Scroll down for a rich digest. But first, listen to these women and check the actions you can take to support them. Their issue is our issue. Its a planetarian issue, and they are appropriately appalled! Let’s join them.
Women’s “Die-In” against the Restart of Ooi Nuke Plant (Jun/07/2012)
Published on Jun 10, 2012 by tokyobrowntabby2

On June 7, 2012, about 70 women including 10 women from Fukushima did a “die-in” in front of the Prime Minister’s Official Residence to protest against the restart of Ooi Nuclear Power Plant. Before the die-in, 10 Fukushima women visited the Cabinet Office and met with officials to submit a letter of requests addressed to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. This video clip shows the words from the Fukushima women and part of the die-in. On the very next day, June 8, 2012, Prime Minister Noda held a press conference and declared he would restart Ooi Nuclear Power Plant.

The original video (https://youtu.be/ODNhDhw_-VY) created by OurPlanet-TV (https://www.ourplanet-tv.org/?q=node/287). OurPlanet-TV is an independent net-based media and welcomes donations.

Translation and captioning by tokyobrowntabby.
Video editing by sievert311 (https://www.youtube.com/user/sievert311)

Fukushima: The US Must Step In

By Akio Matsumura, AkioMatsumura.com 14 June 12

Akio Matsumura is a renowned diplomat who has dedicated his life to building bridges between government, business, and spiritual leaders in the cause of world peace. He is the founder and Secretary General of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival with conferences held in Oxford, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto, and Konya.

I was amazed when I heard that one million Japanese had read our article that introduces Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata’s courageous appeal at the public hearing of the House of Councilors of Japan and Robert Alvarez’s famous figure that there is 85 times greater Cesium-137 at Fukushima than at Chernobyl accident. People from 176 nations have visited our blog and Ambassador Murata and Robert Alvarez have been quoted in online and print media in many of them. Despite this global attention, the Japanese government seems to be further from taking action to deal with the growing dangers of Fukushima Dai-ichi. In April I flew to Japan to meet with government and opposition party leaders to convey how dangerous the situation is. Ambassador Murata and I met with Mr. Fujimura, Chief Cabinet Secretary, who assured us he would convey our message to Prime Minister Noda before his departure for Washington to meet with President Obama on April 30. It was to our great disappointment that the idea of an independent assessment team and international technical support for the disaster were not mentioned publicly. I was also astonished to hear that many Japanese political leaders were not aware of the potential global catastrophe because they were not told anything about it by TEPCO. I find it difficult to understand their mindset. Why would the Japanese political leaders think it appropriate to depend on one source (with an obvious and inherent conflict of interest) to judge what issues have resulted from the Fukushima accident and who is most appropriate to handle it? As a result of this myopia, Japan’s leadership lacks a clear picture of the situation and has little idea where it is steering its country and people. read more

Actions to take now:
Our Japanese brothers and sisters need our support in their fight to keep Japan’s nukes shut down – especially the Oi reactor –

Japan’s citizens are calling for international solidarity at Japanese embassies world-wide. Join us in solidarity with the Japanese people on Friday, June 22, 2012, at 3:00 p.m. at the Japanese Embassy in downtown L.A. to help bring volume to their voices!

Friday, June 22, 2012, at 3:00 p.m. Consulate-General of Japan in Los Angeles
350 South Grand Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90071

ACTION: We will gather at 3:00 PM with signs. We will deliver a letter to the Prime Minister’s representative and at 4:45 we will participate in a Die-In, where we will re-enact what it is like to suffer from deadly radiation exposure. Body painting will be available to make people look like we are bleeding from our orifices (symptom of radiation exposure).

Please note that we wish these protests to be absolutely civil and peaceful, and to fully observe the sovereign rights of the Japanese embassies abroad.

This Solidarity Action was called for by Hideyuki BAN, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC), Kanna MITSUTA, FoE Japan, Aileen Mioko SMITH, Green Action Daisuke SATO, No Nukes Asia Forum, Akira KAWASAKI, Peace Boat, Kaori IZUMI, Shut Tomari. There will be coordinated actions in solidarity by No Nukes NW of Portland, Oregon, in San Francisco by No Nukes Action Committee and in NYC.

Press contact: C.A.N. LA (https://coalitionagainstnukesla.webs.com/)
– Coalition Against Nukes Los Angeles (C.A.N. LA): Jenessa Stemke/Aparna Bakhle
– 951-2-NO-NUKE (951-266-6853)/ and 310-498-2731
– CoalitionAgainstNukesLA@gmail.com
Facebook Event Listing: https://www.facebook.com/events/346978435370914/

Sign the NIRS petition here

No Nukes Action Committee
6/22 SF Action To Demand The Continued Closure Of Japan NUKE Plants
Shut Down, Not Meltdown: Keep Japan Nuclear-Free!
Keep All Nuclear Plants Shut Down In Japan
Picket/Rally/Protest Letter To Japanese Government
Friday, June 22, 2012 – 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM San Francisco Japanese Consulate
50 Fremont St/Mission St. San Francisco, California

From Louise Dunlap
Dear Friends

The energy of our walk is still circulating in California and you can help, even if you are far away.

(1) Tuesday June 19, the Berkeley City Council is voting on its resolution to close down California nukes and replace with clean energy. (The last vote was postponed to allow support to grow) If you’re in the area, please come to a rally with Joanna Macy and Daniel Ellsberg at 6 pm before the Council meeting at 2134 MLKing Way and stay on to help influence the vote. Again, if you can’t make it–no matter where you are–you can email the Council members with the easy system in the “alert” section of the following website: https://www.nuclearfreecal.org/nfcnet/category/alerts/ (Click on “Tell Berkeley to vote YES,” then on “sample email,” then on “click here.”)

