It is one of the marvels of our time that the nuclear industry managed to resurrect itself from its ruins at the end of the last century, when it crumbled under its costs, inefficiencies, and mega-accidents. Chernobyl released hundreds of times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined, contaminating more than 40% of Europe and the entire Northern Hemisphere. But along came the nuclear lobby to breathe new life into the industry, passing off as \u201cclean\u201d this energy source that polluted half the globe. The \u201cfresh look at nuclear\u201d\u2014in the words of a New York Times makeover piece (May 13, 2006)\u2014paved the way to a \u201cnuclear Renaissance\u201d in the United States that Fukushima has by no means brought to a halt.<\/p>\n
That mainstream media have been powerful advocates for nuclear power comes as no surprise. \u201cThe media are saturated with a skilled, intensive, and effective advocacy campaign by the nuclear industry, resulting in disinformation\u201d and \u201cwholly counterfactual accounts\u2026widely believed by otherwise sensible people,\u201d states the 2010-2011 World Nuclear Industry Status Report by Worldwatch Institute. What is less well understood is the nature of the \u201cevidence\u201d that gives the nuclear industry its mandate, Cold War science which, with its reassurances about low-dose radiation risk, is being used to quiet alarms about Fukushima and to stonewall new evidence that would call a halt to the industry.<\/p>\n
Consider these damage control pieces from major media:<\/p>\n
~~ The \u201cminiscule quantities\u201d of radiation in the radioactive plume spreading across the U.S. pose \u201cno health hazard,\u201d assures the Department of Energy (William Broad, \u201cRadiation over U.S. is Harmless, Officials Say,\u201d NYT, March 22, 2011).<\/p>\n
~~ \u201cThe risk of cancer is quite low, lower than what the public might expect,\u201d explains Evan Douple, head of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), which has studied the A-bomb survivors and found that \u201cat very low doses, the risk was also very low\u201d (Denise Grady, \u201cRadiation is everywhere, but how to rate harm?\u201d NYT, April 5, 2011).<\/p>\n
~~ An NPR story a few days after the Daiichi reactors destabilized quotes this same Evan Douple saying that radiation levels around the plant \u201cshould be reassuring. At these levels so far I don\u2019t think a study would be able to measure that there would be any health effects, even in the future.\u201d (\u201cEarly radiation data from near plant ease health fears,\u201d Richard Knox and Andrew Prince,\u201d March 18, 2011) The NPR story, like Grady\u2019s piece (above), stresses that the Radiation Effects Research Foundation has had six decades experience studying the health effects of radiation, so it ought to know.<\/p>\n
~~ British journalist George Monbiot, environmentalist turned nuclear advocate, in a much publicized debate with Helen Caldicott on television and in the Guardian<\/em>, refers to the RERF data as \u201cscientific consensus,\u201d citing, again, their reassurances that low dose radiation incurs low cancer risk.<\/p>\n Everyone knows that radiation at high dose is harmful, but the Hiroshima studies reassure that risk diminishes as dose diminishes until it becomes negligible. This is a necessary belief if the nuclear industry is to exist, because reactors release radioactive emissions not only in accidents, but in their routine, day-to-day operations and in the waste they produce. If low-dose radiation is not negligible, workers in the industry are at risk, as are people who live in the vicinity of reactors or accidents\u2014as is all life on this planet . The waste produced by reactors does not \u201cdilute and disperse\u201d and disappear, as industry advocates would have us believe, but is blown by the winds, carried by the tides, seeps into earth and groundwater, and makes its way into the food chain and into us, adding to the sum total of cancers and birth defects throughout the world. Its legacy is for longer than civilization has existed; plutonium, with its half life of 24,000 years, is, in human terms, forever.<\/p>\n What is this Radiation Effects Research Foundation, and on what \u201cscience\u201d does it base its reassuring claims?<\/p>\n *******<\/p>\n The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), as it was originally called, began its studies of the survivors five years after the bombings. (It was renamed the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in the mid seventies, to get the \u201catomic bomb\u201d out, at around the same time the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was renamed the Department of Energy (DOE). Japan, which has the distinction of being twice nuked, first as our wartime enemy then in 2011 as our ally and the recipient of our GE reactors, has also been the population most closely studied for radiation-related effects, for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings created a large, ready-made population of radiation-exposed humans. \u201cAh, but the Americans<\/em>\u2014they are wonderful,\u201d exclaimed Japan\u2019s radiation expert Tsuzuki Masao, who lamented that he\u2019d had only rabbits to work on: \u201cIt has remained for them to conduct the human<\/em> experiment!\u201d<\/p>\n The ABCC studied but did not treat radiation effects, and many survivors\u00a0were reluctant to identify themselves as survivors, having no wish to bare their health problems to US investigators and become mired in bureaucracy and social stigma. But sufficient numbers did voluntarily come forth to make this the largest\u2014and longest\u2014study of radiation-related health effects ever. No medical study has had such resources lavished on it, teams of scientists, state of the art equipment: this was Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) funding. Since it is assumed in epidemiology that the larger the sample, the greater the statistical accuracy, there has been a tendency to accept these data as the gold standard of radiation risk.