The Personal Lessons I Learned from Fukushima that helped me come up with the 15 Steps to Nuclear Disaster Preparedness
原子力災害への備え15ステップに至るまで福島から学んだ教訓
It was March 2011 when the triple meltdowns and explosions occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. This catastrophe has not been brought under control. Incredible amounts of radioactivity continue to be released into the atmosphere and oceans from the reactors. This radiation gets into the jet stream and ocean currents and comes directly over to us in North America.
Many articles have been written about the “Lessons Learned from Fukushima”.These are all about the lessons the nuclear industry, the nuclear power plants, the nuclear regulators etc. learned by studying what went wrong at Fukushima.
These reports and articles all provide valuable information. However, it has occurred to me that there are also many lessons that I, an ordinary citizen of Canada, have learned from following what has transpired as the disaster has continued to unfold and get worse.
Initially I spent hours of time writing to all levels of government asking them the many questions that arose: 当初私はあらゆるレベルの政府機関に湧き上がってきた多くの疑問を問うために何時間も費やしました。
¨“have we been contaminated with radioactive fallout?”
「私たちは放射性降下物で汚染されていないのか?」
¨“are you checking our air, food and water for radioactivity?”
「政府は空気、食物、水の放射性物質をチェックしているのか?」
¨“what foods are safe to eat?”
「どの食物が食べても安全なのか?」
¨“could you please help to evacuate the children in Japan who are living in highly radioactive areas”?
「放射線の高い地域に住む日本の子どもたちを避難させる手助けをし てくれないか?」
¨“could you please work with the international community to help shutdown this ongoing disaster?” 「この進行中の災害を収めるために国際社会と共に働いてはくれないか?」
¨“could you launch an international effort to take the fuel rods out of the Fukushima reactor Unit #4 that poses the gravest threat to all of Japan and the 4 billion people who live in the Northern Hemisphere?”
「日本人全員と北半球に住む40億の人々にこの上もない由々しい脅威を呈している福島原発4号機から燃料棒を取り出す国際的取組みを始めてはくれないか?」
to read more about this threat, read:
この脅威については、下記の記事を参照ください。
Any answers I got back were simply attempts to reassure me that all was well and therefore they wouldn’t even try to monitor our food or water.They said it “wasn’t necessary” – but how could they know if they didn’t’ test?! Why aren’t they concerned that the greatest threat to the survival of humanity is not being adequately dealt with by the Japanese government?
It bears repeating - the Fukushima nuclear power plant (NPP) has not been brought under control and the fallout continues to contaminate the oceans and atmosphere on a daily basis. At this writing(Sept 2012), the atmospheric releases are estimated at 10 million becquerrels per HOUR. 繰り返し言う必要があります。福島原発は収まってなどいず、降下物は、海を、大気を毎日汚染し続けています。これを書いている今(2012年9月)、大気への放出は1時間当たり1千万ベクレルと見積もられています。
The situation is getting worse.Radioactivity at the Fukushima NPP is higher now than it was even two months ago. Radioactive fallout is bioaccumulating.Although TEPCO, the company that runs the nuclear plant, have removed “test’ fuel rods, they will not even attempt to remove all the 1532 fuel rods from Unit #4 until December 2013.
As if that were not concern enough, we, in Vancouver, B.C., live just 260 miles downwind of the Columbia Generating Station Nuclear Power Plant (CGS) at HanfordWashington. That is the same type of aging boiling water reactor that failed three times at Fukushima. The CGS is also on an earthquake fault. If the 1836 fuel assemblies at Hanford were exposed to the air (as would happen in an earthquake that would cause the cooling water to drain from the pool), then the radioactive contamination that would fallout would exceed the amount released at Fukushima.
There is absolutely no question that WE ARE IN THE NUCLEAR HOTSEAT. If Unit #4 loses it’s ability to cool the fuel pool, or if we get a big earthquake that could cause our local reactor at Hanford to meltdown, we will all need to be prepared.There will not be time to get everything you need in place once either of those events happen. 私たちが、核の瀬戸際にいることは、全く疑問の余地がありません。もし4号機の燃料プールが冷却機能を失ったり、あるいは、ハンフォードの原子炉をメルトダウンさせるような地震が起きれば、と考えれば、私たちは皆備える必要があります。一度これらのようなことが起これば、必要なものを全て用意する時間などないのです。
So I have put together the 15 STEPS YOU CAN TAKE NOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR LOVED ONES. そこで自分自身と愛する者たちのために今できる15ステップをまとめました。
STUDY the following information you need to know and accept. These facts will not change.Accepting the facts and moving to step 2 will save you a lot of time and could save your life.
