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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 6/17/11

The Fukushima Big Lie Flies High

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WHO, not too incidentally, has a formal arrangement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in place since both were established at the UN in the 1950s, to say nothing about issues involving radiation without clearing it with the IAEA, which was set up to specifically promote atomic energy. On Chernobyl, together in an initiative called the "Chernobyl Forum," they have claimed that "less than 50 deaths have been directly attributed" to that disaster and "a total of up to 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident." That nuclear Big Lie precedes the new nuclear deception involving the impacts of Fukushima.

As to background radiation, Dr. Jeffrey Patterson, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin's School of Public Health, says: "We do live with background radiation--but it does cause cancer." That's why there is concern, he notes, about radon gas being emitted in homes from a breakdown of uranium in some soils. "That's background [radiation] but it's not safe. There are absolutely no safe levels of radiation" and adding more radiation "adds to the health impacts."

"There has been a cover-up, a minimization of the effects of radioactivity since the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology," says Dr. Patterson. Meanwhile, with the Fukushima disaster, "large populations of people are being randomly exposed to radiation that they didn't ask for, they didn't agree to."

Dr. Steven Wing, an epidemiologist who has specialized in the effects of radioactivity at the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, said: "The generally accepted thinking about the safe dose is that, no,   there is no safe dose in terms of

the cancer or genetic effects of radiation. The assumption of most people is that there's a linear, no-threshold dose response relationship and that just means that as the dose goes down the risk goes down, but it never disappears."
            Of the claims of "no threat to health" from the radioactivity emitted from Fukushima, that "just flies in the face of all the standard models and all the studies that have been done over a long period of time of radiation and cancer."

"As the radiation clouds move away from Fukushima and move far away to other continents and around the world, the doses are spread out," notes Dr. Wing. "But it's important for people to know that spreading out a given amount of radiation dose among more people, although it reduces each person's individual risk, it doesn't reduce the number of cancers that result from that amount of radiation. So having millions and millions of people exposed to a very small dose could produce just as much cancer as a thousand or a few thousand people exposed to that same dose."

He believes "we should be focusing on putting pressure on people in government and the energy industry to come up with an energy policy that minimizes harm," is a "sane energy policy." Those who have "led us into this situation" have caused "big problems."

And they are still at it--even with radioactivity still coming out at Fukushima and expected to for months. On Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington, the "Special Summit on New Nuclear Energy" will be held, organized by the U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council.

Council members include General Electric, since 2006 in partnership in its nuclear plant manufacturing business with the Japanese corporation Hitachi.

  Other members of the council, notes its information on the summit, include the Nuclear Energy Institute; Babcock & Wilcox, the manufacturer of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant which underwent a partial meltdown in 1979; Duke Energy, a U.S. utility long a booster of nuclear power; the Tennessee Valley Authority, a U.S. government-created public power company heavily committed to nuclear power; Uranium Producers of America; and AREVA, the French government-financed nuclear power company that has been moving to expand into the U.S. and worldwide.

Also participating in the summit as speakers will be John Kelly, an Obama administration Department of Energy deputy assistant for nuclear reactor technologies;

William Magwood, a nuclear power advocate who is a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Matthew Milazzo representing an entity called the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future set up by the Obama administration; and Congressmen Mike Simpson of Idaho, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee Interior & Environment and Ed Whitfield of Kentucky, chairman of the House Energy & Power Subcommittee, both staunch nuclear power supporters.

  Other participants, according to the program for the event, will be "senior executives and thought leaders from the who's who of the U.S. new nuclear community." Bruce Llewelyn, who hosts "White House Chronicle" on PBS television, is listed as the summit's "moderator."

There will be programs on the "State of the Renaissance," "China, India & Emerging Global Nuclear Markets," "Advancing Nuclear Technology" and "Lessons from Fukushima."

As the nuclear Pinocchios lie, the nuclear promoters push ahead.

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Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury and host of the nationally syndicated TV program Enviro Close-Up (www.envirovideo.com)

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