Note: For readers who aren’t aware of my personal history, I spent two years at 17 & 18 yrs old, known as “No-Nukes Annette” for my work as a nuclear activist with the Sunbelt Alliance in Oklahoma. Each summer was spent training an ave. 75 people in non-violent direction to occupy the site of a proposed nuclear power plant just outside of Tulsa in Inola. This was back in the late seventies when the nuclear power industry was beginning to gear-up power plant construction across the U.S., so it was a long, hard battle. I even had agents parked in a cheesy red van wire-tapping our phones, was under surveillance the entire time and had goons approach me on several occasions asking really stupid questions about my work with the alliance and my views on nuclear energy.
Fortunately we won our fight for citizens in Oklahoma, while the rest of the country slept thru the nuclear power plant invasion that swept over America and the world. As a young woman, it was so disheartening to witness the cognitive dissonance emerging in all the aging hippies who taught me the importance of activism as a child growing up during the protests over the Vietnam war. At that point, it seemed if they could care less what was happening to the preservation of the country’s future.
By 1979 it was if everyone had all been seduced. hypnotized by incessant consumerism and lost on the treadmill of the rat-race. Yet, by the mid-eighties even I had given in to the seduction of the music business…my dreams of making the world a better place had faded into the noise.
Now, three decades later Fukushima revived my commitment to educate the public about the lies and criminal negligence on behalf of the NRC and world leaders who have ALL betrayed the trust of the people. They’ve allowed the destruction of the planet at the hands of corporations that only exist is to feed the greed of bankster billionaires, corporate thugs and politicians and to strip mine the resources of the planet till there is nothing but a barren wasteland left.
So PLEASE, if you haven’t already done so, will you join me in the fight to raise awareness on this diabolical and deadly agenda? If nothing else, because planetary destruction is the legacy we’re leaving the children…Mahalo! Much love, Annette
A Basic Primer
by JANETTE SHERMAN, MD
Over the last two years, questions arise as to whether the Fukushima nuclear disaster is worse than Chernobyl. Unless the principles of physics, chemistry and biology are cancelled, the effects that have been documented in the various populations exposed to the radioactive releases from Chernobyl will occur in those exposed to Fukushima releases. This is not new information – it has been known for decades.
Let us consider “Science 101.”
Physics
When uranium is split as in a reactor, or bomb, it releases great amounts of heat, and energy, as well as multiple radioactive decay products. Once released the process of decay cannot be stopped. It takes approximately 10 half-lives for an isotope to fully decay. Given that the half-life of cesium is some 30 years, it will be three centuries before the levels return to normal.
Incineration of contaminated materials is occurring in Japan, but burning, whether in an incinerator or a forest fire spreads the pollution. Isotopes in soil, water, food, plants or animals cannot be detected by sight, taste, or smell. Radiation measuring devices can detect the alpha, beta and gamma emissions, but only if they are performed, and are useful only if the information is released to the public.
Chemistry
All elements, radioactive or not, belong to groups best shown in the Periodic Table of Elements. Radioactive strontium belongs to the same chemical family as calcium, and like calcium becomes deposited in the bones and teeth of children as well as in animals, fish and birds. Like potassium, radioactive cesium is deposited in muscle – of all animals – fish, birds, and humans, while radioactive iodine, is taken up by the thyroid gland, causing the greatest damage in unborn and young animals. These chemicals damage as they release high-energy radiation that causes damage to the surrounding tissues, including mutations.
Biology
As radioactive isotopes re spread over land and water, they become deposited – but in a non-uniform manner, depending upon wind direction, weather, and elevation.
Life process in plants results in the up-take of radioactivity, which is released as plants die, or become dormant, and leaves fall to the ground, to seep into the soil to be take up again the next season. In the interim, fruit, vegetables and grains eaten by livestock and people becomes contaminated.
As isotopes fall upon both fresh and seawater, they are absorbed by plankton, crustaceans, fish, mammals, etc., and spread throughout the food chain.
After Chernobyl, not all life systems were examined, but of those that were – wild and domestic animals, birds, insects, plants, fungi, fish, trees, and humans, all were damaged, many permanently. Thus what happens to animals and plants with short-term life spans is predictive of those with longer ones.
Moller and Mousseau have done field research in both Chernobyl and Fukushima. They document adverse effects seen in organisms with short life spans such as birds, rodents and insects (which have completed as many as 25 generations) that is much worse than has been reported in humans (who are now entering their 3rd generation since Chernobyl.)
The uniqueness of Japan bears mention. Japan is a small country with a large, dense population. The population density around the Fukushima nuclear plants is greater than around Chernobyl. Now two years later, the Fukushima plants are still leaking. Consider too, the area Fukushima area was/is a major crop producing area, and the level of radioactive cesium in vegetables, and fish continues to increase.
Janette D. Sherman, M. D. is the author of Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer and Chemical Exposure and Disease, and is a specialist in internal medicine and toxicology. She edited the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature, written by A. V. Yablokov, V. B., Nesterenko and A. V. Nesterenko, published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Her primary interest is the prevention of illness through public education. She can be reached at: toxdoc.js@verizon.net and www.janettesherman.com
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