The Fukushima Catastrophe

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Point Reyes, California, information event.  Sept 2, 2015 (click on poster for PDF)


Fukushima Update: Community, Contamination, and Challenge A talk by Yuka Saito — Berkeley, CA — March 2015


Fukushima Forever — Overview Article by Charles Perrow — Summer 2014

David Suzuki and David Schindler on the limits of risk management:

https://youtu.be/iTqzqoKMLEg

January 2014 Update

December 2013: What Is Happening with Reactor #3
https://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2217953/fukushima_meltdown_mystery_steam_rising_over_reactor_3.html

Bad News About Fish from Pacific Ocean:
https://www.wnd.com/2013/12/japan-radiation-poisoning-america/


Best web site on Fukushima:

fukushimaresponse-dot-org FukushimaResponse.org


World Action Now on Fukushima – Harvey Wasserman — Oct. 4, 2010


 

Removing Fuel Rods Poses New Risks at Crippled Nuclear Plant in Japan

November 10, New York Times


The Environmental and Public Health Impacts of Nuclear Power (with special attention to Fukushima)  October 19, 2013

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Dr. Robert Gould’s presentation at San Francisco State University, October 19, 2013.
The educational conference at which Dr. Gould spoke was titled,
“The Truth and Reality of Fukushima and What it Means to the People of Japan, the US and the World.” 
Dr. Gould is a longtime member of Physicians for Social Responsibility.


Ongoing Catastrophic Nuclear Power Emergency in Japan, March 2011 to Present (and for hundreds of years to come)

PBS Video about beginning and early weeks of crisis  


September 2013, a new detailed PDF e-book:
Fukushima– A Nuclear War without a War

Summer 2013 news stories from The Guardian


WWW.JOINTWORLD.ORG GEARS UP FOR GLOBAL CAMPAIGN  (Feb. 2013)

Fukushima’s damaged Building #4 is a threat to the entire Northern Hemisphere. The Japanese Government needs to accept emergency help from other countries to remove the spent fuel rods from Building #4 before the building collapses and sends a giant new wave of radioactive poison around the world.

JointWorld.org Web Site 


CROOKED CLEANUP series of articles in The Asahi Shimbun newspaper

CROOKED CLEANUP: Government mishandled complaints about shoddy cleanup work January 05, 2013 Environment Ministry officials failed to act on a flood of complaints from residents in Fukushima Prefecture about companies carrying out shoddy decontamination work.
CROOKED CLEANUP (2): Some decontamination workers sorry for following orders January 04, 2013 A man in his 20s questioned the shady practices involved in decontaminating areas in Fukushima Prefecture, only to be assured that everything was OK.

CROOKED CLEANUP (3): Reporters document extent of shoddy decontamination practices

January 04, 2013

To discover the extent of shoddy decontamination practices, Asahi Shimbun reporters spent 130 hours observing, photographing and interviewing workers at various locations in Fukushima Prefecture from Dec. 11 to 18.


April, 2012, Analytical Report on Building No. 4 Radiation Risks

  A collapse of the already tilting reactor No 4 building at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, atop which sits a spent nuclear fuel storage pool containing 1,535 fuel assemblies – including 204 unused ones – would lead to a “significant global impact,”– by far topping last year’s triple meltdown at the plant, a new report says.

  According to the report ( available for download in PDF  ) released by Holophi CH, a Swiss-based industrial analytics think-tank, even a 10 percent release of the storage pool’s inventory of radioactive cesium and strontium would “represent 3 to 10 times the March 11, 2011 release amounts, substantially increasing risk levels in Japan and marine life.”


April, 2012: Arnie Gunderson: Fukushima Spent Fuel May Catch Fire, Potential of 80 Chernobyls


April 20, 2012.  Fukushima Reactor Still Extremely Dangerous


The Radioactive Poisoning of the Pacific Ocean 2011-2012

Reflections on Fukushima a Year Later — Dennis Rivers

For years the antinuclear movement has been saying to the general public: pay attention to this information because this bad thing is going to happen. And now, the really bad thing has happened. What have we to say to the world now?