(2) On Saturday June 22, activists will gather in San Francisco at the Japanese Consulate from 3-5 PM (50 Fremont St/Mission St. San Francisco) to support the moving protests in Japan that have called on the prime minister NOT to reopen the Ooi nuclear plant there. These protests have been huge and not covered by Japanese media. In California simultaneous actions in LA and SF on the 22nd will support the Japanese activists as part of a world-wide effort. The theme is “Shut Down, Not Meltdown: Keep Japan Nuclear-Free/Keep All Nuclear Plants Shut Down in Japan

No Nukes Pioneer
This edition is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Rosalie Bertell {April 4,1929 – June 14, 2012}, author of the 1985 classic NO IMMEDIATE DANGER: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, and the 2000 work Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War. A Critical Study into the Military and the Environment. She has been a mentor and inspiration for generations of activists, including us. Her recent and relevant Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe: A Message from Dr. Rosalie Bertell is here. For more, see articles below. Eds.

Some highlights in this edition
The FCC is set to review its EMF exposure guidelines for the first time in 15 years. Will it rubber stamp obsolete standards that are far behind the curve of current science?

The NRC has been overruled for the first time by an appeals court and ordered to revisit the environmental impacts of storing tons of highly radioactive used fuel rods on site at nuclear reactors…even for 60 years after the reactors have been shut down. Whatcha gonna do with that hot stuff?!

Secretary of War – oops, of Defence – Leon Pannetta joins cyber security experts in pointing to the internet as the new ‘battle space’ and foreseeing a possible ‘cyber Pearl Harbor’ for U.S. communication, financial and energy systems. So the question follows; how ‘smart’ is a hackable wireless national energy grid based on hackable wireless ‘smart meters?’

Trouble-plagued San Onofre nuclear reactor is down at least through August. Surrounding communities are fighting to keep it that way for good. Will its power be replaced by efficiency and renewables or dirty energy?

Meanwhile Japanese are fighting the restart of the Ooi nuclear reactor against massive industry and government pressure, and Fukushima continues spewing its poisons across the world by wind and water currents.

Canadian Prof. Tony Hall puts it all into properly appalled planetarian perspective in his new must-read article Fukushima Daiichi: From Nuclear Power Plant to Nuclear Weapon

Print and video report summaries and links on these and many other stories follow below.

A Two-Pronged Blog
You’ll notice that this blog has a dual focus.

We’re focusing on the movement to keep San Onofre shut for good. Based on past experience and cosmic trend-watchers, what’s good for California is likely to be good for every body else. And shutting down California’s nukes, at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo, would be a major contribution to consigning the global zombie nuclear industry to its hardened sarcophagus.

We’re also focusing on the human health effects, multiple safety, privacy and security risks of proliferating wireless technologies, and the fact that nuclear reactors and their on-site used (and super radioactive) fuel rod cooling pools are both dependent on getting electrical power from the outside/off-site power grid. That rickety, aging grid is being made totally vulnerable to malicious hacking and potentially nationally catastrophic cyber attack by the spread of the wireless so-called ‘smart grid’ and the forced mass installation of electro-magnetically polluting, hackable wireless ‘smart meters.’

Although different biological mechanisms are involved, both nuclear (ionizing) radiation and electro-magnetic (non-ionizing) radiation can irreparably damage the DNA of humans and all living things. This two-pronged attack on the essential components of all life on earth demands all humanity’s attention and action.

So that’s the double-helix integrating subtext of all this blog’s entries – the synergizing dangers of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation exposure.

Ooi Vey!
Just as Southern California Edison is pushing to restart San Onofre despite massive safety and energy glut contraindications, so the Japanese government (no doubt pressured by the international nuclear mafioso) are pushing to open the Ooi reactor by Monday despite massive domestic and international public opposition. [Sign the NIRS ‘don’t do it’ petition here.]

It’s not hard to see the core underlying issue here. If nukes can remain off-line through the summer in California and Japan without brownouts and blackouts, the public will wake up to the fact that – as the following chart from WomensEnergyMatters.org shows – California has an excess of energy capacity and WE DON’T NEED NUKES, we need ‘negawatts,’ i.e., conservation and efficiency.

Not good PR for the salesmen of the delusional, corporate-driven, tax-payer-funded, never-gona-happen global ‘nuclear-renaissance-is-necessary-to save-the-planet’ scenario.

So, in this edition of our blog you’re going to find a rich selection of stories adding up to a birds-eye view of the current lay of the wireless/nuclear landscape.

We’re off to the SouthLand to cover the NRC’s findings on the San Onofre nuke imbroglio. Watch for our video report in our next post. Scroll on down and check out some of What’s Currently What on these vital issues….

The EON Team

Panetta Warns of Cyber Pearl Harbor: ‘The Capability to Paralyze This Country Is There Now’
By Edwin Mora – CNSnews.com
The reality is we are the target of literally hundreds of thousands of attacks every day. It’s not only aimed at government, it’s aimed at the private sector.”

“There are a lot of capabilities that are being developed in this area,” said Panetta, who served as CIA director in the past. “I’m very concerned that the potential in cyber to be able to cripple our power grid, to be able to cripple our government systems, to be able to cripple our financial system would virtually paralyze this country. And, as far as I’m concerned, that represents the potential for another Pearl Harbor as far as the kind of attack that we could be the target of using cyber.

“For that reason, it’s very important that we do everything that we can, obviously, to defend against that potential,” said Panetta.