<\/p>\n The Japanese physicians and scientists who\u2019d been on the scene told horrific stories of people who\u2019d seemed unharmed, but then began bleeding from ears, nose, and throat, hair falling out by the handful, bluish spots appearing on the skin, muscles contracting, leaving limbs and hands deformed. When they tried to publish their observations, they were ordered to hand over their reports to \u00a0US authorities. Throughout the occupation years (1945-52) Japanese medical journals were heavily censored on nuclear matters. In late 1945, US Army surgeons issued a statement that all people expected to die from the radiation effects of the bomb had already died and no further physiological effects due to radiation were expected. \u00a0When Tokyo radio announced that even people who entered the cities after the bombings were dying of mysterious causes and decried the weapons as \u201cillegal\u201d and \u201cinhumane,\u201d American officials dismissed these allegations as Japanese propaganda.<\/p>\n The issue of radiation poisoning was particularly sensitive, since it carried a taint of banned weaponry, like poison gas. The A-bomb was not \u201can inhumane weapon,\u201d declared General Leslie Groves, who had headed the Manhattan project. The first western scientists allowed in to the devastated cities were under military escort, ordered in by Groves. The first western journalists allowed in were similarly under military escort. \u00a0Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, who managed to get in to Hiroshima on his own, got a story out to a British paper, describing people who were dying \u201cmysteriously and horribly\u201d from \u201can unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague\u2026 dying at the rate of 100 a day,\u201d General MacArthur ordered him out of Japan; his camera, with film shot in Hiroshima, mysteriously disappeared.<\/p>\n \u201cNo Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin,\u201d proclaimed a New York Times headline, Sept 13, 1945. \u201cSurvey Rules out Nagasaki Dangers,\u201d stated another headline: \u201cRadioactivity after atomic bomb is only 1000th<\/sup> of that from luminous dial watch,\u201d Oct 7, 1945. \u00a0There were powerful political incentives to downplay radiation risk. As State Department Attorney William H. Taft asserted, the \u201cmistaken impression\u201d that low-level radiation is hazardous has the \u201cpotential to be seriously damaging to every aspect of the Department of Defense\u2019s nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion programs\u2026it could impact the civilian nuclear industry\u2026 and it could raise questions regarding the use of radioactive substances in medical diagnosis and treatment.\u201d A pamphlet issued by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1953 \u201cinsisted that low-level exposure to radiation \u2018can be continued indefinitely without any detectable bodily change.\u2019\u201d The AEC was paying the salaries of the ABCC scientists and monitoring them \u201cclosely\u2014some felt too closely,\u201d writes Susan Lindee in Suffering Made Real, <\/em>which <\/em>documents the political pressures that shaped radiation science. (Other good sources on the making of this science are Sue Rabbit Roff\u2019s Hotspots<\/em>, Monica Braw\u2019s The Atomic Bomb Suppressed<\/em>, and Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell\u2019s, Hiroshima in America<\/em>). The New York Times \u201cjoined the government in suppressing information on the radiation sickness of survivors\u201d and consistently downplayed or omitted radioactivity from its reportage, as Beverly Ann Deepe Keever demonstrates in The New York Times and the Bomb<\/em>. Keever, a veteran journalist herself, writes that \u201cfrom the dawn of the atomic-bomb age,\u2026the Times almost single-handedly shaped the news of this epoch and helped birth the acceptance of the most destructive force ever created,\u201d aiding the \u201cCold War cover-up\u201d in minimizing and denying the health and environmental consequences of the a-bomb and its testing.<\/p>\n The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission scientists calculated that by 1950, when the commission began its investigations, the death rate from all causes except cancer had returned to \u201cnormal\u201d and the cancer deaths were too few to cause alarm.<\/p>\n *******<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s nonsense, it\u2019s rubbish!\u201d protested epidemiologist Dr. Alice Stewart, an early critic\u2014and victim\u2014of the Hiroshima studies. Stewart discovered, in 1956, that x-raying pregnant women doubled the chance of a childhood cancer: this put her on a collision course with ABCC\/RERF data, which found no excess of cancer in children exposed in utero<\/em> to the blasts. Nobody in the 1950s wanted to hear that a fraction of the radiation dose \u201cknown\u201d to be safe could kill a child. During the Cold War, officials were assuring us we could survive all-out nuclear war by ducking and covering under desks and the U.S. and U.K. governments were pouring lavish subsidies into \u201cthe friendly atom.\u201d Stewart was defunded and defamed.<\/p>\n She persisted in her criticisms of the Hiroshima data which were repeatedly invoked to discredit her findings, pointing out that there was no way the survivors could have returned to \u201cnormal\u201d a mere five years after the atomic blasts. This was not a normal or representative population: it was a population of healthy survivors, since the weakest had died off. Her studies of childhood cancer had found that children incubating cancer became 300 times more infection sensitive than normal children. Children so immune-compromised would not have survived the harsh winters that followed the bombings, when food and water were contaminated, medical services ground to a halt, and antibiotics were scarce\u2014but their deaths would not have been recorded as radiation-related cancer deaths. Nor would the numerous stillbirths, spontaneous abortions, and miscarriages (known effects of radiation exposure) have been so recorded. Stewart maintained that were many more deaths from radiation exposure than official figures indicated.<\/p>\n Besides, the survivors had been exposed to a single, external blast of radiation, often at very high dose (depending on their distance from the bombs), rather than the long, slow, low-dose exposure that is experienced by people living near reactors or workers in the nuclear industry. Stewart\u2019s studies of the Hanford nuclear workers were turning up cancer at doses \u201cknown to be too low\u201d to produce cancer, too low as defined by the Hiroshima data: \u201cThis is the population you ought to be studying to find out the effects of low-dose radiation,\u201d she maintained, not only because the workers have been subjected to the kind of exposure more likely to be experienced by downwinders to reactors and accidents, but also because records were kept of their exposures (the nuclear industry requires such records).