I think the current situation calls for a kind of tragic heroism, of the sort expressed by Winston Churchill when it looked like Britain was losing World War II. He gave a famous speech in which he said that the British would never surrender. They would fight in the fields, they would fight in the hedges, they would fight on the river banks, they would fight to the last man, but they would never surrender.

Applied to the radioactive poisoning of the Pacific Ocean, I think our attitude needs to be something like, “save as many species as you can, you are not going to save them all. Protect as many people as you can, you are not going to be able to protect them all, but never stop.”

In my mind I hear myself rewriting Churchill speech for the post-Fukushima era. “We will never stop caring about life, no matter how bad things get. We will never stop believing in life, no matter how much of life is destroyed. We will never stop reaching out to care for other people, and protect them as much as we can, even if we glow in the dark from radiation, and keel over from leukemia. We will never give up.”


Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown Crisis — March 2011

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Sayonara Nukes!

The Voices of Ten Million: Anti-Nuclear Petition Movement Launched in Japan

July 9, 2011

A group of Japan’s most prominent public intellectuals have launched a movement to amass ten million signatures calling for an end to Japanese nuclear power. The group, which includes Uchihashi Katsuto, Ooe Kenzaburo, Ochiai, Kamata Satoshi,  Sakamoto Ryuichi, Sawachi Hisae, Setouchi Jakucho, Tsujii Takashi and Tsurumi Shunsuke, also plan a nationwide series of protests on September 11, the six month anniversary of the tsunami and the beginning of the Fukushima crisis. The group’s website ( in Japanese ) ( in English ) describes their plan


Links to Japan Times Articles:

Antinuke stance within establishment slowly gathers steam

Fukushima to scrap nuclear plants | The Japan Times Online


Fukushima’s Apocalyptic Threat

By Harvey Wasserman, 5/20/2011, Reader Supported News.  Fukushima may be in an apocalyptic downward spiral.  Forget the corporate-induced media coma that says otherwise … or nothing at all. Lethal radiation is spewing unabated. Emission levels could seriously escalate. There is no end in sight. The potential is many times worse than Chernobyl. Containing this disaster may be beyond the abilities of Tokyo Electric or the Japanese government.  [CALL YOUR CONGRESS PEOPLE — DEMAND MORE ACTION]   more

No to Nuclear Power Open Letter from Nobel Peace Laureates

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, April 26 – and six weeks after the devastating nuclear disaster in Japan – ten Nobel Peace Laureates called upon world leaders to invest in safer and more peaceful future by committing to renewable energy sources. The Laureates sent an open letter to 31 heads of state whose countries are currently heavily invested in nuclear power production, or are considering investing in nuclear power. Read the open letter written by the ten Nobel Laureates .

  Unsafe at Any Dose: Dr. Helen Caldecott on the Consequences of  Fukushima (New York Times 4/30/2011)

Fukushima Update from Green Action Japan

Note: Please be patient.  Pages from this site in Japan may load slowly.

GreenPeace USA Update on Fukushima Disaster

As Fukushima fallout circles the globe, nuclear sleuths sift it for clues(Washington Post 4/1)

Three weeks into the nuclear crisis in Japan, minute traces of radioactive dust have circled the globe, even arriving in Maryland and Virginia.

Fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has landed on 30 exquisitely sensitive detectors on desolate Arctic islands, on the tops of tall buildings and in other windy locales across the Northern Hemisphere, according to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization , which maintains those sensors. Sniffing the air like silent sentinels, the 63 shack-like stations (with 17 more planned) are capturing tiny radioactive particles in filters much like those on a home furnace. more

U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant

United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores. more

Learning from Japan’s Nuclear Disaster

By Amory B. Lovins — March 18, 2011 — As heroic workers and soldiers strive to save stricken Japan from a new horror—radioactive fallout—some truths known for 40 years bear repeating.  An earthquake-and-tsunami zone crowded with 127 million people is an unwise place for 54 reactors. The 1960s design of five Fukushima-I reactors has the smallest safety margin and probably can’t contain 90 percent of meltdowns. The U.S. has six identical and 17 very similar plants.   more

Barbara Ford on  Fukushima, Fallout, and the Spiritual Challenge of Nuclear Disaster 


Poison Fire: Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy speaks on the spiritual challenges of nuclear power and nuclear weapons .  

more about Joanna Macy


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