Cyber search engine Shodan exposes industrial control systems to new risks

Fukushima Daiichi: From Nuclear Power Plant to Nuclear Weapon
by Prof. Anthony Hall

The Fukushima Debacle is Only in Its Infantcy
The growing realization that the worst of the Fukushima debacle lies in the future rather than in the past puts in sharp relief the pertinence of Einstein’s observation. Indeed, the prophetic nature of Einstein’s warning is starkly reflected in the failure of so many in government, in the media, in the academy, and especially in the richly-funded inner sanctums of the nuclear industry to respond appropriately to the terrifying implications of what is going so terribly wrong at Japan’s spewing Fukushima #1 power plant.

Rooted in old and outmoded motifs of perception, officialdom’s failure to identify the proliferating menaces in this unprecedented convergence of circumstances has extremely grave implications. What is being done and, more importantly, what is not being done at Fukushima nuclear plant #1 tragically illustrates Albert Einstein’s pivotal observation that the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our old ways of thinking.

A major obstacle blocking proper perception of the Fukushima debacle’s true nature has its origins in a propaganda meme going back to the 1950s. Initiated by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower with his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations in late 1953, this propaganda meme seeks to disassociate entirely the dual compartments within the nuclear industry.

While the global public has been fooled into thinking that the supposedly civilian branch of the nuclear industry is totally separate from its dominant military branch, this distinction is really a phantom.From its inception the deployment of nuclear energy to generate electricity was designed to give PR cover to the hugely lucrative and totally immoral business of building nuclear weapons. Indeed, to this day the bomb builders draw some of their ingredients such as tritium for their weapons of mass destruction for the operation of nuclear power plants.

https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/feb/03/sequoyah-to-produce-bomb-grade-material/

Federal Court Rejection of Long-Term Waste Storage at Nuclear Plants a ‘Victory’
By Elaine Piniat – Berkeley New Jersey Patch

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was asked to re-evaluate its plan for spent fuel storage after a federal appeals court threw out a rule that would allow nuclear plants, including Oyster Creek Generating Station, to store radioactive waste on site for up to 60 years after a plant shuts down.

“This is an important victory for the people of New Jersey, on an issue that has significant public health and safety implications, and also the potential to negatively impact the state’s environment,” said Bob Martin, Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously decided that the NRC did not fully evaluate the risks associated with long-term storage of nuclear waste, the Associated Press reported.

Appeals court rejects waste storage at nuke plants
By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press – Jun 8, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a rule that allows nuclear power plants to store radioactive waste at reactor sites for up to 60 years after a plant shuts down.

In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not fully evaluate the risks associated with long-term storage of nuclear waste. The court said on-site storage has been “optimistically labeled” as temporary, but has stretched on for decades.

The decision puts the Obama administration in a bind, since the White House directed the Energy Department to rescind its application to build a final resting place for the nation’s nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain and cut off funding two years ago. An alternative site has not yet been identified.

The ruling also adds a new wrinkle to an ongoing dispute that has confounded federal officials for more than 30 years: What to do with the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants?

Mobile-Phone Radiation Safety to Be Reviewed by U.S. FCC
By Todd Shields – Jun 15, 2012 – Bloomberg

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to ask whether its standards protect people from mobile-phone radiation, a question it hasn’t posed in 15 years, as people use smartphones for longer, more frequent calls.

Julius Genachowski, the agency’s chairman, is asking fellow commissioners to approve a notice commencing a formal inquiry, Tammy Sun, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an e-mailed statement. The notice won’t propose rules, Sun said.

Does the FCC Plan to Rubber Stamp Outdated Cell Phone Radiation Standards?
Posted on June 16, 2012 EMFSafetyNetwork.org
by Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D. UC School of Public Health

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will conduct a formal review of the U.S. cell phone radiation standards according to a Bloomberg news report: FCC. Wireless Devices and Health Concerns.

An FCC spokesperson emailed a statement to a Bloomberg reporter that is truly alarming. Her message suggests that the FCC has already decided that the current standards are fine, and will conduct a review to rubber stamp the 1996 FCC guidelines:

“Tammy Sun, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an e-mailed statement. The notice won’t propose rules, Sun said.

‘Our action today is a routine review of our standards,’ Sun said. ‘We are confident that, as set, the emissions guidelines for devices pose no risks to consumers.’”

The Bloomberg article cites a major review of the literature conducted by our research center in which we found an association between mobile phone use and increased brain tumor risk especially after 10 years of cell phone use:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Government must inform us of cell phone risk
Joel M. Moskowitz, San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 2010 
https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/27/EDMB1D58TC.DTL

Cell Phones: Assessing and Preventing Risk
David Katz, Huffington Post, May 31, 2012 
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/cell-phone-health-risks_b_869241.html Seung-Kwon Myung, Woong Ju, Diana D. McDonnell, Yeon Ji Lee, Gene Kazinets, Chih-Tao Cheng and Joel M. Moskowitz.

Mobile Phone Use and Risk of Tumors: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Clinical Oncology. 27(33):5565-5572. 2009. https://jco.ascopubs.org/content/27/33/5565.abstract

Troubles at San Onofre Nuclear Plant Awaken Activists
Friday, 15 June 2012 11:26 By Elizabeth Douglass, Inside Climate News | News Analysis

Ongoing troubles at Southern California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant have galvanized area residents, city officials and environmental groups—putting an emphatic end to a complacency that was unusual for a densely populated region with a nuclear plant in its midst.

