vendredi 29 juillet 2011

More transparency in the Nuclear Crisis

Why Japanese officials refuse to be too realistic over radiation...


Mr. Yukio Edano, Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Government of Japan said:

“Concerning Radiation, we judge that too much concern is unnecessary”

This statement is just as big as the one France made by saying the Tchernobyl cloud didn’t reach france, so French people: business as usual !

This sentence from Mr Edano is the one I think about every time I suspect radiations around my environment in Tokyo and around (on the dirt of the rugby grounds I play in, the vegetables I eat, the Fish and vegetables I eat, in the rain that falls on my head, on the grass of parks I lay on, on the air I breathe…) how can a political leader say such a thing…

As we all stat to realize the huge spread of radioactive contaminants released by the Fukushima Dai ichi plant, this is what the population have to bear, a political leader saying to the face of his population:
“Concerning Radiation, we judge that too much concern is unnecessary”

Mr Edano said that just before agreeing to test (and release the result, it is not the case for every testing) breast milk sample of woman living in Chiba and Saitama, suburbs of Tokyo.

As it could be predictable, radioactive Iodine and Cesium was found… in woman’s breast milk… it has been processed by the body, it well inside of it and ready to defuse its poison in newborns leaving them exposed to early genetic mutation risk and all the bad possible consequences of it and also expose newborns to cancer risks at a time where they are the most vulnerable.

People around eastern Japan who tested their urine found trace indicating that radioactive iodine and cesium were in their body.

Those two components are not produced by our mother earth; they are man made and a direct product of nuclear fission that allows us to have electricity to sustain our lifestyles.

The reality of the situation is that everyday in Japan, people eat contaminated vegetables, fish and meat all around Japan, drink tainted green tea, and consume tainted sea weeds. The proportion of tainted food to make the stall is probably relatively low but eating radiation is far from being harmless, and it accumulates. We always hear: if you eat some it is just a little so it won’t harm you. But this little bit people here are exposed to it everyday. It is like saying, smoking a little bit everyday is not harmful… the reality one more time proves wrong, as much for cigarette, as much fro radiation as Tchernobyl showed.

But how to monitor everything, how to test all the samples, how to stop some productions without sending farmers to suicide…

Since I equipped myself with a Geiger counter, I tested high level at entrance of sewers, saw salads blipping in front of me because they emitted double the background radiation level and I expect to see more in my so called “no contaminated part of Japan”.

Here’s what I hear around me in Japan, and with the little I know here’s what I say to people every time I can.

I don’t care about tainted food my body will digest it and repulse it
FALSE, it will stay

I don’t care too much cause I take the plane often so I’m exposed to a lot of radiation so if I care about everything, life will become impossible

FALSE, you should care because this is different, the radiation from the plant is not the same as the cosmic rays your receive in the plane or the radioactive potassium in evey banana, it is much more harmful and if you eat tainted contaminants like cesium and iodine, radioactive elements will play with your cells in your body for 60 years (cesium), it’s like playing lottery those particle might end up modifying one of your cells into a cancer cell which will start the disease.

There is radiation naturally so it’s just a little more so it should be fine

FALSE, any radiation more than the natural background should be avoided

Having X rays or CT scan is the same, and probably even more and it’s not dangerous so why caing?

FALSE, why do you think your doctor goes behind a protection? Because he will take too much probably if he does that everyday… you can’t be more right taking a little bit continuously is very harmful because it accumulates in the body. Unfortunately the radiation emitted by the plant is continuous, as exposes you to a little bit everyday.
Also, guess what: particles emitted by FUKUSHIMA plant can fly by sticking to heavy metals very volatile, so you can breathe it continuously in some areas for years after a crisis, it’s a very different thing than an x ray. The skin is actually a pretty good protection against natural radiation and x rays.

I trust the government can’t let radioactive particles in my daily government

Unfortunately FALSE, first, no government in the world has the capacity to control everything, with such disasters, and with radiation, everything is to take in account…

Food for example, is just impossible to control, it’s like trying to control the stock option market exchange with a central entity that would check everything, just impossible, too many people involved, the government would need to employ a quarter of the active population of Japan to be able to at least just monitor everything. So don’t believe in everything you hear, it’s not wonderland and the government is unfortunately not made of supermen’s.