<\/p>\n In the Hiroshima and Nagasaki studies, by contrast radiation exposure was estimated on the flimsiest of guesswork. The radiation emitted by the bombs was calculated according to tests done in the Nevada desert and was recalculated several times in subsequent decades. Researchers asked such questions as, where were you standing in relation to the blast, what was between you and it, what had you had for breakfast that morning, assuming that the survivors would give reliable accounts five years after the event.<\/p>\n \u201cBible arithmetic!\u201d Stewart called the Hiroshima data: \u201cit has skewed subsequent calculations about the cancer effect of radiation, and not only the cancer effect, but many other effects \u2013immune system damage, lowered resistance to disease, infection, heart disease, genetic damage. These are serious misrepresentations because they suggest it\u2019s safe to increase levels of background radiation.\u201d In fact, as the Hiroshima studies went on, they turned up numerous radiation effects besides cancer\u2014cardiovascular and gastrointestinal damage, eye diseases, and other health problems\u2014which bore out her prediction. Stewart was also proved right on the issue of fetal X-rays, though it took her two decades to convince official bodies to recommend against the practice, during which time doctors went right on X-raying pregnant women. It took her another two decades to build a case strong enough to persuade the US government, in 1999, to grant compensation to nuclear workers for cancer incurred on the job. (It helps, in this area, to be long-lived, as she commented wryly).<\/p>\n Twice, she has demonstrated that radiation exposures assumed \u201ctoo low\u201d to be dangerous carry high risk\u2014two major blows at the Hiroshima data. Yet this 60-year old RERF data set continues to be invoked to dismiss new evidence\u2014evidence of cancer clusters in the vicinity of nuclear reactors and findings from Chernobyl.<\/p>\n *******<\/p>\n More than 40 studies have turned up clusters of childhood leukemia in the vicinity of nuclear facilities, reckons Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment and a former member of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (an investigatory commission established by the U.K. government but disbanded in 2004). Fairlie describes this as a \u201cmass of evidence difficult to contradict\u201d\u2014yet it continues to be contradicted, on the basis of the Hiroshima studies. Generally when a cancer cluster is detected in the neighborhood of a reactor, the matter gets referred to a government committee that dismisses the findings on the grounds that radioactive emissions from facilities are \u201ctoo low\u201d to produce a cancer effect\u2014\u201ctoo low, according to RERF risk estimates.<\/p>\n But in 2007, something extraordinary happened, when a government-appointed committee formed in response to the pressure of concerned citizens turned up increased rates of childhood leukemia in the vicinity of all 16 nuclear power plants in Germany. The Kinderkrebs in der Umgebung von Kernkraftwerken<\/em> study, known by its acronym KiKK, was a large, well-designed study with a case-control format (1592 cancer cases and 4735 controls). The investigators\u2014who were not opposed to nuclear power\u2014anticipated they\u2019d find \u201cno effect… on the basis of the usual models for the effects of low levels of radiation.\u201d But they found, to their surprise, that children who lived less than 5 km from a plant were more than twice as likely<\/em> to develop leukemia as children who lived more than 5 km away. This was inexplicable within current models of estimating radiation risk: emissions would have had to have been orders of magnitude higher than those released by the power stations to account for the rise in leukemia. So the investigators concluded that the rise in leukemia couldn\u2019t have been caused by radiation.<\/p>\n The findings are not inexplicable, explains Fairlie, when you understand that the data on which risk is calculated, the Hiroshima studies, are \u201cunsatisfactory.\u201d Fairlie\u2019s criticism of these data echoes Stewart\u2019s: \u201crisk estimates from an instantaneous external blast of high energy neutrons and gamma rays are not really applicable to the chronic, slow, internal<\/em> exposures from the low-range alpha and beta radiation from most environmental releases.\u201d (my emphasis) Fairlie points out a further problem with the Hiroshima data: its failure to take into account the dangers of internal radiation. As Sawada Shoji, emeritus professor of physics at Nagoya University and a Hiroshima survivor, confirms, the Hiroshima studies never looked at fallout: they looked at \u201cgamma rays and neutrons emitted within a minute of the explosion,\u201d but did not consider the effects of residual radiation over time, effects from inhalation or ingestion that \u201care more severe.\u201d The distinction between external and internal radiation is important to keep clear. A bomb blast gives off radiation in the form of high-energy subatomic particles and materials that remain as fallout in the form of radioactive elements such as strontium 90 and cesium. \u00a0Most of this is likely to remain on the ground, where it will radiate the body from without, but some may be ingested or inhaled and lodge in a lung or other organ, where it will continue to emit radioactivity at close range. Nuclear proponents cite background radiation to argue that low-dose radiation is relatively harmless, asserting (as Monbiot argued against Caldicott) that we\u2019re daily exposed to background radiation and survive. But this argument misses the fact that background radiation is from an external source and so is a more finite exposure than radioactive substances ingested or inhaled, which go on irradiating tissues, \u201cgiving very high doses to small volumes of cells,\u201d as Helen Caldicott says. (Caldicott explains, when physicists talk about \u201cpermissible doses,\u201d \u201c[t]hey consistently ignore internal emitters \u2014 radioactive elements from nuclear power plants or weapons tests that are ingested or inhaled into the body,\u2026 They focus instead on generally less harmful external radiation from sources outside the body.\u201d )<\/p>\n The KiKK study \u201ccommands attention,\u201d Fairlie insists. But it got no mention in mainstream media in the U.S. or the U.K.