3 Mar 2014 – <\/i>With the third anniversary of the start of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe coming next week, the attempted Giant Lie about the disaster continues\u2014a suppression of information, an effort at dishonesty of historical dimensions.<\/p>\n
It involves international entities, especially the International Atomic Energy Agency, national governmental bodies\u2014led in Japan by its current prime minister, the powerful nuclear industry and a \u201cnuclear establishment\u201d of scientists and others with a vested interest in atomic energy.<\/p>\n
Deception was integral to the push for nuclear power from its start. Indeed, I opened my first book on nuclear technology, Cover Up: What You <\/i>Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, <\/i>with: \u00a0\u201cYou have not been informed about nuclear power. You have not been told. And that has been done on purpose. Keeping the public in the dark was deemed necessary by the promoters of nuclear power if it was to succeed. Those in government, science and private industry who have been pushing nuclear power realized that if people were given the facts, if they knew the consequences of nuclear power, they would not stand for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Published in 1980, the book led to my giving many presentations on nuclear power at which I\u2019ve often heard the comment that only when catastrophic nuclear accidents happened would people fully realize the deadliness of atomic energy.<\/p>\n
Well, massive nuclear accidents have occurred\u2014the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the Fukushima catastrophe that began on March 11, 2011 and is ongoing with large discharges of radioactive poisons continuing to be discharged into the environment.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the posture of the nuclear promoters is denial\u2014insisting the impacts of the Fukushima catastrophe are essentially non-existent. A massive nuclear accident has occurred and they would make believe it hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cFukushima is an eerie replay of the denial and controversy that began with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,\u201d wrote Yale University Professor Emeritus Charles Perrow<\/a> in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists <\/i>last year. \u201cThis is the same nuclear denial that also greeted nuclear bomb tests, plutonium plant disasters at Windscale in northern England and Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains, and the nuclear power plant accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States and Chernobyl in what is now Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n The difference with Fukushima is the scale of disaster. With Fukushima were multiple meltdowns at the six-nuclear plant site. There\u2019s been continuing pollution of a major part of Japan, with radioactivity going into the air, carried by the winds to fall out around the world, and gigantic amounts of radioactivity going into the Pacific Ocean moving with the currents and carried by marine life that ingests the nuclear toxins.<\/p>\n Leading the Fukushima cover-up globally is the International Atomic Energy Agency, formed by the United Nations in 1957 with the mission<\/a> to \u201cseek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the consequences of the Fukushima disaster, \u201cTo date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the accident,\u201d declared the IAEA in 2011<\/a>, a claim it holds to today.<\/p>\n Working with the IAEA is the World Health Organization. WHO was captured on issues of radioactivity and nuclear power early on by IAEA. In 1959, the IAEA and WHO, also established by the UN, entered into an agreement<\/a>\u2014that continues to this day\u2014providing that IAEA and WHO \u201cact in close co-operation with each other\u201d and \u201cwhenever either organization proposes to initiate a program or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n The IAEA-WHO deal has meant that \u201cWHO cannot undertake any research, cannot disseminate any information, cannot come to the assistance of any population without the prior approval of the IAEA\u2026WHO, in practice, in reality, is subservient to the IAEA within the United Nations family,\u201d explained Alison Katz who for 18 years worked for WHO, on Libbe HaLevy\u2019s \u201cNuclear Hotseat\u201d podcast last year.<\/p>\n On nuclear issues \u201cthere has been a very high level, institutional and international cover-up which includes governments, national authorities, but also, regrettably the World Health Organization,\u201d said Katz <\/a>on the program titled, \u201cThe WHO\/IAEA\u2014Unholy Alliance and Its Lies About Int\u2019l Nuclear Health Stats.\u201d<\/p>\n Katz is now with an organization called IndependentWHO which works for \u201cthe complete independence of the WHO from the nuclear lobby and in particular from its mouthpiece which is the International Atomic Energy Agency. We are demanding that independence,\u201d she said, \u201cso that the WHO may fulfill its constitutional mandate in the area of radiation and health.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are absolutely convinced,\u201d said Katz on \u201cNuclear Hotseat,\u201d \u201cthat if the health and environmental consequences of all nuclear activities were known to the public, the debate about nuclear power would end tomorrow. In fact, the public would probably exclude it immediately as an energy option.