Monitoring of food is estimated at 7% today. Not more than 7% of the food is sampled and tested, that leaves a lot of uncertainty…

Running a country is very costly and adding a crisis like that to a country in recession is an extremely big shock to the budget, the reconstruction itself will make tax payers pay more. If you decide to apply the principle of caution regarding to the risk linked to radiation you would have to close all schools in many prefectures, stop farming in those areas, clean up public building at least, sewers, environmental facilities, decontaminate grounds, launch a huge communication campaign to inform about the risks.

This would include not only relocating people but also supporting them financially and psychologically to rebuild a new life, pay the farmers for lost crops, increase taxes even more, impose severe restriction plan on the population.
This work would be the most difficult a state would have to deal with.

On a smaller scale, this job is currently being done for the tsunami hit areas where people have to move on to a new life having lost everything.

So what do politicians like Mr Edano propose:

“Concerning Radiation, we judge that too much concern is unnecessary”

Flush a big part of the problem by increasing the radiation acceptable limit of 1mSv per year to 20mSv. So as schools and activities exposed to levels over the previous limit just can continue working… flush the problem…

Many people don’t blame the government because it is so hard to deal with, but the limit of 20mSv has been decided following a study by an organism called WHO which is by far the most optimistic group in term of radiation consequences.

Optimism…

Is it time for optimism or taking the least risk possible ?

It’s like if the police would say: We will raise the alcohol limits allowed driving, Too many drunk drivers, just raise the limits... flush the problem, it’s almost magical, and the illegal becomes legal…


Let’s check what happened after Tchernobyl?

….Yes….
People fought about whether the evaluation of consequences had to be done:

In term of political issues
(then “the less consequences we find will be the better, it will be cheaper and look better for our voters, so let’s not search too much things we don’t want to find”)

Or in term of epidemiology
(the scientific way, sciences has its margin of errors but science has no interest or felling and no reason not to assess the consequences in the most extensive way possible)

Yes…That’s what happened…

Which way was chosen… well governments make that kind of decisions so guess which one won…

The officials at the time of Tchernobyl (86) stated that maybe around 4000 people could be affected and develop a cancer in the future, also that only 47 people died and nine children died of thyroid cancer.

According to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), more than 10,000 people are diagnosed with thyroid cancer and 50 000 additional cases are expected in the future. In Europe, 10 000 malformations of newborns because of Chernobyl and 5000 infant deaths were declared. Hundred thousands of members of response team on tchernobyl site are sick today as a result of radiation and ten of thousands have died…
rapport indépendant « Conséquence de Tchernobyl sur la santé »

In 2007, According to a Russian study by three scientists whose Nesterenko famous for his position against the official version of facts at the time, the medical records for the period 1986 to 2004 reflect 985 000 deaths caused by the disaster (mostly Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, but also in other countries).
http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1


This is the kind of things that we expose to with Nuclear Energy.

I’m not against nuclear energy and especially with a growing population like ours, the future will be made with a mix of nuclear and solar energy, but as Einstein said, “nuclear energy is a hell of a way to broil water” and as surely as there are no highways without accidents, nuclear accidents might happen again in the future.


This man made crisis made Japan realize that we have to save energy, and this is so important today.

If we continue with many of our useless electric gadgets, none efficient technology, if we take for granted that energy is cheap so it’s ok to leave the lights on, to leave TV and appliances on stand by. Choose apartments, houses, lightings that consume energy we will not expose to have 1 nuclear reactor 300 km away from our homes but we’ll have many much closer to us.

Fukushima and Tchernobyl taught is how bad it can be so if that doesn’t make us responsible, it will just mean we are asleep in our daily life not conscious about all we use, how hard and risky it is to use them.


Since the beginning of the crisis, the Japanese government is reluctant to test and monitor radiation in a proper way to inform the population it swears to serve and represent.

Now, this government has a challenge that no country ever had in front of him, to face a nuclear crisis and protect its population.

How are they handling it so far? They minimized everything they could minimize, lied to the population and hided a lot of information.
Mr Edano summed up the situation really clearly.

Nuclear problems bring huge consequences, terrible consequences. The scale of the problem is enormous if one decides to take a look at it in depth.

Air, Water, Ground, Food everything we sustain on, all of our life sources become a potential danger. The challenge for population is that this danger is in fact an invisible one, you can’t see radiation, and you can’t touch radiation.

I love Japan and Japanese people, I hope the population rises up and and force the government to act in reflection of what Japanese people can expect a safe environment, and if it is not possible at least transparency.


Between a huge population exposed to a big danger in eastern Japan, and a government that refuse to take the safest approach for it’s population, I say everyone should have an advice, if you are Japanese make your heard…

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