\u2014until The Guardian, <\/em>in early May of 2011, gave this spin to it: \u201cPlants have been cleared of causing childhood cancers,\u201d declared the headline. \u201cGovernment\u2019s advisory committee says it is time to look elsewhere for causes of leukaemia clusters.\u201d What \u201celsewhere,\u201d what other causes are cited for cancer clusters in the vicinity of reactors? Infection, a virus, a mosquito, socioeconomics, chance say the experts quoted in The Guardian.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>The U.K. government is now moving ahead with plans to build eight new reactors.<\/p>\n When new evidence comes into conflict with old models, reinvoke the old models rather than looking at the new evidence. The world is flat. So is it flat in Chernobyl.<\/p>\n *******<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident at Chernobyl,\u201d announced the New York Times, a few days after the Fukushima reactors began to destabilize (Denise Grady, \u201cPrecautions should limit health problems from nuclear plant\u2019s radiation,\u201d March 15, 2011) The Times bases this claim on a 2005 World Health Organization (WHO) study that found \u201cminimal health effects\u201d and estimated that only 4000 deaths \u201cwill probably be attributable to the accident ultimately.\u201d The worst effect of the accident is a \u201cparalyzing fatalism,\u201d an expert tells the Times, which leads people to \u201cdrug and alcohol use, and unprotected sex and unemployment\u201d (Elisabeth Rosenthal, \u201cExperts find reduced effects of Chernobyl,\u201dSept 6, 2005). \u00a0\u201cRadiophobia,\u201d this is called\u2014an attitude problem.<\/p>\n The Times did not mention that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is mandated with the promotion of nuclear energy, has an agreement with WHO that gives it final say over what it reports, an entangling alliance much decried by independent scientists. Nor did it mention two other studies that came out in 2006, \u201cThe Other Report on Chernobyl\u201d and \u201cThe Chernobyl Catastrophe\u201d by Greenpeace, both of which gave much higher casualty estimates than the widely publicized WHO\/IAEA report. Nor did it breathe a word about Chernobyl:<\/em>\u00a0Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, <\/em>by Alexey Yablokov et al., translated into English and published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009\u2014which estimates casualties at 985,000, orders of magnitude more than the WHO\/IAEA report.<\/p>\n Yablokov et al. draw on \u201cdata generated by many thousands of scientists, doctors, and other experts who directly observed the suffering of millions affected by radioactive fallout in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia,\u201d and incorporate more than 5000 studies, mostly in Slavic languages (compared with the 350 mentioned in the 2005 report, most of which were in English). The authors are impeccably credentialed: Dr. Alexey Yablokov was environmental advisor to Yeltsin and Gorbachev; Dr. Vassily Nesterenko was former director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy in Belarus. Nesterenko, together with Andrei Sakharov, founded the independent Belarusian Institute of Radiation Safety BELRAD, which studies \u2013as well as treats<\/em>\u2014the Chernobyl children. When he died in 2008 as a result of radiation exposure incurred flying over the burning reactor (which gave us the only measurement of radionuclides released by the accident), his son Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, third author of this study, took over as director and senior scientist at BELRAD. Dr. Janette Sherman, consulting editor, is a physician and toxicologist.<\/p>\n Comparing contaminated areas of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia with the so-called \u201cclean areas,\u201d the studies document significant increases in morbidity and mortality in contaminated regions: not only more cancer, especially thyroid cancer, but a wide array of noncancer effects \u2014 ulcers, chronic pulmonary diseases, diabetes mellitus, eye problems, severe mental retardation in children, and a higher incidence and greater severity of infectious and viral diseases. Every system in the body is adversely affected: cardiovascular, reproductive, neurological, hormonal, respiratory, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, and immune systems. The children are not thriving: \u00a0\u201cPrior to 1985 more than 80% of children in the Chernobyl territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia were healthy; today fewer than 20% are well.\u201d In animals, too, there are \u201csignificant increases in morbidity and mortality\u2026 increased occurrence of tumor and immunodeficiencies, decreased life expectancy, early aging, changes in blood and the circulatory system, malformations.\u201d<\/p>\n Parallels between Chernobyl and Hiroshima are striking: data collection was delayed, information withheld, reports of on-the-spot observers were discounted, independent scientists were denied access \u201cThe USSR authorities officially forbade doctors from connecting diseases with radiation and, like the Japanese experience, all data were classified.\u201d With the \u201cliquidators,\u201d as they\u2019re called, the 830,000 men and women conscripted from all over the Soviet Union to put out the fire, deactivate the reactor, and clean up the sites, \u201cIt was officially forbidden to associate the diseases they were suffering from with radiation.\u201d \u201cThe official secrecy that the USSR imposed on Chernobyl\u2019s public health data the first days after the meltdown\u2026 continued for more than three years,\u201d during which time \u201csecrecy was the norm not only in the USSR, but in other countries as well.\u201d<\/p>\n But the parallels are political, not biological, for the Hiroshima data have proven to be an \u201coutdated\u201d and useless model, as Stewart said, for predicting health effects from low-dose, chronic radiation exposure over time. The Hiroshima studies find little genetic damage in the survivors, yet Yablokov et al. document that \u201cWherever there was Chernobyl radioactive contamination, there was an increase in the number of children with hereditary anomalies and congenital malformations. These included previously rare multiple structural impairments of the limbs, head, and body,\u201d devastating birth defects, especially in the children of the liquidators. The correlation with radioactive exposure is so pronounced as to be \u201cno longer an assumption, but\u2026proven,\u201d write the authors. As in humans, so in every species studied, \u201cgene pools of living creatures are actively transforming, with unpredictable consequences\u201d: \u201cIt appears that [Chernobyl\u2019s irradiation] has awakened genes that have been silent over a long evolutionary time.\u201d The damage will play out for generations \u2014 \u201cat least seven generations.\u201d<\/p>\n Such findings have provided radiation experts a chance to reexamine their hypotheses and theories about radiation effects, observes Mikhail Malko, a researcher at the Joint Institute of Power and Nuclear Research in Belarus. But rather than using new evidence to enlarge their understanding, experts have found ways of dismissing these studies as \u201cunscientific\u201d: they are said to be observational rather than properly controlled, \u201cEastern European\u201d and not up to Western scientific protocols, and inconsistent with the hallowed Hiroshima data. Radiation scientists denied that the thyroid cancer that increased exponentially after the accident could be a consequence of radiation: it manifested in only three years, whereas it had taken ten years to appear in Hiroshima, and it took a more aggressive form. They explained the increase in terms of improved screening, iodine substances used to treat the children, or pesticides\u2014even though epidemiological studies kept turning up a link with radiation contamination. Finally in 2005, a case-control study headed by Elisabeth Cardis confirmed a dose-response relationship between radiation and thyroid cancer in children in terms that had to be acknowledged.<\/p>\n Chernobyl does not usually provide the kind of neat laboratory conditions that allow such precise dose-response calculations. But<\/em> neither did Hiroshima<\/em>, where radiation exposure was guesstimated years after the fact and recalculated several times according to new findings. Yet scientists have accepted the Hiroshima uncertainties \u2013all too readily\u2014 and have allowed this data to shape policy affecting all life on this planet, while citing the less-than-ideal conditions for studying Chernobyl as an excuse to ignore or discredit these findings, dismissing them according to a model more questionable than the data they\u2019re discounting. The Chernobyl effects demonstrate that \u201cEven the smallest excess of radiation over that of natural background will statistically\u2026affect the health of exposed individuals or their descendants, sooner or later.\u201d But as with Stewart\u2019s findings about fetal x-rays and nuclear workers, as with the studies that turn up cancer clusters around reactors, so with Chernobyl \u2014 it can\u2019t be radiation that\u2019s producing these effects because the Hiroshima studies say it can\u2019t. As independent scientist Rudi Nussbaum points out, the \u201cdissonance between evidence and existing assumptions about\u2026 radiation risk,\u201d the gap between new information and the \u201cwidely adopted presuppositions about radiation health effects,\u201d has become insupportable.<\/p>\n Chernobyl is a better predictor of the Fukushima consequences than Hiroshima, but we wouldn\u2019t know that from mainstream media. Perhaps we would rather not know that 57% of Chernobyl contamination went outside the former USSR; that people as far away as Oregon were warned not to drink rainwater \u201cfor some time\u201d; that thyroid cancer doubled in Connecticut in the six years following the accident; that 369 farms in Great Britain remained contaminated 23 years after the catastrophe; that the German government compensates hunters for wild boar meat too contaminated to be eaten \u2013 and it paid four times more<\/em> in compensation in 2009 than in 2007. Perhaps we\u2019d rather not consider the possibility that \u201cthe Chernobyl cancer toll is one of the soundest reasons for the \u2018cancer epidemic\u2019 that has been afflicting humankind since the end of the 20th<\/sup> century.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis information must be made available to the world,\u201d write Yablokov et al. But their book has met \u201cmostly with silence,\u201d as he said in a press conference in Washington DC, March 15, 2011. The silence of mainstream media has stonewalled information about Chernobyl\u2019s health effects as effectively as the Soviets\u2019 blackout concealed the accident itself, and as the Allies\u2019 censorship hid the health effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.<\/p>\n *******<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to quash any stories trying to compare this [Fukushima] to Chernobyl,\u201d \u201cotherwise it could have adverse consequences on the market.\u201d \u201c\u2019This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally\u2026We really need to show the safety of nuclear,\u201d that \u201cit\u2019s not as bad as it looks.\u201d These statements were made in a few of the more than 80 emails which the Guardian<\/em> got access to, which were not intended for the public eye. \u201cBritish government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami,\u201d reports the Guardian<\/em>, \u201cto try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n Comparisons with Chernobyl have been conspicuously absent from mainstream media, even when Fukushima was upgraded, in early June, to a level on a par with Chernobyl, level 7, the highest. Even when Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear engineer turned whistleblower who has been monitoring Fukushima from the start, asserted that this accident may actually be more<\/em> dire than Chernobyl. Gundersen, an informed, level-headed commentator who inspires confidence, points out that there are four damaged reactors leaking into the atmosphere, ocean, and ground in an area more populated than the Ukraine: \u201cYou probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores\u2026that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl.\u201d (Fairewinds, June 16, <\/sup>2011). But apart from the damage control piece it published March 15 (cited above) and Helen Caldicott\u2019s passing reference to \u201cresearch by scientists in Eastern Europe\u201d (op-ed, \u201cAfter Fukushima: Enough is enough,\u201d December 2)\u2014the Times has barely mentioned Chernobyl (and even Caldicott did not mention the Yablokov study by name). What Chernobyl has wrought, which has been documented so clearly by Yablokov et al., is simply too dangerous to give press to, undercutting as it does the nuclear industry\u2019s claims to safety and viability.