Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Radiation Refugees and the De-Valuing of Life


We are approaching the Fukushima Daiichi's anniversary, as the many news reports testify.

My brief "thematic" analysis of this year's crop of Fukushima anniversary news stories indicates "returning home" as the dominant theme.

Fukushima's refugees - both official and non-official - are inclined to be suspicious of the government's assurances that they face no additional health risk by returning to officially de-contaminated areas.

Here is a particularly detailed article describing competing claims about safety:
Derrick A. Paulo & Tamal Mukherjee (2018, March 4). New cracks seven years on, as Fukushima residents urged to return home. Channel News Asia. Available, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-radiation-residents-return-safety-9888552 (accessed March 6, 2018)

...The upper limit of the stated safe range in an emergency is 100 mSv/year, but some experts contend that exposure to even 20 mSv/year is too high. Former World Health Organisation regional adviser (Radiation and Public Health) Keith Baverstock said: “It could be, living in your house, the dose rate is 20 mSv/year. The dose rate outside that area that has been cleaned up can be a lot higher. So no, it isn’t safe.”

Cancer specialist Misao Fujita, 55, contrasted the situation in Fukushima with medical X-ray rooms, where the typical maximum amount of radiation allowed is five mSv/year – a level that hospital staff “rarely” get exposed to, he said.
The article describes efforts by 70 Fukushima families to seek justice using the court system, alleging that the government did not release Speedi information (which I've documented in my published books), leading to chaotic evacuations and increasing radiation exposure.

A Mr. Konno, a resident of Tsushima, said that his child has had "cold-like symptoms for over two years."

Japan's radiation authorities are themselves divided, with some seeing evidence of exposure in people, while others hotly denying that any relationship between disease and radiation exposure can be proven in the absence of definitive evidence of exposure level.

Very elevated levels of children's thyroid cancer stand at the center of the ongoing safety debates (http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/did-fukushima-daiichi-cause-cancer-in.html).

My head hurts. My heart hurts.

The Channel News Asia article also addresses ongoing contamination of the Pacific Ocean, which I've discussed frequently at this blog (most recently here: http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2018/03/fukushima-daiichis-ongoing-assault.html). Japan's former prime minister is quoted as saying he is confident contaminated water is flowing into the ocean:
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who was the premier when the nuclear accident happened, told Insight there is no doubt “some of the water is flowing into the (Pacific) ocean”.
Japan is not the only nation to have produced radiation refugees and to be contaminating the pacific and other large bodies of water.

In a recent chapter I wrote on radiation refugees I note that Pacific Islanders, whose lives and livelihoods were catastrophically changed by US atmospheric testing during the early Cold War, are still seeking redress. Here is a brief excerpt from this chapter:
For decades after WWII, legal recourse and compensation were denied to entire communities living in landscapes of risk after being exposed to atmospheric testing. 
For example, indigenous people exposed to atmospheric testing in the South Pacific Marshall Islands (1946-1955) were studied as experimental subjects by the US military, but to this day are still seeking full compensation for ongoing claims of acute health problems and property lost due to contamination. 
In 2012, Calin Georgescu, then-United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and toxic waste, concluded after a visit to the Marshall Islands that many communities reported feeling like “nomads” in their own country.
Nomads in their own country. I wonder if that is what Fukushima refugees feel like. I wonder how long it will be before the US has its own newly-made batch of radiation refugees.


Trump's promise to extend the operating license of nuclear reactors by decades ensures future US radiation refugees:
Ari Natter (2018, February 21). Nuclear Reactors Could Run as Long as 80 Years Under Trump Plan. Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-02-21/nuclear-reactors-could-run-as-long-as-80-years-under-trump-plan?
Radiation refugees are among the dispossessed. Their lives have been discounted.

We see the discounting of the lives of the exposed when we evaluate the assumptions of the new policy toward "ADAPTATION" of people in radioactive zones being promoted by organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Adaptation is occurring as governments, including the US and Japan, raise the allowable exposure level after radiological emergencies. By raising the exposure levels, governments discount the lost years of the exposed and reduce the costs and publicity damage caused by evacuation.

Exposures levels go up while environmental health protections are lifted.

Life is devalued.






