Dr Helen Caldicott’s new book, Crisis Without End: the Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima, is a compilation of the symposium she organized at the New York Academy of Medicine in March 2013.* The latter was a virtual Who’s Who of nuclear physicists and radiation health experts. In the short video below, she gives a brief overview of the nuclear accident at Fukushima and the systematic cover-up by the US and Japanese government of the on-going threat it poses to all global inhabitants.
What Actually Happened at Fukushima?
Following a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that knocked out their cooling systems, three nuclear reactors experienced core meltdowns. When a meltdown occurs, the core overheats to the point that it melts through the containment vessel into the grounds. Driven by the intense heat of continuous chain reactions, the molten mass continues to spew radiation into the environment over an extended period.
The mountain streams that flow under the stricken reactors absorb this radiation from the molten cores and carry it to the Pacific Ocean. Approximately four tons daily of radiation-contaminated water has been flowing into the Pacific Ocean for 3 ½ years.
One the radiation reaches the ocean, it’s taken up into the food chain where it’s “biomagnified” (i.e. small fish eat radioactive algae, which are eaten by larger fish). Tuna is at the top of the food chain. Which is why tuna caught off the coast of California contains radioactive cesium that originated at Fukushima.
The Cover-Up
The Japanese government knew almost immediately the meltdowns had occurred – expose the whole of Japan and the American West Coast to massive doses of airborne radioactive fallout – and covered it up for three months. They and Tepco, the private company running Fukushima, continue to mislead the public by asserting it will take forty years to stop the flow of radioactive water into the Pacific. According to Caldicott, no technology exists at present to reverse the effects of a nuclear meltdown.
A new law Japan passed in December 2013 makes it illegal for journalists to disclose any information about Fukushima that the government wishes to suppress.
Obama, the pro-nuclear president (he received a $250,000 campaign contribution from Exelon Corporation) colluded in the cover-up. Instead of warning Americans in Seattle, Florida and other US sites that they were being exposed to high levels of airborne radioactive fallout (specifically I 131), he specifically denied that the US faced any risk of radiation exposure.
Caldicott maintains the EPA has an absolute legal and moral obligation to monitor radiation levels of US air, water and sea food, especially as the Fukushima site remains extremely vulnerable to a future earthquake, tsunami or typhoon. Workers are still pumping seawater on the stricken reactors to cool them. Afterwards the radioactive seawater is stored in 1500 enormous storage tanks held together with adhesive tape.
Obama, in contrast, is far more concerned about protecting his friends in the nuclear industry. Amazingly he has just finalized $6.5 billion $6.5 billion in loan guarantees to build two new nuclear power plants in Georgia.
Hillary Clinton is also a major player in the cover-up, with the agreement she signed immediately after the Fukushima accident, for the US to continue to import Japanese seafood. Caldicott warns that under no circumstances should people anywhere eat rice, fish or miso imported Japan – owing to high levels of radiation it contains.
Chernobyl
Caldicot also discusses the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl (Ukraine) which has caused one million, mainly cancer-related, deaths across Europe. Information about the effects of Chernobyl in other parts of Europe is also being suppressed. Lambs in Wales, Wild boards in Germany and Turkish hazelnut are still too dangerous to eat due to radiation contamination.
* Free link to presentations from last year’s Symposium available via the Helen Caldicott Foundation
The Most Revolutionary Act 
great interview, Dr. I have read some of Helen’s books, watched one or more videos, circa 2003. I appreciate your site and am glad I found you, thru VT, mostly.
joe
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Thanks, Joe. I really admire Dr Caldicott’s ability to explain things in plain English.
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It obviously doesn’t matter if people ‘uncover’ the cover-up, this will continue to be a horrifying situation without end!
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You got it. At the same time, people can protect themselves against additional radiation exposure by avoiding foods grown in radioactive “hot spots.” The distribution of radioactive iodine, cesium and strontium is by no means uniform across the US – it all depends on the wind patterns immediately after the meltdowns.
This is why I (and Caldicott) feel it’s criminal that Obama continues to cover this up instead of allowing the EPA to monitor our food and water for radioactivity. A number of private groups have begun doing this in several regions. However their scope is quite limited, as they have nowhere near the resources the EPA does.