These days, public meetings about San Onofre are jammed with residents and media outlets. Local groups are calling for the plant’s closure, city councils are demanding assurances about safety, Friends of the Earth and other national groups are re-engaged, and the actions and statements of both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and operator Southern California Edison (SCE) are being examined like never before.

In the news: Threats to industrial control systems
Public discussion focuses on security vulnerabilities
Phil Carson | Jun 06, 2012

It was weird—and disconcerting—to see the front page of The Washington Post the other day devoted to cyber security and the vulnerabilities of industrial control systems. In a series of articles in the Post, much of the discussion around ICSs that we’ve provided in these pages was echoed and amplified.
Bottom line: They’re connected. They’re vulnerable. Utilities in the United States should harden their defenses and understand the nature of threats that are only likely to increase.

In “Cyber Search Engine Shodan Exposes Industrial Control Systems to New Risks,” reporter Robert O’Harrow Jr. described how a programmer developed a search engine named “Shodan” that finds and “exposes” online devices. The Shodan website’s tagline is “Expose Online Devices: Webcams. Routers. Power Plants. iPhones. Wind Turbines. Refrigerators. VoIP Phones.” Wait, did that list mention power plants, along with iPhones and refrigerators? Yes.

Oh, and, here’s a pop quiz: What’s the most common ICS in the power industry? (Answer: SCADA, or supervisory control and data acquisition.)
More from the Post on what the Shodan programmer found with his new toy:
“Uncounted numbers of industrial control computers, the systems that automate such things as water plants and power grids, were linked in, and in some cases they were wide open to exploitation by even moderately talented hackers.

“The rise of Shodan illuminates the rapid convergence of the real world and cyberspace, and the degree to which machines that millions of people depend on every day are becoming vulnerable to intrusion and digital sabotage.”
The difference between corporate computer networks and industrial control systems and the potential impact of hacking is pretty crucial, as one ICS source told us about this time last year.

In “Cyber Security and Control Systems,” Joe Weiss, principal at Applied Control Solutions, LLC, said, “IT systems don’t kill people. Control system problems have killed people.”

(Weiss initiated the control system cyber security program at the Electric Power Research Institute in 2000 and wrote the book, Protecting Industrial Control Systems from Electronic Threats.)

That column explained: “According to Weiss, IT professionals don’t understand ICS. Operations personnel may understand ICS, but not IT and its cyber security implications. That’s one disconnect. Another: responsibility for the integrity of ICS at electric utilities tends to be splintered among various roles, in contrast to the chief information officer’s clear mandate for IT cyber security, he said. Further, IT cyber incidents leave a forensics trail that can be reconstructed after the fact, while ICS incidents leave only physical evidence without a clear forensics trail.

“Historically, the overriding concerns of those developing industrial control systems was their usefulness, reliability, safety and cost, Weiss said. And the control system engineer’s traditional role is to “keep things running,” he added. Making ICSs remotely controlled via Ethernet over local area networks and their microprocessors updatable by this method led to their present vulnerabilities, he argued.

“Flexibility and security pull in opposite directions,” Weiss told me.

Those are the stakes and that’s an abridged history of concerns around ICSs. So, what do we know about the nature or number of actual attacks? The Post report said that 120 “incident reports” from October 2011 to April 2012—a six-month period—equaled the number for all of 2011. I.e., the numbers of documented attacks are increasing. However, noted the Post, “companies are under no obligation to report such intrusions to authorities.”

… A skeptic might ask—and folks tell me that utility executives are among the skeptics—if ICSs are so vulnerable, then where’s the example of a successful disruption?

Ah, that’s where Stuxnet and Duqu and now Flame come in. We documented the approach taken by Stuxnet and its still-unknown sponsors to Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in “Stuxnet’s Lessons Learned.” That was followed by “‘Duqu Reminds Utilities of Unfinished Cyber Work.” And now comes “Flame,” the focus of a news article last week, “Cyberattacks on Iran – Stuxnet and Flame,” in The New York Times. A related discussion panel among international cyber security practitioners debated whether the U.S.—the most capable of launching such attacks—was also the most vulnerable to similar strategies by its enemies.
No doubt much work is taking place behind the scenes. Perhaps solutions are being developed in secret while vulnerabilities are trumpeted publicly, leading to a skewed sense of the actual risks and management thereof.
On the other hand, if skeptical utility executives really are waiting for a major domestic incident as a proof point before taking action, we’re in for quite a ride.
More background is available in these articles:
“SCADA Vulnerabilities, Redux?”
“Cyber Expertise Lacking?”
“Security, Part II: Control Systems and IT Systems”

Phil Carson 
Editor-in-chief
Intelligent Utility Daily
pcarson@energycentral.com

The challenge and promise of unstructured data
Utilities navigating more complex world of data

Mike Smith | Jun 10, 2012 Intelligent Utility
As utilities have waded into the data-heavy post-Smart Grid era, utility leaders from across the enterprise are seeing that there is value in all of that data beyond simply managing the volumes of data and getting it to the right people. This, of course, is where analytics is proving to be a “game changer” at many utility organizations.
We’ll be discussing these and other issues at Utility Analytics Week.
Turning the volumes of data into actionable intelligence is what the analytics game is all about, and utilities are finding more ways to do score points in this game on a seemingly daily basis. The examples range from new business processes for managing assets predictively to segment and targeting customers for new programs to re-shaping the load curve, and more. These examples—and countless others—are all dependent on the ability to move the organization from using all of that data to report “what happened” to operating predictively by taking the knowledge from the historical data and changing business processes based on this knowledge. When done well, the improvements across customer, financial, operational, and regulatory requirements can be significant.