Fukushima Daiichi 3/7/2018 1:06


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3 comments:

  1. If you go to a doctor, you do not want them to sucker you with quakery. You also do not want them to lie to you, if your condition is bad. When reactors , on the coasts here melt, catch fire, and fuel pools catch fire, there will be no tuning back. The catstrophic weather patterns, are going that way. Coastal reactors, at least need to be shutdown. How fuking stupid can muricans be

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  2. Trump Administration Apparently Agreed To Give America’s Latest Nuclear Propulsion Technology To Russia In September 2017
    05MondayMar 2018
    Posted by miningawareness in Uncategorized≈ 
    "The Trump Administration (NASA) signed an agreement with Russia (Roscosmos) in September 2017. This would appear to include giving America’s latest nuclear propulsion technology to them. Is that what Putin was bragging about?

    “NASA has already engaged industry partners in gateway concept studies. Roscosmos and other space station partner agencies are preparing to do the same.“.

    Image Credit: NASA/MSFC/Emmett Given

    Notice that NASA is already working on this and Roscosmos is “preparing” – but gee, they won’t have to, it seems, for the US taxpayer will give it all to them with Trump’s help. The US, Norway and some European countries paid to help secure and clean-up Russia’s old nuclear waste, enabling Russia to use its money to build more nuclear submarines, a floating nuclear reactor (first invented by the US govt.), etc. Russia has benefitted from tech transfer before – Ford (1929) who created GAZ and the father of the Koch brothers, who taught them to make gasoline, spring to mind. More recently DaimlerChrysler sold an entire old assembly line to (now Deripaska owned) GAZ in 2006. There were many other examples – Anthony Sutton listed many of them. Cummins engines started doing business with the USSR-Russia during the Cold War. US Vice President Pence’s brother was VP at Cummins (until Dec. 2017), and started working for them in 1981. Russia and the US both got military related technology from Nazi scientists after WWII, too. It is worth noting that this is effectively the Executive (Trump) overriding the will of the legislative branch (US Congress), which voted sanctions against Russia, albeit weak ones."

    https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/trump-administration-apparently-agreed-to-give-americas-latest-nuclear-propulsion-technology-to-russia-in-september-2017/
    US research is well underway and Russia is being allowed to waltz right in while Russia is still

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  3. Ayn rand a psychopath or perhaps a sociopath. Her group of rightwing and Cia and deepstate, billionairs, oligarchs, zioonist oligarchs,  and rich supporters back  the heck out of the altrights racism and nuclear power. Her neoliberal economic philosophy dominates american politics today. Right down to the supreme court allowing  bottomless pits  of  corrupt-corporate and oligarch money, as free speech.There is nothing moral about ruthless selfishness. If Ayn Rand's ideas are true, why do people bother to raise children? They are merely a drain on your energy and resources. Why not hire them out so they can pay their way or prostitute them as billionair pedophiles do others chilldren? I am sure ayn rand would go aling with tha.  Even though the crazy demon things philosophy ignores the fundamentally human qualities of love and compassion, she called people evil who believe in altruism. There's more to life than just being a self-seeking bag of crap - if you're not a sociopath, or psychopath, according to ayn rand and her followers, that is.

    People who support the ugly, crazy monster, hag, ayn rand are mostly fascists . She wasn't a sociopath, you say? All of the creeps indulging and bastardizing her insanity, today lend credence to it. For goodness sakes, she thought altruism was evil! I mean, have you ever held the door for someone or done something nice for somebody else just because you love them? If yes, you're an evil bastard, according to Rand. Literally. She refers to anyone that disagreed with her as "evil". If she's not a sociopath or a psychopath then she's at the very least emotionally damaged.

    Illogical and possibly a form of  twisted Darwinist bs, Ayn Rand in essence believed that the rich are privileged and the poor, no matter the predicament in a capitalism dominated society, like the U.S., are all by default just lazy "parasites" (a word she loved to flaunt in all of her non-fiction works) who aren't trying hard enough, even if the system she preached in favor of would make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to make a decent living.

    Furthermore, for her claims of not being racist, she quite vocally stated it was a positive development when European settlements seized the lands of the First Nations, because they did not have the same concept of ownership. In addition, she describes the industrial revolution as the height of human development. The time when there were no unions, no minimum wage, or workplace safety; people, including children, were constantly getting caught in the gear-works of machinery, where little boys got stuck in chimneys and died of ash inhalation, and where children suffered lead poisoning from crafting matches.

    Ayn Rand encouraged generations of Psychopaths Look at people who subscribe to Ayn Rand's Ideas such as the 21% of CEO's identified as Sociopaths according to recent Australian Research. Many political leaders in the right-wing such as Paul Ryan are devoted followers of Rand. Lack of empathy, creating chaos, pitting people against each other, unethical and immoral behavior are charateristics of Sociopaths. Look at Trumpo the clown. Besides george w bush, he is the stpupidest and most incompetent, ignorant fools to be cwlled a president.



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