a.Your government will not warn you. In fact the government will even downplay the situation.The Japanese government did not tell the Japanese people for three months that there had been a triple meltdown at Fukushima. Eventually news was leaked that the British government worked closely with the nuclear industry after Fukushima to devise a plan to “show the safety of nuclear”! 政府はあなたに警告しません。実際には、政府は状況を小さく見せようとさえするでしょう。日本政府は日本国民に3ヶ月もの間、福島のトリプルメルトダウンのことを告げませんでした。福島の事故の後、英国政府が原子力業界と密に協力し、「原子力の安全を示す」ための計画を考案しているというニュースがリークされることにもなりました。
The official line of the Canadian Government was that there was nothing to be concerned about. And while we’re on it, have you ever heard of Rocketdyne or Chelyabinsk? – these were huge nuclear accidents and contaminations that are to this day affecting the health of many people – but the cover-ups are near perfection.
I urge you to watch Chernobyl Heart チェルノブイリ・ハートを、是非見てください。
and you will see the city where 700,000 people still live in a highly contaminated place and many of their children are sick. In all, 6 million people continue to live in contaminated environments due to the catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986. 汚染の酷い場所に、未だに70万人の人々が住んでいる市で、多くの子どもたちが病気であることが分かります。全部で6百万人の人々が、1986年に起きた大惨事が故に、汚染された環境で暮らし続けています。
Over 32 million people still live in Tokyo where the official governmentline is thatlevels of radiation are low – but many studies show that Tokyo is now highly contaminated. 3200万名以上の人々が、政府が線量が低いとしている東京にまだ住んでいるのです。しかし、多くの研究が、東京が今では高度に汚染されていることを示しています。
The sad fact is that the people of Fukushima, Belarus, Chernobyl, Chelyabinsk and Rocky Flats, who relied on their governments to warn them, are being poisoned on a daily basis by the radioactivity in their areas. 政府が警告してくれることに頼っていた福島、ベラルーシ、チェルノブイリ、チェリャビンスク、そしてロッキーフラッツの人々の悲しい現実は、その地域で放射性物質により、毎日汚染されている、ということです。
b.Your government will not test your air, food, soil or water for signs of contamination. They will not be testing for contamination because they will not have in place any regular system for testing food and water. They will not inform you if their air monitoring (Test Ban Treaty Organization) systems shows anything. Just check their website and you will see for yourself that they are not reporting to the public. 政府は、汚染の兆しを知るために大気、食物、土壌、そして水を検査しません。食物や水を定期的に検査するシステムが構築されないので、汚染を検査することはありません。政府は、(包括的核実験禁止条約の)大気のモニタリングシステムが何かを示してもそれを伝えることはありません。ウェブサイトを自分で調べてください。国民に報告されていないことを自分の目で確かめることになるでしょう。
The fact is that it took 10 months after the Fukushima disaster before it was revealed that our government did not release data from a Calgary Health Canada monitoring station that showed levels of radioactive Iodine 131 in rainwater that was above the Canadian guideline for drinking water. This radioisotope also showed up in Winnipeg and Ottawa.(The American government was more transparent. When they found levels of Iodine 131contamination in Virginia that were lower than those found in Calgary, they issued a "don't-drink-rainwater" advisory.) 実際に、雨水に含まれる放射性ヨウ素131のレベルが、カナダの飲料水のガイドラインを越えたことを示していたカルガリー・ヘルスカナダのモニタリングステーションのデータを、カナダ政府が発表しなかったことが明らかになったのは、福島惨事の後、10ヶ月経ってからのことでした。この放射性核種はまた、ウィニペグとオタワでも見られました。(アメリカ政府はまだ透明性がありました。バージニアでヨウ素131の汚染レベルを発見したとき-カルガリーより低いレベルでしたが-「雨水を飲まない」よう勧告を発したのです。)
The fallout from Fukiushima had to travel past Vancouver Island, Vancouver and southern B.C. before it reached Calgary.In Vancouver the rain water falls directly into our three open drinking water reservoirs.