Government plans to install smart meters in our homes ‘will leave us open to cyber attack’
* Foreign computer hackers will be able to target individual homes
* Campaigners say it goes to far and creates ‘a spy in every home’
* Home information could be ‘sold’ to burglars and identity thieves
By Gerri Peev – Daily Mail

Intelligence chiefs have warned that plans to install smart energy meters in every house will leave families vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

According to the Government’s listening agency GCHQ, the plans will create a ‘strategic vulnerability’, giving foreign computer hackers the opportunity to target individual homes, municipal buildings and even whole districts.

Described by security experts as the ‘modern day equivalent of a nuclear strike’, hackers would be able to switch off meters from overseas, cutting off targets from the national grid. Read more

25′ Al Jazeerah Nuclear Waste Debate with Arnie Gundersen
Inside Story Americas – Going nuclear

Allison Macfarlane, President Obama’s nominee to head the body that regulates Nuclear Safety in the US is a geologist and expert on nuclear waste disposal though she describes herself as a nuclear agnostic. If confirmed, she will replace Gregory Jaczko whose 8 year tenure was plagued by battles with the industry and Congress as he attempted to bring in new safety regulations. The United States is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s commercial nuclear reactors.

Video: MIT Evac Zone study debunked

Godards’ Journal has just put out an excellent 17 minute video debunking the recent MIT study claiming that their low radiation level test demonstrated why the country should reduce the need for evacuations following a nuclear disaster. A brief summary of his findings was that the MIT testers only dosed their lab mice for 35 days, and then made unsubstantiated statements that such low levels could continue not to cause any harm. Goddard found a 2009 study showing just the opposite of the MIT claims.

And of course the real issue here is that this study was done by the physics department at MIT that had gotten millions of dollars from DOE, including a study designed to win public acceptance for reducing the need to reduce evacuation zones.

Roger Herried
Abalone Alliance Clearinghouse archivist
Energy Net

A Radioactive Nightmare
As fallout from Fukushima heads our way, the government turns a blind eye
By Michael Collins 06/07/2012

Millions of Southern Californians and tourists seek the region’s famous beaches to cool off in the sea breeze and frolic in the surf. Those iconic breezes, however, may be delivering something hotter than the white sands along the Pacific.

Buckyballs.

According to a recent U.C. Davis study, uranium-filled nanospheres are created from the millions of tons of fresh and salt water used to try to cool down the three molten cores of the stricken reactors. The tiny and tough buckyballs are shaped like British Association Football soccer balls.

Water hitting the incredibly hot and radioactive, primarily uranium-oxide fuel turns it into peroxide. In this goo buckyballs are formed, loaded with uranium and able to move quickly through water without disintegrating.

High radiation readings in Santa Monica and Los Angeles air during a 42-day period from late December to late January strongly suggest that radiation is increasing in the region including along the coast in Ventura County.

The radiation, detected by this reporter and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, separate from each other and using different procedures, does not appear to be natural in origin. The EPA’s radiation station is high atop an undisclosed building in Los Angeles while this reporter’s detection location is near the West L.A. boundary.

…Southern California is still getting hit by Fukushima radiation at alarmingly high levels that will inevitably increase as the main bulk of polluted Pacific Ocean water reaches North America over the next two years….

…The main wave of water-borne radiation from the meltdowns, including highly mobile uranium-60 buckyballs, is surging across the Pacific along the Kuroshio Current, second only to the Gulf Stream for power on the planet…

…no federal agency, department or administration is doing anything to sample and analyze water from the Pacific. Fish aren’t being tested for contamination, either….

…These radionuclides and buckyballs make up the goo inexorably crossing the Pacific, which may just have begun to impact our shores. Yet not a nickel of state or federal money is spent monitoring it. We are on our own in this Fukushima nightmare.

Outage at San Onofre may cost hundreds of millions
Equipment repair, electricity purchases are just some of the expenses
By Elizabeth Douglass/ InsideClimate News
Thursday, June 14, 2012

Costs are mounting for the months-long outage at the San Onofre nuclear plant and any possible solutions, as investigators examine steam generator damage — and it’s unclear who will end up paying the bill.

With the reactors set to be offline through August, the additional expenses will likely exceed $200 million — and would be substantially higher if recently replaced steam generators need extensive work and San Onofre provides reduced or zero power generation for an even longer period.

The outlays include the expense of securing power contracts and daily electricity purchases while the plant is offline — a bill expected to exceed $100 million by itself — and the cost of repairing or replacing the equipment. It also includes items such as increased regulatory oversight and customer-funded incentives for energy conservation.

State utility regulators will review any extra expenses for “reasonableness” before they are passed on to customers, said Jennifer Manfrè, the spokeswoman for Southern California Edison, which operates San Onofre in northern San Diego County. Right now, she added, “it’s not a matter of counting costs, it’s a matter of operating safely.”
The electricity produced by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station — up to 2,200 megawatts at any given time — is so integral to powering daily life in Southern California that government and industry officials have implemented plans to avoid power shortages this summer.

N.R.C. Nomination Shines Spotlight on Waste-Disposal Issue
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: June 10, 2012

WASHINGTON — When the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee meets on Wednesday to consider President Obama’s choice to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, three themes are likely to dominate the questioning: waste, waste and earthquakes.

Video: MIT Evac Zone study debunked
Godards’ Journal has just put out an excellent 17 minute video debunking the recent MIT study claiming that their low radiation level test demonstrated why the country should reduce the need for evacuations following a nuclear disaster. A brief summary of his findings was that the MIT testers only dosed their lab mice for 35 days, and then made unsubstantiated statements that such low levels could continue not to cause any harm. Goddard found a 2009 study showing just the opposite of the MIT claims.

