Fukushima Radiation Fallout Causing Serious Biological Effects on Plants and Animals

Following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown, biological samples were obtained only after extensive delays, limiting the information that could be gained about the impacts of that historic disaster. Determined not to repeat the shortcomings of the Chernobyl studies, scientists began gathering biological information only a few months after the disastrous meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan in 2011. Results of these studies are now beginning to reveal serious biological effects of the Fukushima radiation on non-human organisms ranging from plants to butterflies to birds.

A series of articles summarizing these studies has now been published in the Journal of Heredity. These describe widespread impacts, ranging from population declines to genetic damage to responses by the repair mechanisms that help organisms cope with radiation exposure.

"A growing body of empirical results from studies of birds, monkeys, butterflies, and other insects suggests that some species have been significantly impacted by the radioactive releases related to the Fukushima disaster," stated Dr. Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina, lead author of one of the studies.

Radiation in Our Food

Dees Illustration

Chris Kilham
Fox News

Though the horrendous tsunami that hit Japan on March 12, 2011 seems like old news in the midst of today’s headlines, the crippled nuclear power plants at Fukishima Daichi continue to spew radiation into water, air and soil, with no end in sight.

Even as thousands of Japanese workers struggle to contain the ongoing nuclear disaster, low levels of radiation from those power plants have been detected in foods in the United States. Milk, fruits and vegetables show trace amounts of radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima Daichi power plants, and the media appears to be paying scant attention, if any attention at all. It is as if the problem only involves Japan, not the vast Pacific Ocean, into which highly radioactive water has poured by the dozens of tons, and not into air currents and rainwater that carry radiation to U.S. soil and to the rest of the world. And while both Switzerland and Germany have come out against any further nuclear development, the U.S. the nuclear power industry continues as usual, with aging and crumbling power plants receiving extended operating licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as though it can’t happen here. But it is happening here, on your dinner plate.

Taking a page from the BP pubic relations handbook, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and the Japanese government have downplayed the extent of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daichi, in which three of six nuclear reactors are in ongoing meltdown. According to Japanese nuclear engineer Naoto Sekimura, nuclear fuel rod meltdown at the damaged plants began only hours after the tsunami, and the situation has not been contained. There is still an ongoing threat of a total “China Syndrome” meltdown, and Japanese officials now say that the three damaged plants may possibly continue to emit uncontrolled radiation for another year.

Read Full Article

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

The New Era of "All Natural" False Flag Disasters

Disclosed nuclear power plants, with a seismic hazard overlay. (Image)

Zen Gardner
Before It's News

On 9/11 the premise for explaining the dramatic ritual that unfolded before the world was that steel structures can collapse into dust from jet fuel fires. Never before has a steel structure collapsed from any kind of fire nor has one since, yet that day 3 huge buildings dropped like rocks into their own footprints--one, building 7 that didn't come down till the afternoon, did it even without jet fuel.

No problem. Buildings fall from fire. We get it.  And the whole world fell for it...or was forced to.

Enter the Nuclear Factor

India to press ahead on nuclear power

India's Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma
© AFP/File Mandel Ngan

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - India's commerce minister has called for more cooperation with the United States on nuclear energy and brushed aside talk of scrapping ambitious plans in the wake of Japan's Fukushima crisis.

On a visit to Washington, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said he has faced questions on whether India should rethink its nuclear energy policy and responded flatly: "My answer was no."

While supporting safety reviews of nuclear establishments, Sharma said: "We are very clear it is an absolute must in the bouquet of energy resources which have to be accessed."

Japan strains to fix a another reactor damaged before quake

Fast Breeder Reactor Monju in Japan - Wiki Image

Hiroko Tabuchi
The New York Times

TSURUGA, Japan — Three hundred miles southwest of Fukushima, at a nuclear reactor perched on the slopes of this rustic peninsula, engineers are engaged in another precarious struggle.

The Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor — a long-troubled national project — has been in a precarious state of shutdown since a 3.3-ton device crashed into the reactor’s inner vessel, cutting off access to the plutonium and uranium fuel rods at its core.

Engineers have tried in vain since the accident last August to recover the device, which appears to have gotten stuck. They will make another attempt as early as next week.

But critics warn that the recovery process is fraught with dangers because the plant uses large quantities of liquid sodium, a highly flammable substance, to cool the nuclear fuel.

The Monju reactor, which forms the cornerstone of a national project by resource-poor Japan to reuse and eventually produce nuclear fuel, shows the tensions between the scale of Japan’s nuclear ambitions and the risks.

IAEA Admits - 'There Is NO Safe Level Of Radiation'

The IAEA standards are not based on what is safe but how great the benefit, said CAP after a meeting with the panel.