福島からの降下物は、カルガリーに到達するまでに、バンクーバー島、バンクーバー、BC州南部を通過しました。バンクーバーでは雨水が3つの野外貯水場に直接降り注ぎました。
In May of 2011 Iodine 131 had been found in the rainwater on Burnaby mountain. In Sydney B.C. the government air monitoring systems detected radioactive Iodine 131 in the air 300 times above background – but did the government warn us? NO.
2011年3月にヨウ素131は、バーナビー・マウンテンの雨水で発見されました。BC州、シドニーで、政府の大気モニタリングシステムは、バックグランドの300倍の放射性ヨウ素131を検出しました。政府は私たちに警告しましたか?いいえ、しませんでした。
This is why Rod Marining, co-founder of Greenpeace International, moved his family from the SunshineCoast up to the Cariboo where they could be supplied by in -ground well water. He said he remembers the water in Vancouver’s three watersheds being contaminated during the Chernobyl disaster. (Did anyone warn us then? No and they didn’t warn us this time.Without a doubt, they will not warn us next time. This is an important lesson to learn and accept)
これが、グリーンピース・インターナショナルの共同創設者、ロッド・Marining氏が、彼の家族をサンシャインコーストからカリブーへ移動させた理由です。そこには地下水を汲める井戸があるのです。彼は、チェルノブイリ災害の間、バンクーバーの3つの分水嶺が汚染されたのを覚えている、と話しました。(その時、誰か私たちに警告しましたか?いいえ、このときも彼らは私たちに警告しませんでした。疑いもなく、次も警告はしないでしょう。このことが、学び、受け入れなければならない重要な教訓なのです。)
"In effect, Health Canada has not allowed Canadians to take any preventative steps to reduce our exposure to this radiation.”
It was probably also in the milk in B.C. at that time as well, but no one tested for it. その時BC州のミルクにもおそらく含まれていたでしょうが、誰も検査しませんでした。
The fact is that in June 2012, Arnold Gunderson, a nuclear engineer with 40 years experience with the nuclear industrysaid that we, on the west coast of North America should have been taking Potassium Iodide pills after Fukushima!WHAT!!!! 1 ¼ YEARS after Fukushima – we hear this??No public health department in our city, province or country gave us any warning that we should have taken Potassium iodide tablets to protect our thyroid glands from developing cancer.??!!! 実際に、2012年6月に原子力業界で40年の経験を持つ原子力技術者であるアーノルド・ガンダーセン氏は、私たち、北米の西海岸の人間が、福島の後、ヨウ化カリウム剤を飲むべきだったと言うのです。なんということでしょう!1年と1/4が経って、このことを耳にするのです??私たちの市、州、あるいは国の衛生機関は甲状腺癌を防ぐためにヨウ化カリウム剤を飲むべきだと警告など一切しませんでした。
c.All levels of government(federal/provinclal/ municipal levels) will only respond to queries of concern with platitudes. 連邦政府、州、市の政府機関はどこも、ただ、決まり文句で懸念に対する問い合わせに答えるだけです。
d.Your mainstream media sources will not report it. How many articles have you seen in the mainstream media, telling you about the ongoing Fukushima problem.How many articles have you read about the contamination of our food supply?To get a good idea about why this is, listen to this interview on Nuclear Hotseat with Karl Grossman in which he explains why is it so impossible to bet the mainstream media to cover what is the most serious problem in the world. 主要メディア源も、このことは報道しません。今も継続している福島の問題を伝える記事を、どれだけ主要メディアで見かけますか?食物供給の汚染について、どれだけの記事を読みましたか?なぜそうなのかについて知るには、Nuclear Hotseatのカール・グロスマンとのインタビューを聞いてみてください。世の中でもっとも深刻な問題を、主要なメディアがカバーすることが不可能な理由を説明しています。
f.Once found out, your government may apologize . It took 15 months after the disaster started before the Japanese government even discussed the possibility of giving an apology to their people that they didn’t report the radiation maps given to them by the US when the accident began. But does that apology in any way protect the people whom they did not inform about which direction the plume was going in – so that some people evacuated directly into the path of the radioactive plume?
g.Many people will not want to talk about it – the nuclear issue is more of a taboo than sex.
多くの人々はこのことについて話したくありません。核問題は、性についてよりもタブーなのです。
So if, there is another meltdown – at CGS at Hanford, at San Onofre in California, at any of the restarted nuclear reactors in Japan , at any of the 435 nuclear power plants in 30 countries of the world, or if Unit #4 at Fukushima collapses (resulting in a release of radiation 85 times worse than at Chernobyl) you need to be very clear that there will be no testing, no informed advice, no easily accessible news, no warnings and what information you do get may be false.