<\/p>\n *******<\/p>\n The New York Times has done good reporting on Japanese blunders and corruption. It has described the way plant operators and government officials minimized the severity of the meltdown, the corporate and government cover-ups and irresponsibility (Norimitsu Onishi and Martin Fackler, \u201cJapan held nuclear data, leaving evacuees in peril,\u201d August 8, 2011). It has pointed out complicity between industry and regulators (Norimitsu Onishi and Ken Belson, \u201cCulture of Complicity Tied to Stricken Nuclear Plant,\u201d April 27, 2011). It has done pieces on citizens\u2019 opposition (Onishi and Fackler, \u201cJapan ignored or long hid nuclear risks,\u201d May 17, 2011; Ken Belson, \u201cTwo voices are heard after years of futility\u201d, August 19, 2011) and on grass-roots initiatives to gather data where bureaucrats failed (Hiroko Tabuchi, \u201cCitizens\u2019 testing finds 20 radioactive hot spots around Tokyo,\u201d Aug 1, 2011). Tabuchi even takes a swipe at the \u201ctameness of Japanese mainstream media,\u201d which is commendable, though her statement is a model of \u201ctameness\u201d compared to Nicola Liscutin\u2019s denunciation of Japanese mass media as \u201clittle more than the mouthpiece of the government and TEPCO.\u201d Human interest stories abound in the Times, as in other major media, stories of workers sent in to quiet the reactors, of people living in the vicinity of the reactors. In one such piece, \u201cLife in limbo for Japanese near damage nuclear plant,\u201d May 2, 2011, Fackler and Matthew Wald refer to \u201ca lack of hard data about the health effects of lower radiation doses delivered over extended periods\u201d \u2013 a \u201clack\u201d that\u2019s assured, as we\u2019ve seen, by the stonewalling of evidence endemic in the media.<\/p>\n As laudable as some of the Times coverage has been, what it targets is the ineptitude and corruption of the Japanese, what happened over there<\/em> as opposed to what goes on here, where our own dirty linen remains unwashed, as it were, and out of sight. How much easier to criticize the lax regulatory mechanisms and lack of transparency of the Japanese than to shine a light on ourselves, on the insidious but largely invisible working of the nuclear lobby and lobbyists in this country, on the complicity of our own government and media with the nuclear industry.<\/p>\n A fascinating expose by Norimitsu Onishi, \u201cSafety myth left Japan ripe for nuclear crisis\u201d (June 25, 2011), invites comment along these lines. Onishi investigates the \u201celaborate advertising campaigns\u201d led by Tepco and the Ministry of Economy to convince the public of the safety of nuclear power. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to rally support: \u201cOver several decades, Japan\u2019s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions.\u201d In one of these, \u201cAlice discovers the wonders of nuclear power. The Caterpillar reassures Alice about radiation and the Cheshire Cat helps her learn about the energy source\u201d.<\/p>\n Lest we feel smug, recall the promotion of \u201cthe friendly atom\u201d by Walt Disney\u2019s book and film, Our Friend the Atom,<\/em> read and viewed by millions of schoolchildren (when they weren\u2019t doing \u201cduck and cover\u201d drills).<\/p>\n What Onishi describes as happening in Japan happened in the U.S. as well\u2014 perhaps Onishi means to evoke such resonances\u2014 where a powerful propaganda campaign was launched, with hundreds of millions of dollars behind it, to promote \u201cAtoms for Peace,\u201d the new energy source \u201ctoo cheap to meter\u201d (though there was nothing \u201ccheap\u201d about it: it required enormous government subsidies, and still does). \u00a0This propaganda machine is described in the 1982 study Nukespeak: The Selling of Nuclear Technology in America<\/em>: \u201cBeginning in the mid-1950s, the AEC conducted a huge public relations operation to promote the vision of Atoms for Peace,\u201d using \u201ca wide range of PR techniques, including films, brochures, TV, radio, nuclear science fairs, public speakers, traveling exhibits, and classroom demonstrations\u201d (traveling AEC exhibits with names like \u201cPower Unlimited,\u201d \u201cFallout in Perspective,\u201d and \u201cThe Useful Atom\u201d).<\/p>\n \u201cMillions of kits of atomic energy information literature were distributed to elementary, high school, and college students.\u201d The public relations departments of reactor manufacturers such as Westinghouse and General Electric were also mobilized to prepare communities for nuclear facilities coming soon to their neighborhoods and to prime the general population to welcome the new technology. The connection with mainstream media could hardly be more direct, since \u201cWestinghouse owned CBS for many years, and General Electric, NBC,\u201d as Karl Grossman points out. This same PR apparatus has been busy, in recent decades, conjuring the \u201cnuclear renaissance\u201d from the ashes of Chernobyl, selling nuclear power as \u201cclean, green, and safe.\u201d<\/p>\n The Times coverage of Fukushima has raised hopes in some quarters that this current disaster may have opened a space for public debate in mainstream media about nuclear power. But how real is this debate, when so many fundamental issues remain hidden? How open a discussion can this be, when Chernobyl and the German reactor study go unmentioned, when we have to turn to alternative media to learn that the Yablokov study even exists\u2014or to learn that, as Alexander Cockburn reports, Obama was the recipient of generous campaign contributions from the nuclear industry (which may cast some light on his enthusiastic support of nuclear power)? How open a discussion is this, when the ABCC\/RERF radiation risk assessments that enable the industry to exist remain unaddressed? A serious consideration of the Yablokov study and the German reactor study would reveal them to be \u201cskewed\u201d and useless, as we\u2019ve seen; but rather than go this route, the Times calls on RERF experts to do damage control for the industry. So RERF reassurances about radiation risk remain unchallenged and in place as the invisible buttressing of the nuclear industry, as the basis of radiation safety standards throughout the world.<\/p>\n Contrast the response of U.S. media to the response of the German press: \u201cFukushima marks the end of the nuclear era\u201d (Spiegel, March 14, 2011); \u201cGermany can no longer pretend nuclear power is safe\u2026. it is over. Done. Finished.\u201d (March 14, 2011) \u00a0To Spiegel, Fukushima is a warning that cries out for an end to nuclear power; to the Times, Fukushima is a warning that we should build our reactors more efficiently and regulate them more carefully, rather than cease building them at all (Editorial, \u201cIn the wake of Fukushima,\u201d July 23, 2011). In the months after Fukushima, \u201cSpiegel\u2019s most popular online feature as the drama unfolded was an evolving digital map of the \u2018radiation plume,\u2019\u201d observes Ralph Martin; \u201cthe German electorate made nuclear power their top concern\u2014they made Fukushima theirs,\u201d whereas \u201cthe reaction of American media\u2026[was to] regard the events as yet another story, without any larger social ramifications,\u201d without much relevance to ourselves. And so nuclear power marches on: \u201cAlabama nuclear reactor, partly built, to be finished,\u201d Matthew Wald, August 19, 2011; \u201cTwo utilities win approval for nuclear power plants,\u201d Matthew Wald, December 23, 2011 (neither of these is a particularly long or noticeable article, and neither is front page).<\/p>\n There has been precious little mention in U.S. mainstream media of the plume Spiegel was tracing, except to whisk it away as presenting \u201cno health hazard\u201d (Broad, cited above), though the worldwide fallout from Fukushima has occasioned much discussion on the Web. Gundersen cites evidence that the early releases, which were revealed to be more than double what we were initially informed, contained \u201chot particles\u201d of cesium, strontium, uranium, plutonium, cobalt 60 that have turned up in automobile engine filters, and according to what\u2019s been detected in air filters, a person in Tokyo was breathing about ten hot particles a day through the month of April. A person in Seattle was breathing about five, that same month.<\/p>\n *******<\/p>\n Not to worry: \u201cThe effects of radiation do not come to people that are happy and laughing. They come to people that are weak-spirited, that brood and fret.\u201d So says Dr. Yamashita Shunichi, who has been assigned to head the official study of radiation health effects in the Fukushima population. Yamashita was sent by the Japanese government from Nagasaki University, where he was part of the RERF studies, revered for their long experience with the A-Bomb survivors. Mandated with addressing the concerns of the citizens and correcting their misconceptions, Yamashita rallies the population with stirring words: \u201cThe name Fukushima will be widely known throughout the world\u2026This is great! Fukushima has beaten Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From now on, Fukushima will become the world number 1 name. A crisis is an opportunity. This is the biggest opportunity. Hey, Fukushima, you\u2019ve become famous without any efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re in good hands.<\/p>\n REFERENCES:<\/strong><\/p>\n Chernobyl released hundreds of times the radioactivity<\/p>\n Yablokov, Alexey et al. 2009. Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment<\/em>. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1181, link<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe Greening of Nuclear Power,\u201d NYT editorial, May 13, 2006<\/p>\n 2010-2011 World Nuclear Industry Status Report, Worldwatch Institute, link<\/a><\/p>\n British journalist George Monbiot \u201cPrescription for Survival: A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy,\u201d Amy Goodman, March 30, 2011, Links 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>,\u00a03<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAh, but the Americans\u2026.\u201d\u00a0Daniel Land, \u201cA reporter at large,\u201d New Yorker<\/em>, June 8, 1946, quotes Tzuzuki; in Robert J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial,<\/em> 1995, 53<\/p>\n no further physiological effects due to radiation were expected.\u00a0Rosalie Bertell, No Immediate Danger,<\/em> 143-4; also, Shoji Sawada, \u201cCover-up of the effects of internal exposure by residual radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,\u201d Medicine, Conflict and Survival,<\/em> 2007, 23, 1, 58-74, p. 61: \u201cBrigadier General T. Farrel, of the research commission of the Manhattan Project\u2026 said that at that time [Sept 1945] in Hiroshima and Nagasaki all those fatally ill had already died and no one was suffering from atomic radiation.\u201d His exact words: \u201cIn Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at present, the beginning of September [1945], anyone liable to die has already died and no one is suffering from atomic radiation.\u201d<\/p>\n Tokyo Radio Catherine Caulfield, Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age<\/em>, U of Chicago Press, 1989, 62-3<\/p>\n not \u201can inhumane weapon\u201d Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial<\/em>, Avon, 1995, 4-5; Monica Braw, The Atomic Bomb Suppressed<\/em>, 119-23<\/p>\n Wilfred Burchett, Shadows of Hiroshima<\/em>, London, 1983; also Sue Rabbit Roff, Hotspots:<\/em>\u00a0The Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki<\/em>, Cassell, 1995, 271, and Lifton and Mitchell, 46-9<\/p>\n \u201cNo Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin\u201d Caulfield, 62-4<\/p>\n Taft, \u201cmistaken impression\u201d Brian Jacobs, \u201cThe politics of radiation: When public health and the nuclear industry collide,\u201d Greenpeace<\/em>, July-Aug 1986,7<\/p>\n A pamphlet issued by the AEC Caulfield, 120<\/p>\n \u201csome felt too closely\u201d Susan Lindee Suffering Made Real:<\/em>\u00a0American Science and the Survivors of Hiroshima<\/em> U of Chicago Press, 1994, 107<\/p>\n Beverly Ann Deepe Keever News Zero:<\/em>\u00a0The New York Times and the Bomb<\/em>, Common Courage Press, 2004, p. 16; 1-3<\/p>\n Death rate returned to normal Shoji Sawada, \u201cCover-up of the effects of internal exposure by residual radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,\u201d Medicine, Conflict and Survival,<\/em> Jan-March 2007, 23, 1, 58-74<\/p>\n \u201cNonsense\u2026 rubbish!\u201d Stewart\u2019s quotes are from my biography of her. Gayle Greene, The Woman Who Knew Too Much:<\/em>\u00a0Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation<\/em>, 1999, 143<\/p>\n numerous radiation effects besides cancer:\u00a0Shimizu, Y, et al. 1992. Studies of the morality of A-bomb survivors. Radiat Res<\/em> 130: 249-266. 