\u201d<\/p>\n WHO last year issued a report <\/a>on the impacts of the Fukushima disaster claiming that \u201cfor the general population inside and outside of Japan, the predicted risks are low and no observable increases in cancer rates above baseline rates are anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n Then there is the new prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, who last year insisted<\/a> before\u00a0the International Olympic Committee as he successfully pushed to have the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo (180 miles from Fukushima): \u201cThere are no health-related problems until now, nor will there be in the future, I make the statement to you in the most emphatic and unequivocal way.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0Abe has been driving hard for a restart of Japan\u2019s 54 nuclear power plants, all shut down in the wake of the Fukushima catastrophe.<\/p>\n His is a totally different view than that of his predecessor, Naoto Kan, prime minister when the disaster began. Kan told a conference in New York City last year of how he had been a supporter of nuclear power but after the Fukushima accident \u201cI changed my thinking 180-degrees, completely.\u201d He declared that at one point it looked like an \u201carea that included Tokyo\u201d and populated by 50 million people might have to be evacuated. \u201cWe do have accidents such as an airplane crash and so on,\u201d Kan said, \u201cbut no other accident or disaster\u201d other than a nuclear plant disaster can \u201caffect 50 million people\u2026 no other accident could cause such a tragedy.\u201d Moreover, said Kan, \u201cwithout nuclear power plants we can absolutely provide the energy to meet our demands.\u201d Japan since the accident began has tripled its use of solar energy, he said, and pointed to Germany as a model with its post-Fukushima commitment to shutting down all its nuclear power plants and having \u201call its power supplied by renewable power\u201d by 2050. The entire world could do this<\/a>, said Kan. \u201cIf humanity really would work together\u2026 we could generate all our energy through renewable energy.\u201d<\/p>\n A major factor in Abe\u2019s stance is Japan having become a global player in the nuclear industry. General Electric (the manufacturer of the Fukushima plants) and Westinghouse have been the Coke and Pepsi of nuclear power plants worldwide, historically building or designing 80 percent of them. In 2006, Toshiba bought Westinghouse\u2019s nuclear division and Hitachi entered into a partnership with GE in its nuclear division. Thus the two major nuclear power plant manufacturers worldwide are now Japanese brands. Abe has been busy traveling the world seeking to peddle Toshiba-Westinghouse and Hitachi-GE nuclear plants to try to lift Japan\u2019s depressed economy.As for the nuclear industry, the \u201cFukushima accident has caused no deaths,\u201d declares the World Nuclear Association in its statement<\/a> \u201cSafety of Nuclear Power Reactors\u2026Updated October 2013.\u201d \u00a0 The group, \u201crepresenting the people and organizations of the global nuclear profession,\u201d adds: \u201cThe Fukushima accident resulted in some radiation exposure of workers at the plant, but not such as to threaten their health.\u201d<\/p>\n What will the consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster be?<\/p>\n It is impossible to know exactly now. But considering the gargantuan amount of radioactive poisons that have been discharged and what will continue to be released, the impacts will inevitably be great. The claim of there being no consequences to life and the prediction that there won\u2019t be in the future from the Fukushima catastrophe is an outrageous falsehood.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because it is now widely understood that there is no \u201csafe\u201d level of radioactivity. Any amount can kill. The more radioactivity, the greater the impacts. As the National Council on Radiation Protection has declared<\/a>: \u201cEvery increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in the risk of cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n There was once the notion of there being a \u201cthreshold dose\u201d of radioactivity below which there would be no harm. That\u2019s because when nuclear technology began and\u00a0 people were exposed to radioactivity, they didn\u2019t promptly fall down dead. But as the years went by, it was realized that lower levels of radioactivity take time to result in cancer and other illnesses\u2014that there is a five-to-40-year \u201cincubation\u201d period<\/p>\n Projecting a death toll of more than a million from the radioactivity released from Fukushima is Dr. Chris Busby, scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk who has been a professor at a number of universities. . \u201cFukushima is still boiling radionuclides all over Japan,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cChernobyl went up in one go. So Fukushima is worse.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, a report by the Institute for Science in Society, based in the U.K., has concluded<\/a>: \u201cState-of-the-art analysis based on the most inclusive datasets available reveals that radioactive fallout from the Fukushima meltdown is at least as big as Chernobyl and more global in reach.\u201d<\/p>\n A death toll of up to 600,000 is estimated in a study<\/a> conducted for the Nordic Probabilistic Safety Assessment Group which is run by the nuclear utilities of Finland and Sweden.