.
 
It also says there was a partial meltdown of Fermi 1, its predecessor and prototype, in 1966. The stated cause was a stuck tap. The plant was shut down and no radiation escaped, but damage did lead to its decommissioning. Wiki's page on Sodium reminds us that the metal is indeed volatile, reacting "exothermically with water, to the point that sufficiently large pieces melt to a sphere and may explode..." Presumably, that's what the referenced book meant; the needed contact is with water, not air. But there may have been water around, I don't know. Whether the explosion would have sufficed to break the containment vessel, I also don't know; but they are massive.
 
I didn't lose Detroit, because I never owned it. But other government action did wreck it, for sure.

Lawrence M. Ludlow's picture

hi Jim, unfortunately Reisman was an all-out advocate of nuclear power at whatever price. I once saw him in Orange County California carrying on at length to an audience.Of course he has many articles about that on the web and in his anti market diatribes against use of natural resources in a libertarian manner.Although if I were him I would have removed them from the web by now as they were a great embarrassment.. He did not call for removal of the government from its development or administration even though I'm sure he would agree that that would be the best solution. after all, he is not a complete basket case. About Fermi 2, it was a very very close call. there was a partial meltdown and it really was quite dire. That book and the newspapers of the time will go into the story much better than any sanitized wiki article I assure you. We both know that the government has Stooges that are cleaning up anything related to government in wiki pages, or at least we learned that from the New York Times article from several years ago. So it does not surprise me that the current online version has been somewhat sanitized. But sodium reacts with air and water because air contains water molecules.but thanks for getting back with us on that.

Jim Davies's picture

Larry, are you sure that George Reisman is "an all-out advocate of nuclear power at whatever price"? It would be interesting to see a couple of links to his articles that say that plainly. It would be a very surprising viewpoint for a respected member of the Austrian school, even though I understand Rand also had a deal of influence over his thinking. It's the "whatever price" bit that looks so incredible. Surely no rational economist would favor a generation method that yielded electricity at $100 a KWh? Or $10? Or even $1.00?
 
Incidentally you might want to check again your reference to "Fermi 2". The Wiki page is quite clear: there was no accident to Fermi 2, but rather it was Fermi 1, a low-output pilot plant.

Lawrence M. Ludlow's picture

my apologies, Jim. It was the Fermi number 1 reactor.it was one of those brain farts. mr. Reisman has any number of articles at Mises.org but his textbooks that is used in economics contains entire sections like that about nuclear power and other technologies including pollution.

Lawrence M. Ludlow's picture

P. S. I lived in Detroit at the time. And a meltdown would have poisoned the entirety of Lake Erie because Fermi 2 is within yards of Lake Erie. Lake Erie is a major source of tap water for the cities of Toledo, Cleveland, and all downstream cities such as Buffalo and Toronto and Montreal through Lake Ontario and the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Although we find from Jim Boulevard that the city of Toledo has been screwing water up in new ways in the past year. Haha

KenK's picture

Nuclear power is just so risky that I can't see its benefit ever being worth its risk. Whether government run or by private parties, the downside, as we see with Japan now, is horrendus and irreversible.

Glock27's picture

Ken--More than likely I will not be around much longer, but Nuclear energy I believe will be inevitable regardless the risk involved.
I am still curious about all those people who invented the hydrogen fuel for cars via water conversion and other fuel injection systems. Were they really a hoax or did some dark ops silence these individuals??

Glock27's picture

Ken--Oops! sorry about those posts.

Glock27's picture

Sorry about those posts. Don't know for sure what happened.

Jim Davies's picture

Talking of nukes and bright new technologies, I saw today in a Gary North article (he isn't always right, but often is) that Lockheed Martin has announced development of a small nuclear fusion reactor. As he says, this would be absolutely revolutionary.
 
It's hard to believe, since the fusion of hydrogen isotopes into helium appears to require temperatures found only on the Sun, and cold-fusion experiments have still not blossomed into replicable power plants. But hey, this is not government speaking, it's Lockheed.
 
 

Lawrence M. Ludlow's picture

The technological obstacles that you just named, Jim, may have been solved by Lockheed tapping into the hot air stream coming from Washington. When you combine that with the bovine explosions that come from the rear quarters of the Washington DC creatures, the result certainly will ignite at temperatures hotter than the Sun.