By John LaForge, Nukewatch staff Cover story, CounterPunch magazine, March 2014, Vol. 21. No. 2, pp. 10-14
New safety standards for radioactive cesium in food products go into effect
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- Cesium levels still exceed standards in wild mushrooms, seafood, game
- Nuclear Power: Too Expensive, Too Risky By John LaForge
- Even Time magazine reported Dec. 31, 2008, “It turns out that new [reactors] would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.”
- LaForge is on the Nukewatch staff, edits its Quarterly and lives on Anathoth Community Farm. This article was published in the Duluth News Tribune
- LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch and edits its Quarterly newsletter.
New safety standards for radioactive cesium in food products go into effectJAPAN TODAY // NATIONAL APR. 02, 2012 TOKYO — New tougher standards for radioactive cesium in food and drink products went into effect in Japan on Sunday. The health ministry says no food or drink product will be permitted to be sold if it has radioactive cesium above the government-set limit. Under the new rules, the limit for general foodstuffs such as fruit, vegetables, rice, seafood and meat is 100 becquerels of radiation per kilogram, down from 500 prior to April 1. The limit for milk, baby food and infant formula is 50 becquerels per kilogram. For drinking water and tea leaves, it is 10 becquerels per kilogram. The ministry said local municipalities will be responsible for carrying out testing and that any item measuring above the set standard will not be permitted to be sold. Since January, the ministry said tests had shown radioactive cesium above 100 becquerels in products from nine prefectures—Miyagi, Iwate, Fukushima, Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Yamagata and Chiba. Some supermarkets, such as Aeon, did not wait for the new regulations and began testing items themselves back in February in order to reassure consumers. Many consumers, unconvinced by measures taken by the government so far, have steered clear of produce from anywhere near the affected area, leaving farmers with fields full of crops they could not sell and fishermen with catches worth nothing. Kunio Shiraishi, a former senior researcher at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, said the current regime of sample inspections has been a problem for public confidence and says blanket testing is the way forward. Japan Today/AFP Cesium levels still exceed standards in wild mushrooms, seafood, game March 06, 2013 / // THE ASAHI SHIMBUN Nearly a year after the government set tougher safety standards for radioactive materials in food and drink, roughly 2,000 samples--mostly from wild mushrooms, seafood and game--were found to exceed the new limit. Most of the food products showing cesium levels higher than the safety standards were not for commercial distribution and were collected only for the test. Marine products such as flatfish, boar and other wild meat and mushrooms accounted for 80 percent of the contaminated items seen in tests from April 2012 to January 2013. The vegetables that exceeded the standards were mostly gathered from the wild. All drinking water, infant formula and baby milk tested showed lower cesium levels than the standards. Under the standards that took effect on April 1, 2012, the limit for general food items is 100 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. The limit for milk and infant formula is 50 becquerels per kilogram. The new standards are much tougher than the tentative ones decided on immediately after the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake. "After a round of the seasons with the new standards, we have gone through almost all of the food items that could contain radioactivity," a health ministry official said. Experts say radiation levels will be affected for a long time. Cesium 137, for instance, has a half-life of 30 years, and radioactive contamination in mountainous areas can reach seawater through river flow. Yasuyuki Muramatsu, a chemistry professor at Gakushuin University who has been studying the radioactive content in mushrooms, said some types of fungi may absorb higher radioactivity levels. "It depends upon the variety," he said. "But wild mushrooms need to be tested for at least 10 years." ________ Nuclear Power: Too Expensive, Too Risky By John LaForge Lofty claims about the benefits of nuclear power are coming from the Nuclear Energy Institute and others. Meanwhile, news, financial and energy journals make clear that boiling water with uranium is the costliest and dirtiest energy choice. Even Time magazine reported Dec. 31, 2008, “It turns out that new [reactors] would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.” Florida Power and Light’s recent estimate for a 2-reactor system is a shocking $12 to $18 billion. The Wall St. Journal reported on nuclear’s prospects May 12, 2008 finding, “[T]he projected cost is causing some sticker shock … double to quadruple earlier rough estimates.” These estimates never include the costs of moving and managing radioactive waste -- a bill that keeps coming for centuries. Radioactive tritium has poisoned groundwater near at least 14 U.S. reactors, including Kewaunee in Wisconsin. Water under Braidwood, Dresden, Brookhaven, Palo Verde, Indian Point, Diablo Canyon, San Onofre and Kewaunee is all contaminated at levels above EPA and NRC standards. Nuclear power is so clean that Germany legislated a phase-out of its 17 reactors by 2025. The 1998 decision was based partly on government studies that found high rates of childhood leukemia in areas near its reactors. In July 2007, the European Journal of Cancer Care published a similar report by Dr. Peter Baker of the Medical Univ. of South Carolina that found elevated leukemia incidence in children near U.S. reactors. U.S. Representative Ed Markey, D-Mass., attacked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005, writing “The nuclear industry and the NRC have automatically dismissed all studies that link increased cancer risk to exposure to low levels of radiation. The NRC needs to study -- not summarily dismiss -- the connection between serious health risks and radiation released from nuclear reactors.” The New York Times reported five years ago that owners of nearly half the reactors in the U.S. “are not reserving enough money to decommission them on retirement, according to Congressional auditors, who also say the NRC is not tracking the money carefully.” In its July 2007 study “Too Hot to Handle,” the Oxford Research Group calls the hope of quickly building new reactors a “pipe dream.” Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the President of the Institute for Energy & Environmental Research, says in his book Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, “Even the leaders of the nuclear industry have said that they will not build new plants without 100 percent federal loan guarantees.” In his 2008 report “The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power,” Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute concludes, “While little private capital is going into nuclear power, investors are pouring tens of billions of dollars into wind farms each year. And while the world’s nuclear generating capacity is estimated to expand by only 1,000 megawatts this year, wind generating capacity will likely grow by 30,000 megawatts.” The Washington Post reported Nov. 24, 2009 that “leading environmental figures, including former vice president Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear’s promise,” because of the high cost of building and the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. Indeed, but leading security and big business figures are skeptical for the same reasons. The federal Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has called for halting subsidies that promote nuclear power’s expansion. In the commission’s Oct. 21 report “The Clock Is Ticking,” recommendation No. 3 is, “The U.S. should work internationally toward strengthening the non-proliferation regime ... discouraging, to the extent possible, the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.” And no less than Jeffrey Immelt, current CEO of General Electric -- one of the world’s richest nuclear engineering firms -- discourages new reactor construction because of financial liabilities. In the Nov. 18, 2007 London Financial Times, he says, “If you were a utility CEO and looked at your world today, you would just do gas and wind. You would say [they are] easier to site, digestible today [and] I don't have to bet my company on any of this stuff. You would never do nuclear. The economics are overwhelming.” LaForge is on the Nukewatch staff, edits its Quarterly and lives on Anathoth Community Farm. This article was published in the Duluth News Tribune, Mon., Jan. 11, 2010. Think Nukes Are Safe? Think Again By John LaForge Reporters, columnists and nuclear industry boosters often state without qualification that nuclear facilities “have operated safely since the 1970s.” It is easy to prove this statement false. Every U.S. government agency that regulates radiation exposures agrees that there is no safe level of exposure. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC), Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services and the National Academy of Sciences all agree that any exposure, no matter how small, poses a risk of causing cancer. The EPA says, “There is no level below which we can say an exposure poses no risk.... Radiation is a carcinogen. It may also cause other adverse health effects, including genetic defects in the children of exposed parents or mental retardation in the children of mothers exposed during pregnancy.”i The NRC says, “The radiation protection community conservatively assumes that any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer and hereditary effect...”ii The National Council on Radiation Protection says, “... every increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in the risk of cancer.”iii It follows that radioactive contamination of the environment is unsafe per se, because people working at reactors, or living nearby or downwind, are exposed to radioactive releases. Many people do not know that radioactive contamination of the environment occurs daily from the normal operation of nuclear reactors. Reactors can’t even operate without regular, legally-permitted -- as well as accidental and prohibited -- releases of radioactively-contaminated water and gas, such as tritium, Xenon, Krypton, and even strontium-90 and cobalt-60. Radioactivity is vented every day in order to control the pressure, temperature and humidity inside reactor cores and to keep radiation levels from exceeding exposure limits for nuclear reactor workers inside. The workers’ exposures are a necessary evil of reactor operations, and are allowed under statute, but they’re all unsafe and increase the workers’ risk of cancer. Wisconsin’s reactors at Point Beach and Kewaunee spew radiation like all the others. In fact Wisconsin’s reactors have a particularly unsafe record of operations, when compared to the other 101 reactors operating across the country. Only four “Red Findings” -- the most serious safety failure warning the government issues -- have been issued in the history of the NRC. Two of the four went to Point Beach. One Red Finding included a $325,000 fine for 16 safety violations, including the potentially catastrophic May 1996 explosion of hydrogen gas, “powerful enough to up-end the three-ton lid,” inside a loaded radioactive waste cask. The NRC said Point Beach operators were “inattentive to their duties,” were found “starting up a power unit while one of its safety systems was inoperable,” and had failed to install “the required number of cooling pumps.”iv Regarding human exposures, Kewaunee and Point Beach have both contaminated surface and groundwater with radioactive releases, some unlawful. In 1975, Point Beach Unit 1 leaked approximately 10,000 gallons of radioactively-contaminated water which flowed into a retention pond and from there into groundwater. In 1997, another 10,000 gallons of radioactive water ran eventually into Lake Michigan. That year, Unit 2 had a leaking discharge pipe that contaminated a stream and Lake Michigan. In a 2005 case, a Point Beach worker was convicted in federal court of knowingly making false written statements to the NRC.v Nukewatch has compiled a list of 27 such accidents between 1995 and 2009. In 2006, Kewaunee workers found radioactive tritium in the groundwater below the facility. The leak rate was unknown, and the operators could not find the leak’s source but were investigating. Groundwater cannot be decontaminated and tritium persists in the ecosystem for about 120 years. The bio-accumulation of these long-lived radioactive elements from nuclear reactors is a threat to human health, especially when mixed into unknown, untested cocktails with many of the 75,000 other toxic chemicals that are routinely poured, sprayed or dumped into the soil, water and air every day. Since nuclear reactors can’t operate without exposing us to radiation, none are safe. Instead, all of them are permitted to expose workers and the public to an increased risk of cancer. LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch and edits its Quarterly newsletter. This article was published in the Madison, WI Capital Times. Fri., Feb. 5. 2010. 1 Duluth News-Tribune & Herald, “Slight rise in radioactivity found again in state milk,” May 22, 1986; Minneapolis StarTribune, “Low radiation dose found in area milk,” May 17, 1986 2 Fairlie & Sumner, “TORCH: The Other Chernobyl Report,” April 2006, p. 30 3 Judy Pasternak, “Nuclear energy lobby working hard to win support,” McClatchy Newspapers, Jan. 24, 2010, http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/nuclear-energy-lobbying-push/story/nuclear-energy-working-hard-win-support/ 4 Jeremy Rifkin, “Nuclear power is dead,” pubic address, Wermuth Asset Management 5th annual investors event, March 1, 2013, <http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/nuclear-energy-lobbying-push/story/nuclear-energy-working-hard-win-support/> 5 Ibid |