<\/p>\n Dr. Helen Caldicott, a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, told a symposium<\/a> on \u201cThe Medical Implications of Fukushima\u201d held last year in Japan: \u201cThe accident is enormous in its medical implications. It will induce an epidemic of cancer as people inhale the radioactive elements, eat radioactive vegetables, rice and meat, and drink radioactive milk and teas. As radiation from ocean contamination bio-accumulates up the food chain\u2026radioactive fish will be caught thousands of miles from Japanese shores. As they are consumed, they will continue the the cycle of contamination, proving that no matter where you are, all major nuclear accidents become local.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Caldicott, whose books on nuclear power include Nuclear Madness, <\/i>also stated: \u00a0\u201cThe Fukushima disaster is not over and will never end. The radioactive fallout which remains toxic for hundreds to thousands of years covers large swaths of Japan will never be \u2018cleaned up\u2019 and will contaminate food, humans and animals virtually forever.\u201d<\/p>\n Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, has said<\/a>: \u201cThe health impacts to the Japanese will begin to be felt in several years and out to 30 or 40 years from cancers. And I believe we\u2019re going to see as many as a million cancers over the next 30 years because of the Fukushima incident in Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n At Fukushima, \u201cWe have opened a door to hell that cannot be easily closed\u2014if ever,\u201d said Paul Gunter<\/a>, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at the U.S.-based group Beyond Nuclear last year.<\/p>\n Already an excessive number of cases of thyroid cancers<\/a> have appeared in Japan, an early sign of the impacts of radioactivity. \u00a0\u00a0 A study last year<\/a> by Joseph Mangano and Dr. Janette Sherman of the Radiation and Public Health Project, and Dr. Chris Busby, determined that radioactive iodine fall-out from Fukushima damaged the thyroid glands of children in California. \u00a0And the biggest wave of radioactivity in the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima is slated to hit the west coast of North America in the next several months.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, every bluefin tuna caught in the waters off California in a Stanford University study was found to be contaminated with cesium-137, a radioactive poison emitted on a large scale by Fukushima. The tuna migrate from off Japan to California waters. Daniel Madigan, who led the study, commented<\/a>: \u201cThe tuna packaged it up [the radiation] and brought it across the world\u2019s largest ocean. We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured.\u201d<\/p>\n There is, of course, the enormous damage to property. The Environmental Health Policy Institute of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in its summary<\/a> of the \u201cCosts and Consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster\u201d cites estimates of economic loss of between $250 billion and $500 billion. Some 800 square kilometers are \u201cexclusion\u201d zones of \u201cabandoned cities, towns, agricultural land, homes and properties\u201d and from which 159,128 people have been \u201cevicted,\u201d relates PSR senior scientist Steven Starr. Further, \u201cabout a month after the disaster, on April 19, 2011, Japan chose to dramatically increase its official \u2018safe\u2019 radiation exposure levels from 1 mSv [millisievert, a measure of radiation dose] to 20 mSv per year\u201420 times higher than the U.S. exposure limit. This allowed the Japanese government to downplay the dangers of the fallout and avoid evacuation of many badly contaminated areas.\u201d<\/p>\n And last year the Japanese government enacted a new State Secrets Act which can restrict\u2014with a penalty of 10 years in jail\u2014reporting on Fukushima. \u201c\u201dIt\u2019s the cancerous mark of a nuclear regime bound to control all knowledge of a lethal global catastrophe now ceaselessly escalating,\u201d wrote Harvey Wasserman<\/a>, co-author of Killing Our Own, <\/i>in a piece aptly titled \u201cJapan\u2019s New \u2018Fukushima Fascism\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the nation\u2019s Nuclear Regulatory Commission has over the past three years consistently refused to apply \u201clessons learned\u201d from Fukushima. Its chairman, Dr. Gregory Jaczko, was forced out<\/a> after an assault led by the nuclear industry after trying to press this issue and opposing an NRC licensing of two new nuclear plants in Georgia \u201cas if Fukushima had never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosalie Bertell, a Catholic nun, in her book No Immediate Danger, <\/i>wrote about the decades of suppression of the impacts of nuclear power and the reason behind it: \u201cShould the public discover the true health cost of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperative passively with their own death.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus the desperate drive\u2014in which a largely compliant mainstream media have been complicit\u2014to deny the Fukushima catastrophe, a disaster deeply affecting life on Earth.<\/p>\n _______________________________<\/p>\n Karl Grossman is the professor of journalism at the State University of New York\/College at Old Westbury. Karl is also the author of <\/i>Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and other books on nuclear technology, as well as hosting numerous TV programs on the subject including <\/i>Chernobyl: A Million Casualties, Three Mile Island Revisited and The Push to Revive Nuclear Power.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n