But know this for a fact- no matter where the event occurs, you will be affected.The jet stream is powerful and it transports radioactive fallout around the world in about 7 days.That fallout will continue to circle the globe as long as the catastrophe has not been contained. Fukushima has not been contained and continues to release radioactivity into the atmosphere on an hourly basis, day after day.
h. And there is an excellent chance that on top of the contamination you receive via jet stream and ocean, your area will continue to import foods from the affected area.Very shortly after Fukushima, Hilary Clinton signed a secret pact with the Japanese agreeing to continue to import Japanese food.And sure enough, you can now find radioactive Japanese food at your local food store. The Canadian and American governments are doing very little testing for radioactivity in imported food. All that radioactive fish is also used in fertilizers so it will be spread on farms and gardens and find its way into your food.
i. The radioactivity will spread everywhere. Even if you could convince human beings not to eat fish, David Suzuki’s book, The Legacy, details how everything on our planet is connected.Dr. Suzuki was not writing about radioactivity per se, but if you realize that the salmon he writes about is radioactive, then you can follow the spread of radioactivity as you read his amazing description:
“Through his work tracing nitrogen from the ocean in the soil of the rainforest, University of Victoria biologist Tom Reimchen has shown that salmon are the largest source of nitrogen fertilizer delivered to the forest.After two to five years in the ocean, depending on the species, salmon return to their birthplace rich in marine nitrogen, which can be distinguished from the terrestrial nitrogen.Eagles, wolves, and bears consume the salmon and then spread the marine nitrogen when they urinate and defecate throughout the forest.”
“Reimchen showed that a bear will take over six hundred salmon in a season, hiking up to 150 metres away from the river’s edge to eat in privacy.It eats about half the fish, leaving the rest of the carcass and going back to the river for another.The remains are eaten by ravens, salamanders, insects, and other creatures.Most of the salmon carcass is consumed by fly maggots, which grow to full larval size before dropping into the forest litter to overwinter.The following spring the marine-nitrogen-laden adult flies emerge from the pupal condition just in time to feed birds passing through from South America on their way to their Arctic nesting grounds.”
“It turns out that bears are a major vector for spreading marine nitrogen through a host of other animals and plants. Many of the spawned-out salmon die and sink to the bottom of rivers, where they are soon covered in a thick coat of fungi and bacteria, which in turn are consumed by insects and other invertebrates.When baby salmon emerge from the spawning gravel, the waters are filled with marine-nitrogen-rich food; so in dying, the parents prepare a feast for their off-spring.Salmon, forest, birds and bears, ocean, air and land, northern and southern hemispheres are all inter-connected through a web of interdependence.”
Add to that everyone who continues to eat Pacific fish or seaweed will excrete whatever radioactive isotopes that do not lodge in their bodies and that will go into waste water and recontaminate the oceans or wherever else it goes.
When it rains the fallout will come down into the open drinking water reservoirs and we will be drinking radioactive elements in our water.The radioactive water will go into our cooking, onto our gardens, into our crops and into our bodies.
j. These radioactive isotopes last for a long long time.You have to multiply the ½ lives of the radioisotopes by 10 to find out how long they will stay around.So Cesium lasts for 300 years.Plutonium 239 for over 243,000 years.Strontium 90 for 288 years.This radioactivity will not leave our planet in our lifetime.
k. Don’t expect to be told what you can eat and what you can’t.As the government is not testing, it is up to citizens and scientists to monitor food, air and water.Some especially good citizens (like Potrblog) and reporters , like Enviroreporter will publish their findings on the net. You can see their websites in “Keep Yourself Informed.”
l. Scientific studies take time to come out with the results. It took 15 months before it was reported that 100% of all the tuna caught off the California coast and tested in August 2011 (just 4 months after the accident) hadshowed increased levels of Cesium 137 that were 10 times higher than normal.Scientists did the study. They had no mandate to warn the public and they decided to wait until their paper was published rather than warn the public.So people, unaware, were eating radioactive tuna and other seafood for months and months before the information was made public. And still, to this day, our government has not put any public warning in the newspapers to warn us to not eat Pacific seafood. This is completely irresponsible on the part of the government.
California almonds and prunes have been found to have Cesium 134 and 137 in them – who found that out? An independent Japanese scientist who bought them in Japan after they had been imported from California! But did you read that in the mainstream media? You have to study your alternative sources daily to find out what’s new.
m. You also need to know that the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has determined that there is NO safe level of radiation . Rod Marining said, “Once you start dealing with radiation you’re going to see increasesin cancer, birth defects and it will attack your immune system.”
When a body ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, that particle releases damaging radiation inside the body over a long period of time.New findings indicate that ongoing low levels of radiation may be even more harmful than one large insult.
There are over 200 radioisotopes coming our way from Fukushima. A brief review of what just three of them can do shows that Strontium 90 lodges in the bone and causes bone cancer and leukemia.Cesium 137 goes to the brain, muscles and heart and wrecks havoc there. Iodine 131 accumulates in the thyroid gland and causes thyroid cancer.
A significant fact I learned was that a fetus is 1000 times more susceptible to the effects of radiation and a young girl is 7 times more susceptible than a 30 year old man.Women are more susceptible than men and girls twice as susceptible as boys.
After the one meltdown in Chernobyl in 1986 in all the areas affected, hundreds of scientific studies have proven that there was a significant increase in heart attacks and cardiovascular diseases, thyroid cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, diseases of the central nervous system, increase in stillbirth rates, increase in miscarriages, increase in infant deaths, increase in birth defects and a decrease in birth rates. That was from one meltdown brought under control after 18 days.Fukushima was three meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions and still not brought under control.
n. Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl.If the CGS Nuclear Power Plant at Hanford melts down, it will be worse than Chernobyl or Fukushima. You need to know what you are up against in order to be able to be properly prepared.
Remember: The Fukushima disaster is still going on with no end in sight.If Unit #4 collapses, the releases could be 85 times more than Chernobyl. No wonder many experts are saying that this is an issue of human survival.
覚書:福島の災害はまだ続いていて、終わりが見えません。もし4号機が崩壊すれば、チェルノブ
イリの85倍の放出となります。人類生き残りの問題だと多くの専門家が言う所以です。
And Unit #4 at Fukushima could collapse in the next big earthquake that has been predicted to happen in the near future. This last year alone there have been over 9000 earthquakes in Japan.Did anyone tell you?
Experts have stated that an earthquake of magnitude 7, an explosion or even a storm could cause the building to crumble and the cooling system to be lost.
This would set off a fire in the Spent Fuel Pool that contains 460 tons of fuel.The radioactivity released would be so high that workers would not be able to get close to the other reactor units at the site and so the ongoing work of keeping those units cooled would end. The water in all the units would evaporate and the hot fuel rods in these units would also ignite. The 6291 fuel rods in the common pool on the ground would also be set on fire.
The type of fires that would be created could not be put out by water.The fires would just have to burn until all the stored nuclear fuel was burned up.
In all, the Fukushima Daiichi site holds 10,893 fuel assemblies. Those fuel assemblies hold a total of 3,488,000 lbs of radioactive nuclear fuel including highly toxic Uranium, Plutonium and Cesium 137.
The fires would cause an unprecedented amount of radiation to be released directly into the atmosphere – of the type never ever seen before in the history of mankind.
The nuclear fallout released would be at a level higher than the amount of radioactive Cesium 137 that was released in all the 700 atomic bomb tests ever conducted in the world in the above ground testing that was carried out in the 1940’s, 50,’s 60’s and 70’s.
It would release 85 times more Cesium 137 than was released at Chernobyl in 1986. Chernobyl is still uninhabitable 26 years later.Over one million people died because of Chernobyl and hundreds of thousands more are ill and have a shortened life expectancy.
The fallout would contaminate Japan, cause the evacuation of Tokyo, plus go directly into the jet stream and over to Canada, the United States and all around the Northern Hemisphere.
This catastrophic amount of radiation would affect people’s health for generations. It would cause irreversible contamination of crops, water and land.It would contaminate the Pacific Ocean - to a much greater extent than has been happening over the last year and a half. It would cause great harm to all marine life.
And it would do great harm to all who would remain in the northern hemisphere.
そして、北半球に残っている全ての人々にとっても大変な害となります。
o.We all have a responsibility to watch out for our family and friends and give them essential warnings.But every adult has the right to make his/her own decisions, so if they show disinterest you can respect their right to decide for themselves.
p.It is our responsibility to stand up for the rights of childrenwho are many times more susceptible to the effects of radiation and who will have to rely on responsible adults to provide them with clean air, water, food ,playgrounds and, in the worst case scenario, to evacuate them to safer, cleaner environments.