Tashny Sukumaran
Free Malaysia Today

PUTRAJAYA: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today admitted there is no such thing as “safe” levels of radiation.

However, it told the Consumer Association of Penang that some radiation levels could be justified.

The nine-member IAEA panel is here to gauge the safety of the Lynas rare earth refinery in Kuantan.

CAP vice-president Mohideen Abdul Kader told reporters after meeting the IAEA panel that they had agreed to carry out a cost-benefit analysis before allowing the plant to start operations.

Mohideen also said that the IAEA’s radiation standards were merely an “international consensus”  as studies had not found a safe level of radiation.

Read Full Article

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Fighting Radiation Damage the Natural Way with Cannabis

Cannabis medicine Wikimedia Image

Dr. Mark Sircus, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Dr. Ben Whalley, middle, with Dr. Gary Stephens and Dr. Claire Williams at their secret cannabis farm near London. These researchers have discovered that three compounds found in cannabis leaves can help to reduce and control seizures in epilepsy. Dr. Whalley, who is leading the research at the department of pharmacy at the University of Reading, said tests in animals had shown the marijuana compounds effective at preventing seizures and convulsions while also having fewer side effects than existing epilepsy drugs.

Cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals and also kill cancer cells. Their use in the case of childhood cancer is compassionate.

And lucky for us, cannabis is also an excellent treatment for radiation sickness and exposure.

Japan shows how to defuse debt time-bomb

Ellen Brown
Asia Times

"Threatening to default should not be a partisan issue. In view of all the hazards it entails, one wonders why any responsible person would even flirt with the idea." -- Alan S Blinder, Princeton professor of economics, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.

A game of Russian roulette is being played with the national debt ceiling. Fire the wrong chamber of the gun, and the result could be the second Great Depression.

New Maps Show MASSIVE Radiation Over the U.S. (Video)

Youtube

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

How To Remove Radioactive Iodine-131 From Drinking Water

Jeff McMahon
Forbes

The Environmental Protection Agency recommends reverse osmosis water treatment to remove radioactive isotopes that emit beta-particle radiation. But iodine-131, a beta emitter, is typically present in water as a dissolved gas, and reverse osmosis is known to be ineffective at capturing gases.

A combination of technologies, however, may remove most or all of the iodine-131 that finds its way into tap water, all available in consumer products for home water treatment.

First, the standard disclaimers: Every government agency involved in radiation monitoring—the EPA, FDA, USDA, NRC, CDC, etc.—has stressed that the radiation now reaching the United States has been found at levels thousands of times lower than standards of health concern. When it found iodine-131 in drinking water samples from Boise, Idaho and Richland, Washington this weekend, the EPA declared:

An infant would have to drink almost 7,000 liters of this water to receive a radiation dose equivalent to a day’s worth of the natural background radiation exposure we experience continuously from natural sources of radioactivity in our environment.”

Read Full Article

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Beyond That Door is Death

Death's Door

Dr. Mark Sircus, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Beyond that door is death. It’s death’s door and it has brought us a new hell on earth. What’s behind this door and several others like it is so hot, in terms of death, that its effects can be seen 10,000 miles away. Though thanks to the media we almost forgot about this and other similar doors and the nuclear meltdowns that are occurring right here right now on planet earth.

Today you have to be a hound dog to sniff up any credible news about what is actually going on at that destroyed nuclear plant. It’s very scary how the media has clamped down on most of the news so it seems like multiple nuclear meltdowns are not a big deal.

On April 21 radiation levels stood at up to 110 microsieverts per hour in the air in the town of Okuma in Tokyo, some 3 kilometers southwest of that door you see above.

Questions Raised on Purchases of Tokyo Electric Power Shares

“There’s somebody out there that holds a whale of a position, and structured the position in such a way that they don’t have to file” a mandatory disclosure.

TEPCO's Twin Tower power station in Yokohama
Wikimedia Commons image

Keith Bradsher
New York Times

TOKYO — Japanese regulators and executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company are asking questions about a seemingly coordinated series of stock purchases two weeks ago that led to an undisclosed buyer or buyers acquiring a large bloc of the utility, which owns Japan’s dangerously damaged nuclear power plant.

Regulators want to know whether the trades, valued at up to $600 million and placed from Hong Kong during the week of April 3, were structured to circumvent Japanese securities laws, which require the owner of more than 5 percent of a publicly traded company to file disclosure papers identifying the shareholder.

Depending on the prices at which the buy orders were executed, they could add up to nearly 10 percent of Tepco’s shares.

The trading and the questions surrounding it were described by a senior executive in an interview here. The executive insisted on anonymity to protect business and government connections.

Read Full Article


Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner