Fukushima's sting: cancer diagnoses among US sailors

Remember how our valiant Navy seamen took part in the Fukushima rescue mission after the tsunami caused a nuclear disaster? (You may have forgotten; the American news media did.)

The sailors were stationed aboard the USS Ronald Reagan as they performed their rescue duties. Now, many are being diagnosed with various forms of cancer. (Bolding ahead is mine.)

Crew members, many of whom are in their 20s, have been diagnosed with conditions including thyroid cancer, testicular cancer and leukemia. The Department of Defense says the Navy took "proactive measures" in order to "mitigate the levels of Fukushima-related contamination on U.S. Navy ships and aircraft” and that crew members were not exposed to dangerous radiation levels.

Charles Bonner, attorney for the sailors, says the radiation the USS Ronald Reagan crew was exposed to extended beyond the tasks of Operation Tomodachi. Deployed ships desalinate their own water, so crew members were unknowingly drinking, cooking with, and bathing in contaminated water due to the ship's close proximity to the disaster site, according to Bonner. The USS Reagan was ultimately informed of the contamination after a month of living approximately 10 miles offshore from the affected region.

I had to find out about this through Al Jazeera because the American media are beholden to industries that make zillions of dollars from nuclear energy. Therefore, one mustn't say anything bad about nuclear energy -- even after a disaster like Fukushima. It would be a mortal sin to talk about it. Shhhhhhh.

Scary stuff

In the United States, the nuclear calamity at Fukushima has been all but forgotten. The US media literally cut off news about the situation in Japan about a week after it occurred because, I assume, bringing the nation's attention to this matter might upset the people who make billions from nuclear reactors. One must protect their feelings at all costs!

But the danger hasn't gone away. In fact, it's about to get much, much worse. The nitwits at TEPCO, who own the Fukushima facility, are about to pull spent fuel rods out of the most damaged storage pool. And if anything goes wrong (and it almost surely will), we will be in the midst of the greatest nuclear calamity the Earth has ever seen. It could be "85 times worse than Chernobyl".

We are now within two months of what may be humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focused on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4. … Neither Tokyo Electric nor the government of Japan can go this alone. There is no excuse for deploying anything less than a coordinated team of the planet’s best scientists and engineers. …

Maybe it's time for the US to report the Fukushima news, huh? Seriously, go read Gaius Publicus' article at AmericaBlog. (It's linked above.) This is very serious. If things go wrong, it could affect us all.

Fukushima nightmare continues

This must be the greatest nightmare imaginable. Click the link and look at the photo of endless, giant water tanks filled to the brim with radioactive water in Fukushima.

They need to keep pumping water over the nuclear material, which makes the water so contaminated that they can't release it. So it just builds and builds and...

They can't let it drain into the ocean. Really, there's nowhere sensible to put it, nowhere at all. And all the while, they can hardly keep up with the flow.

This won't end well. (Not that it began well.)

First real peek at the disaster in Fukushima

Just go read this. The report is out about what really happened at Fukushima. The bravery and dedication of those nuclear plant workers in the midst of one of the world's worst disasters is amazing.

Update on Fukushima

Dahr Jamail has an amazing article at Al Jazeera today. It's about the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. There's no sense in me excerpting it; you've got to read this one in full. Things are much, much worse than we've been told.

I think it's a safe bet that news from Fukushima is purposely being excluded from US news broadcasts. Jamail suggests as much and I thank him for saying this in print. Why do you think the world's greatest nuclear disaster isn't being covered by the American news media? The answer is obvious: the nuclear power brokers in this country spoke -- and the media scurried to do their bidding. Poof. No Fukushima in the American news. (This should scare you, by the way.)

But at least we have the internet, for now. We can still access independent news sources. So get on over to Al Jazeera and read the story. And if you're still in favor of nuclear power after reading it, something is probably wrong with you.

Next step in Japan's radiation story

There's an article in the Wall Street Journal today about Japan's attempt to deal with the huge volume of irradiated water that has accumulated as a result of hosing down the reactors for such a long time. They mention the size of the problem:

". . . there is altogether an estimated 67,500 tons of water from the three most heavily damaged reactor units that needs to be either processed or stored."

That's a lot of water. I read the story and it seems they believe they'll be able to filter the radioactivity from the water at processing plants, which they're now building. Their current aim is to move the water via a hose strung from the nuclear plant to a huge cistern in the ground. Then they'll move the water again, this time from the cistern to the processing plants, once they're operational.

Sounds pretty shaky to me. The article also mentioned an idea to switch from hosing the rods with water, to cooling them down with refrigerated air. They don't mention how this will be accomplished. It sounds like there's a long way to go before this situation is truly defused.

My heart goes out to all the people in Japan who have to live through this terrible time. From out the blue comes doom. Sometimes that's the way things happen, and it must seem very unfair to those who suffer the consequences.

Michio Kaku on Fukushima danger

New York's Daily News today has an interview with Michio Kaku, the physicist, about Fukushima raising the threat level to 7, equal to Chernobyl. Here's an excerpt:

"Chernobyl went through 600,000 workers, with each spending just a short time at the site to avoid radiation sickness. Everyone got a medal," he said. "Many of the workers (at Fukushima) don't even know how much radiation they've absorbed. Some of them are going to die. They've probably received the lethal amount of radiation already."

I've never heard about the 600,000 workers they cycled through Chernobyl. I'd love to read a comprehensive book about what happened there. For instance, how did this work out? Have those 600,000 workers remained healthy? And what on Earth will happen to the Japanese people who lived close to Fukushima Dai'ichi?

Katrina all over again

If I read one more story about the 50 workers in the Fukushima Dai'ichi plant who are bravely giving up their lives for their country -- yet don't have food to eat -- I'll scream. Every story about these workers says they have no food (only crackers) and are forced to sleep in the cold with "one blanket". This is insane.

They can drop endless tons of water on the plant but they can't send down a little parachute with some basic supplies? These people are giving up their lives and they don't have food or blankets? And none of the news reports on TV or stories I've read online ever mentions why they are in this sorry state. These are heroes -- and they're not being fed or kept warm?

What's wrong with this picture? It's driving me crazy, just like those images of people without water after Katrina -- day after day after day.

Drop some supplies down to the workers now!