And of course the real issue here is that this study was done by the physics department at MIT that had gotten millions of dollars from DOE, including a study designed to win public acceptance for reducing the need to reduce evacuation zones.

Roger Herried Abalone Alliance Clearinghouse archivist Energy Net

Published on Thursday, June 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
Japan One Step Closer to Nuclear Restart; Reactors Likely to be Turned On by Weekend
Japanese mayor approves plan to restart nuclear power plant
– Common Dreams staff
A nuclear energy restart in Japan has moved one step closer today, after Shinobu Tokioka, the mayor of Oi, a town in Fukui prefecture, said he had been persuaded to support the restart of two nuclear reactors at the Oi nuclear plant.

Japan’s Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui prefecture, where two reactors may be restarted. (Photo: Kepco/EPA) Following an appeal from Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, and an approval from the local nuclear safety commission, the Mayor of Oi effectively approved the restart.

The restart now needs only one more voice of approval from Issei Nishikawa, the governor of the prefecture of Fukui, which includes Oi; he is expected to approve the restart on Friday.

Published on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 by Common Dreams
Over 1300 Fukushima Residents Demand Nuclear Officials Face Jail
Lawsuit filed Monday accuses TEPCO, gov’t officials of negligence in disaster
– Common Dreams staff

Over 1300 residents of Fukushima filed a criminal complaint on Monday against 33 people including Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) executives and workers in government organizations saying that they are responsible for negligence over the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster and should go to jail.

Caption: A group of Fukushima Prefecture residents are seen on their way to the public prosecutors office to file a complaint over the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in Fukushima on June 11. (photo: Mainichi) The groups says that the officials failed to adequately prepare for the nuclear disaster, despite the well-known risks of earthquakes and tsunamis in the area.

“The Fukushima nuclear accident is the worst corporate crime in Japan’s history and caused significant damage to the life, health and assets of the people of Fukushima and the rest of Japan,” the group, the Plaintiffs Against the Fukushima Nuclear Plant, said on its website.

At a news conference where the group and their lawyer addressed a crowd after submitting the complaint, Ruiko Muto, the 58-year-old head of the group that submitted the complaint, said, “We want to restore our power by having prefectural residents come together as one, saying, ‘We’re not staying silent.'”

“We lost our homeland, filled with beautiful nature, and our irreplaceable community. We shoulder the heavy burden of a divided local community and we are sitting in the midst of a suffering which shall never end,” the group lamented.

Unintentional Infanticide
Life Under the Radioactive Cloud
by LINDA PENTZ GUNTHER JUNE 14, 2012

Mothers in Fukushima, Japan, worry that the food and milk that they must feed daily to their infants and children may one day kill them. Is that a fear that an American parent can even begin to fathom? That because of the secrecy, the intransigence and, ultimately, the criminality of your own government, you might be unwillingly killing your own children by feeding them produce contaminated with radioactive fallout? And yet, that is life in Fukushima Prefecture today.

You are a grandmother whose grandchildren can never visit you. You are a farmer whose crops are too contaminated to sell. You are a teacher who must tell children to jump into the school swimming pool’s cesium-laced waters. You are suffering ailments not unlike those found among populations exposed to the Chernobyl fallout. And whether your sufferings are physical or mental they are all equally real and equally serious and they are all caused, one way or the other, by the devastating nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi that, far from being over, could actually get worse. Much worse.

25′ Al Jazeerah Nuclear Waste Debate with Arnie Gundersen
Inside Story Americas – Going nuclear
Allison Macfarlane, President Obama’s nominee to head the body that regulates Nuclear Safety in the US is a geologist and expert on nuclear waste disposal though she describes herself as a nuclear agnostic. If confirmed, she will replace Gregory Jaczko whose 8 year tenure was plagued by battles with the industry and Congress as he attempted to bring in new safety regulations. The United States is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s commercial nuclear reactors.

Nuclear Energy Institute Chief ‘Optimistic’ About California Nuclear Plant
By Felicity Carus
Published: June 13, 2012 AOL Energy

The head of the Nuclear Energy Institute yesterday said he was optimistic that California’s San Onofore nuclear plant would again start producing electricity and denied that the US industry was troubled by high costs and safety concerns after Fukushima.

Marvin Fertel, the president and chief executive of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said: “I’m optimistic that it will be restored to full power. If they plug in less than full power it will be for the right reasons.”

Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future Issues Final Report to Secretary of Energy
Contact: 
John Kotek
(202) 460‐2308
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future today released its final report to the U.S. Energy Secretary, detailing comprehensive recommendations for creating a safe, long-term solution for managing and disposing of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

The report is the culmination of nearly two years of work by the commission and its subcommittees, which met more than two dozen times since March 2010, gathering testimony from experts and stakeholders, as well as visiting nuclear waste management facilities both domestic and overseas.

The commission, co-chaired by former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, was tasked by Energy Secretary Steven Chu with devising a new strategy for managing the nation’s sizable and growing inventory of nuclear waste. Scowcroft and Hamilton said they believe the report’s recommendations offer a practical and promising path forward, and cautioned that failing to act to address the issue will be damaging and costly.

“The majority of these recommendations require action to be taken by the Administration and Congress, and offer what we believe is the best chance of success going forward, based on previous nuclear waste management experience in the U.S. and abroad,” the Commissioners wrote in a letter to Chu that accompanied the report. “We urge that you promptly designate a senior official with sufficient authority to coordinate all of the DOE elements involved in the implementation of the Commission’s recommendations.”

The report noted that the Obama Administration’s decision to halt work on a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is the latest indicator of a nuclear waste management policy that has been troubled for decades and has now reached an impasse. Allowing that impasse to continue is not an option, the report said.
“The need for a new strategy is urgent, not just to address these damages and costs but because this generation has a fundamental, ethical obligation to avoid burdening future generations with the entire task of finding a safe, permanent solution for managing hazardous nuclear materials they had no part in creating,” the Commission wrote in the report’s Executive Summary.

The strategy outlined in the Commission report contains three crucial elements. First, the Commission recommends a consent-based approach to siting future nuclear waste storage and disposal facilities, noting that trying to force such facilities on unwilling states, tribes and communities has not worked. Second, the Commission recommends that the responsibility for the nation’s nuclear waste management program be transferred to a new organization; one that is independent of the DOE and dedicated solely to assuring the safe storage and ultimate disposal of spent nuclear waste fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Third, the Commission recommends changing the manner in which fees being paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund – about $750 million a year – are treated in the federal budget to ensure they are being set aside and available for use as Congress initially intended.

The report also recommends immediate efforts to commence development of at least one geologic disposal facility and at least one consolidated storage facility, as well as efforts to prepare for the eventual large-scale transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste from current storage sites to those facilities.

Mobile base stations on Tuesday’s parliamentary agenda
Article published on 10 June 2012

The sensitive issue of mobile base stations has made it to the parliamentary agenda, with Parliament’s Social Affairs Committee due to discuss the issue at length on Tuesday. The discussion will revolve around the potential threat posed to children.
In addition to interested parties from the public, the meeting will hear from representatives from the Ministries of Health, Education, Infrastructure and Communications, the Malta Communications Authority, Mepa, environmental NGOs, and the countries three mobile telephony providers.

A concurrent online petition, which calls for mobile base stations situated on rooftops across the country to be removed from within at least 10 metres from children’s bedrooms, drawn up by Prof. Peter Xuereb, describes the current practice as a “human experiment”. Referring to Tuesday’s Social Affairs Committee, the petition’s organisers say, “We intend to speak there and question the mobile phone operators, who deny that there is any evidence of risk such as to bring into play the ‘precautionary principle’.

“This,” the petition states, “would require them to find alternative sites and remove the many hundreds already sited within 10 metres of the bedrooms of children, elderly people, and sick and other vulnerable people all over Malta.

“For three years they have ignored the growing evidence, including European Parliament resolutions that call on the authorities and operators not to site these on schools and so on. How can it then be right to site them in densely populated residential areas, without consultation or consideration of viable (if less profitable and effective − commercially) alternatives; and this on their own admission?”
The petition − which can be viewed and signed at

www.avaaz.org/en/petition/STOP_MOBILE_PHONE_ANTENNAE_BEING_SITED_WITHIN_15_METRES_OF_KIDS_BEDROOMS_IN_MALTA− adds, “Please help us break through this cynical barrier − you could be saving health and even lives down the line. Stop this human experiment now, in Malta and in other countries”.

Smartphone pictures pose privacy risks
Pictures you’ve e-mailed or uploaded from your smartphone could leak information that can threaten your safety or that of your children.
Visit https://tinyurl.com/smartphonerisks to read much more on this

Debated in Congress on antennas, electromagnetic pollution and health effects
06/07/2012
Organized by the Popular Unity bloc was held in the annex building of the Chamber of Deputies a public hearing to discuss the effects they have on the health of people.
The national deputy Antonio Riestra, Popular Unity bloc, presented by the legislator of Buenos Aires in Buenos Aires for all UP Laura Garcia Tunon and neighborhood organizations autoconvocados held a public hearing on the effects on the health of the population, Electromagnetic pollution from phone masts, FM, Wi-Fi and other devices.

In opening the hearing, Rep. Riestra said that “although not yet know all the aspects of this problem, it is clear that safety standards limiting radiation levels in almost every country in the world, seem to be thousands of times higher than the levels at which the risk actually disappear or be minimized. “So, estimated that” new approaches are needed to find alternatives that do not pose the same level of health risk, while it is time tothose changes. ”

“As people became aware of the effects on health when installing antennas in neighborhoods, the lawsuits brought against these authorizations, the complaints filed with the municipalities were increasing. And this happens not only in Argentina , multiply global social and environmental movements that seeks review of regulations and protection of human health, “the national legislature.

On this point, Riestra submitted to debate the bill of his own which he said, “establishes minimum budgets for environmental protection in the matter, according to the rules set forth by Article 41 of the Constitution guaranteeing the right to health and to live in a healthy environment. The Office is authorized to issue such rules in order to match the floor of environmental regulation across the country. Each province can from there pass laws stricter but not more lax. ”

In this month’s issue of Connection Magazine (Monterey, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Mateo County) www.connectionmagazineonline.com They published two article I sent:
Healthy Planet Section p. 6, 8 

Smart Meter News Alert:

World Health Organization 
Radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation emitted by Smart Meters is a possible carcinogen.

American Academy of Environmental Medicine
Calls for immediate moratorium, hearings on health impacts, immediate relief for those requesting it by restoring analog meters. “FCC guidelines are obsolete and inadequate for providing public health standards.”

Santa Cruz County Health Department
“FCC guidelines are irrelevant…No current, relevant public safety standards for pulsed RF involving chronic exposure of the public, nor of sensitive populations, nor of people with metal and medical implants that can be affected by localized heating and by electromagnetic interference.’’