1574582<\/p>\n U.S. government in 1999 granted compensation to workers, link<\/a><\/p>\n a \u201cmass of evidence difficult to contradict.\u201d Ian Fairlie, \u201cNew evidence of childhood leukeaemias near nuclear power stations,\u201d Medicine, Conflict and Survival<\/em>, 24, 3, July-Sept 2008, 219-227. A fuller discussion of cancer clusters and the studies that dismiss them is in chapter 13 of The Woman Who Knew Too Much.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201ctoo low\u201d to produce cancer effect Wing, S., D. Richardson, A.M. Stewart. \u201cThe relevance of occupational epidemiology to radiation protection standards,\u201d New Solutions<\/em>, 1999, 9, 2: 133-51<\/p>\n The investigators anticipated \u201cno effect\u2026\u201d Claudia Spix et al, \u201cCase-control study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany 1980-2003,\u201d European J of Cancer<\/em> 44, 2008, 275-84<\/p>\n Inexplicable by \u201cthe present status of radiobiological and epidemiological knowledge\u201d\u00a0BfS. Unanimous statement by the expert group commissioned by the Bundesamt fur Strahlenschutz<\/em> on the KiKK Study. German Federal Office for Radiation Protection. Berlin, Germany; 2007.\u00a0Link<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cunsatisfactory dataset\u201d Ian Fairlie, \u201cThe risks of nuclear energy are not exaggerated,\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, Jan 20, 2010, link<\/a><\/p>\n \u201crisk estimates from an instantaneous external blast\u201d Fairlie, \u201cChildhood cancer near German nuclear power stations,\u201d J of Environ Science and Health<\/em> Part C, 28:1-21, 2010, 1-21; also Rudi Nussbaum, \u201cChildhood leukemia and cancers near German nuclear reactors,\u201d Int J Occup Environ Health,<\/em> 2009, 15, 318-23<\/p>\n Shoji Sawada, \u201cCover-up of the effects of internal exposure by residual radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,\u201d Medicine, Conflict and Survival,<\/em> Jan-March 2007, 23, 1, 58-74<\/p>\n Caldicott emphasizes this crucial distinction \u201cUnsafe at Any Dose,\u201d Op Ed, New York Times, April 30, 2011<\/p>\n KiKK \u201c commands attention\u201d Ian Fairlie, \u201cInfant leukaemias near nuclear power stations,\u201d CND Briefing, Jan 2010<\/p>\n \u201cPlants have been cleared of causing childhood cancers\u201d Sarah Bosley, \u201cUK nuclear power plants cleared of causing leukemia: Government\u2019s advisory committee says it is time to look elsewhere for causes of leukemia clusters,\u201d Guardian<\/em>, May 6, 2011<\/p>\n entangling alliance much decried by independent scientists.\u00a0A quick WEB search turns this up: Link 1<\/a>;\u00a0link 2<\/a>. Also, Helen Caldicott, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer<\/em>, New Press, 2007; Rudi Nussbaum, \u201cClinging to the nuclear option,\u201d Counterpunch<\/em>, May 30 2011<\/p>\n two other studies that came out in 2006 The Other Report on Chernobyl,<\/em> Ian Fairlie and David Sumner, 2006. MEP Greens\/EFA, Berlin, Brussels, Kiev; and Greenpeace. 2006. The Chernobyl Catastrophe: Consequences on Human Health, <\/em>Amsterdam, the Netherlands, link<\/a><\/p>\n Yablokov, Alexey et al. 2009. Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment<\/em>. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1181, link<\/a><\/p>\n Mikhail Malko MV. 1998 \u201cThe Chernobyl accident: The Crisis in the International Radiation Community,\u201d Research Activities about the Radiobiological Consequences of the Chernobyl NPT Accident<\/em> KURR-KR-21, link<\/a><\/p>\n 2005 case-control study of thyroid cancer\u00a0Elisabeth Cardis et al. 2005. \u201cRisk of thyroid cancer after exposure to 131-I in childhood,\u201d J Natl Cancer Inst<\/em> 97: 724-734<\/p>\n Rudi Nussbaum, Childhood malignancies near German nuclear reactors. Int J Occup Environ Health<\/em>, 2009, (15) 3: 318-23; also, Ian Fairlie, \u201cChildhood cancer near German nuclear power stations,\u201d J of Environ Science and Health<\/em> Part C, 28:1-21, 2010, 1-21.<\/p>\n German government and wild boars Charles Hawley, \u201cA quarter century after Chernobyl: Radioactive boar on the rise in Germany,\u201d Der Spiegel, July 30, 2010, link<\/a><\/p>\n Yablokov, press conference, links 1<\/a>, 2<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cBritish government officials approached nuclear companies\u201d Rob Edwards, \u201cRevealed: British government\u2019s plan to play down Fukushima,\u201d Guardian, June 30, 2011. Link<\/a>\u00a0(\u201cRead the emails here\u201d has been blocked.) Also, John Vidal, \u201cFukushima spin was Orwellian,\u201d Guardian, July 11, 2011, link<\/a><\/p>\n Nicola Liscutin\u2019s denunciation of Japanese mass media \u201cNew Media and anti-nuclear activism in Japan, Asia-Pacific Journal<\/em>, Nov 21, 2011<\/p>\n This propaganda campaign is described\u00a0Stephen Hilgartner, Richard Bell, Rory O\u2019Connor, Nukespeak:The Selling of Nuclear Technology in America, <\/em>Sierra Club Books, 1982, pp.74-6<\/p>\n as Karl Grossman points out \u201cDownplaying deadly dangers in Japan and at home, after Fukushima, media still buying media spin,\u201d Extra<\/em>! The Magazine of FAIR, the Media Watch Group, May 2011; Grossman\u2019s articles on media spin are well worth reading. Karlgrossman.blogspot.com<\/p>\n as Alexander Cockburn reports \u201cIn the midst of Fukushima,\u201d Counterpunch<\/em>, March 18-20, 2011<\/p>\n Ralph Martin, \u201cWhen Japan sneezes, Germany catches a cold,\u201d The European,<\/em>\u00a0April 29, 2011, link<\/a><\/p>\n Gundersen, \u201cScientist Marco Kaltofen presents data confirming hot particles, Fairwinds, Oct 31, 2011, link<\/a><\/p>\n Dr. Yamashita Shunichi, Democracy Now, June 10, 2011, link<\/a><\/p>\n from a lecture, Fukushima City, March 21, Links\u00a01<\/a>,\u00a02<\/a><\/p>\n _____________________<\/p>\n Gayle Greene is Professor of English at Scripps College. She is the author of\u00a0The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation, a biography of pioneering British radiation epidemiologist and anti-nuclear guru Alice Stewart, and \u201cAlice Stewart and Richard Doll: Reputation and the Shaping of Scientific \u2018Truth\u2019,\u201d Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, autumn 2011, 504-31. Her work has been published in scholarly journals such as Signs,\u00a0Contemporary Literature, and\u00a0Renaissance Drama, and in popular venues such as\u00a0Ms\u00a0Magazine,\u00a0The Nation,\u00a0The Women’s Review of Books, and\u00a0In These Times. gaylegreene@earthlink.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n