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Dr. Bramhall, I’ve had a serious thyroid condition for years. I recently had yet another sonogram of the right side of my thyroid. I had one large 2 centimeter nodule and now there are nodules clustered around it measuring 3-4 centimeters and pressing slightly on the trachea. This was biopsied last month and was determined to be benign and I was told to continue taking Synthroid and come back in a year for my yearly follow-up. I also have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, when I was in hospital, they informed me that my cerebella tonsils are low lying but not ectopic and should be of no concern to me. Now, am I Frankenstein’s monster or what? Plus, I have two teeth that are so far down in my jaw(on the left and the right side) that no surgeon will touch them and several have said that in the history of their 23-30 years of practicing oral surgery, they have never seen a patient with teeth that far down in the jaw and lying sideways on a nerve. And, the bone at the base of my spine is deformed and the bulging discs from the accident are pressing on that. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I am some experiment gone horribly wrong and now, I am probably glowing in the dark from being radiated to the ninth degree.
Have you ever heard of such?
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It sounds very similar to the stories I hear from people who were exposed to 2,4 D and 2,4,5 T because they lived next to our Dow chemical plant that was manufacturing dioxin. All of us carry approximately 150 toxic chemicals in our blood stream, so these physical abnormalities seem to occur more and more often with each successive generation.
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“A new law Japan passed in December 2013 makes it illegal for journalists to disclose any information about Fukushima that the government wishes to suppress.”
To my mind it is criminal to pass laws that make it illegal for journalists to disclose any information about conditions in nuclear power plants. How can the public think it is right for governments to suppress such information. Does the public not have a right to take steps to protect themselves from any kind of radiation?
It baffles me how so many people seem not to be wanting to object to the suppression of important information by secretive governments. How can they live with themselves thinking that such secrecy is justified?
Today in conversation a woman mentioned how under communism in her country a lot of things were so much better. Life was simpler and everyone had a job. That people could be incarcerated for their political views did not seem to bother her. Her response was: If you do not do anything illegal, nothing is going to happen to you.
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I think it’s really unfortunate the way western leaders insist that we have only 2 choices political democracy, in which we supposedly have the right to hold dissident views and speak out against government oppression (this is rapidly disappearing in western society) and economy democracy in which people have guaranteed economic rights, such as a job, safe and nutritious food, education, shelter and health care. I think we’re gradually learning that both are essential. That countries who deny basic economic rights will eventual take away your political rights, as well.
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You do explain it well, Stuart, in a true democracy you have both these rights.
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Reblogged this on Puppet Master's Slave Market and commented:
Super Typhoon Cat5 VongFong is headed to Japan-will hit this weekend. Understanding The complexing of toxins is 9th grade biology. Tepco and Exelon’s desire to ‘save face’ may result in the melting of hundreds of millions of innocent faces as the radiation spreads throughout the global food chain. How do we stop it ?
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How do we stop it? How indeed.
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I personally believe the only way we can address our present powerless is by organizing in our local communities. Too many people are passive and apathetic. In my mind, the first step is to re-engage them in civic and community groups (both political and apolitical) like our parents’ and grandparents’ generation.
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Community groups, yes, this should be worth thinking about, Stuart. I am reminded of what for instance it may have been like in the GDR before the fall of the wall.
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I think, though I may be mistaken, that there were no community groups in the GDR because the Stasi either banned them or infiltrated and smashed them. There’s some of that (in the US at least – I don’t know about other western countries – the FBI infiltrates a lot of grassroots groups to break them up). However I think the role of pro-consumption, individualistic, competitive propaganda is far more important than government infiltration in discouraging people from being active in the community. What do you think?
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Perhaps these weekly prayer meetings could be seen as community group meetings? I found several write-ups about the events in the GDR that lead to the fall of the wall. The following is just the first paragraph in an article about the Monday demonstrations that started in Leipzig in September 1989.
“In Leipzig the demonstrations began on 4 September 1989 after the weekly Friedensgebet (prayer for peace) in the Nikolaikirche with parson Christian Führer, and eventually filled the nearby downtown Karl Marx Square (today known again as Augustusplatz). Safe in the knowledge that the Lutheran Church supported their resistance, many dissatisfied East German citizens gathered in the court of the church, and non-violent demonstrations began in order to demand rights such as the freedom to travel to foreign countries and to elect a democratic government.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_demonstrations_in_East_Germany
This Chronik shows how the will of the people brought about changes!
http://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/index.php/de/Start/Index/id/652005
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Fascinating. I think it’s exactly in small groups like this that resistance starts.
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