Panel to release report on cancer risk: Public comment needed

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Nuclear Radiation and Studies Board (NRSB) will release its Phase I report to the public NEXT Thursday, March 29, 2012. The public has 60 days to comment. The NAS was asked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to assess the cancer risks around NRC-licensed facilities. Phase two should begin following this report. For more background information on the charge of the Phase I committee see here.

Beyond Nuclear has attended and given comments at some of the meetings held in the Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, DC and Los Angeles areas where the NRC has attempted to minimize exposure risk in its comments, despite science that demonstrates otherwise. The NAS has failed to have a meeting in the Northeast/New England, in effect closing off oral public comment to an area of the United States that has a large number of poorly operating and leaky reactors such as Vermont Yankee and Oyster Creek. Where the committee has hosted meetings, many local concerned citizens have come to speak to the committee, to share the personal and community health experiences of living near nuclear facilities. We will keep you updated on action you can take and will provide final comments to the NAS.

Cesium found in plankton 600 km away

Radioactive cesium believed to have been released during the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has been found in plankton about 600 kilometers east of the facility, according to a Japan-U.S. joint research team.

The amount of cesium detected in the plankton was far below the government's provisional limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram for marine products, according to the team led by Jun Nishikawa, research associate at the University of Tokyo's Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute.

However, follow-up studies will be necessary because the radioactive cesium is likely to have accumulated in fish that eat plankton, the team said.

The findings will be reported to a conference of the Oceanographic Society of Japan set for Tuesday. The Yomiuri Shimbun.

Beyond Nuclear's Cindy Folkers on RT discussing Fukushima radiation health effects

See this interview on the Fukushima catastrophe and what is happening today, particularly with respect to human health. Folkers contends that those in Japan who have not yet been moved out of the contaminated areas should be evacuated immediately since even small levels of internal contamination (between 30-50 Bq/kg of cesium) can cause disease.

Radiation precautions are not child's play in Fukushima Prefecture

A heartbreaking BBC News Asia video focuses on Ayaka, a young girl who lost her grandfather and home to the tsunami in Fukushima Prefecture on March 11, 2011, and whose life is now circumscribed by radiation precautions that limit her freedom to play outdoors. This, despite now living beyond the arbitrarily small 12.4 mile (20 km) "Dead Zone" around the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Her father bought a Ukrainian radiation monitor on the internet, which he uses to check background levels before he lets Ayaka play on the parking lot for at most 30 minutes, only on weekends. She's not allowed to play on the grass, or near trees or surface water, because the radiation levels are higher there. Ayaka also wears a face mask on her way to school, and a personal radiation monitor to track her exposures. Ayaka reads from her diary entry from March 13, 2011, in which she expresses her fear of the invisible radioactivity around her. Writing helped her deal with her emotions -- she was afraid to express her fears directly to her father or grandmother.

Beyond Nuclear on Thom Hartmann Show: Fukushima radioactive release estimates doubled (again!)

On March 1st, the Thom Hartmann Show hosted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps to discuss a Common Dreams article reporting that estimates of how much hazardous radioactive Cesium has escaped the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex have doubled -- again. This is the third major doubling of estimates since the catastrophe began. (Kevin's interview is from minute 30:30 to minute 38:20).

Thom also asked Kevin what a becquerel is, to give some understanding and perspective on the "mind-boggling" estimate that 40,000 trillion (or 40 quadrillion) becquerels of radioactive Cesium have escaped into the environment from Fukushima Daiichi. A becquerel is a unit of measurement of radioactivity, equal to one disintegration per second. A becquerel is the SI (International System of Units) derived unit used to measure the rate of radioactive decay. When the nucleus of an atom emits nucleons (protons and/or neutrons) and is thereby transformed into a different nucleus, decay has occurred. A decay rate of one becquerel for a given quantity means there is one such atomic transformation per second. The unit of measurement is named after Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852-1908), the French physicist who discovered the photographic action of the rays spontaneously emitted by uranium salts, and so instigated the study of radioactivity. His work led to the discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie, with whom he shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for physics. As Kevin said during the interview, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has affirmed for decades that any exposure to radioactivity, no matter how small, carries a health risk of cancer. Thus, 40 quadrillion becquerels of radioactivity represent that many rolls of the dice, or rounds of radioactive Russian roulette, for people and other living things living downwind, downstream, and up the food chain.