Austrian Medical Association
“The planned area-wide introduction of so-called ‘smart meters’, can lead to health consequences…Who is liable in the event of health problems and diseases caused by the increased field exposure on the part of the Smart Meter?… The Austrian Medical Association strictly rejects another, in this case actually state-mandated, expansion of the Electrosmog exposure on the Austrian population.

Dr. Yolanda Gilli, Swiss Parliament
“How do you intend to preventatively protect the Swiss population against such radiation?
How high do you estimate the economic costs, for example as a result of the increase of multi-system diseases in area-wide introductions of smart grids?”

City of Ojai
“There is a growing body of evidence which calls into question the safety of smart meters due to the potential health risks they pose, especially to children. “

San Francisco Sierra Club
Calls for moratorium and investigation into “safety, accuracy, and necessity of wireless meters…Smart Meters may require more energy for production, operation and disposal.”

Alameda County Green Party
Calls for moratorium; issues of safety, accuracy, potential radio interference for first responders, impacts to wildlife.

Green Party of British Columbia
Calls for moratorium, public hearings, and health studies

Union of British Columbia Municipalities
Calls for moratorium and investigation

John Rowe, Exelon
“… it costs too much, and we’re not sure what good it will do. We have looked at most of the elements of smart grid for 20 years and we have never been able to come up with estimates that make it pay.”

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
“The utilities want to experiment with expensive and unproven smart grid technology, yet all the risk for this experiment will lie with consumers.
…disappointing results that reinforce what Rowe already knows. On hot summer days, people continue to run their air conditioners no matter how much information they have from their smart meter.”

Blake Levitt, Chellis Glendinning
“How is it that so many intelligent, inside-the-beltway environmentalists are buying into an eco-health-safety-finance debacle with the potential to increase energy consumption, endanger the environment, harm public health, diminish privacy, make the national utility grid more insecure, cause job losses, and make energy markets more speculative?
Answer: by not doing their homework.”

Parenting, Kids and Education p. 28
Microwaving Our Children

Apps for tots. iPads for play. Teething on Smart Phones. Baby monitors in cribs. Smart Meters on bedroom walls. Wi-Fi in schools. Broadband initiatives. Cell towers in school yards.

Microwaving our children. Exposing their brains, eyes, developing neurological and immune systems, hearts, organs, glands, cells, DNA, testes and ovaries, and bone marrow to potent biologically-active microwave radiofrequency radiation.

Children absorb far more radiation in their brains and eyes than adults. They have thinner, softer craniums. Girls carry all the eggs at birth they will ever produce. Children’s neurological and immune systems are developing. What will be the results? The Russian NCNIRP warns of early onset dementia, cancer, and other problems. Scientist Leif Salford calls exposing all of us to this wireless technology the largest biological experiment ever. And without our informed consent.

What’s already known about this radiation is that it damages DNA, causing single strand and double strand breaks. It causes sperm damage and dysfunction. It causes cellular stress. It increases the risk for cancers and tumors. It can cause seizures. It affects hormone production. It affects heart function. It damages the blood-brain barrier which keeps toxins and other substances out of the brain, increasing the risk of stroke, auto-immune diseases, and dementia. It may damage the blood-placental barrier. It alters brain waves and affects brain function. There are links to autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, stroke. It causes changes in the blood, like rouleau formation, where RBCs clump together, raising the risk of thrombosis. There are environmental impacts to birds, bees, amphibians, trees, and plants.

In February, the Austrian Medical Association issued a report calling for “normal” limit benchmarks ten million times lower than FCC guidelines. In 2010, an article in the Santa Clara County Medical Association Bulletin summarized some of the research, and in August 2009, the journal Pathophysiology devoted the entire issue to EMF/RF research. By 2003 in Germany, over 2000 health care professionals signed the Freiburg Appeal, warning about health changes related to wireless technology use. In 2008, the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection warned that our children’s future is at risk from cell phone use. In France, Austria, Taiwan, Switzerland, England, Belgium, Israel, and by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, actions are being taken to warn and protect the public and protect children.

But not in America. Military and Industry pressure, FCC, EPA, and FDA complicity, junk science (e.g. the Danish cell phone study), and mainstream media silence keep the public thinking everything is fine. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and a catastrophic health crisis waits around the corner.

The World Health Organization declared this radiation a Class 2B carcinogen last year, in the same category as DDT and lead. Is that what we want for our children? What an enormous cost our society is willing to pay for these “convenient” devices. How convenient is a brain tumor or a damaged child?

Wireless technology – boon or disaster. It’s our children and our future that is at stake.

For more information,
Citizens for Safe Technology www.citizensforsafetechnology.org
Cellular Phone Task Force www.cellphonetaskforce.org
Escuela Sin Wi-fi www.escuelasinwifi.org — Spanish
Radiation Education www.radiationeducation.com — by and for kids
H.E.S.E. Project www.hese-project.org — multi-lingual

Self-reliance: Why building owners should go off the grid
Posted by Jim Sinopoli on Wednesday Jun 6th at 3:00am GreenBiz.ocm

[Editor’s Note: As managing principal of Smart Buildings, Jim Sinopoli discusses the benefits of using a microgrid to generate power.]

Centralized power plants have been around since the 1880s. More than a century later, we’re starting to see growth of microgrids — decentralized or distributed generation of power at individual buildings, primarily through renewable sources such as solar panels or wind turbines. With microgrids, real estate developers, building owners or the local community builds the power grid for their large development, industrial park, campus or even an entire neighborhood. No longer just a new concept, microgrids have moved beyond the pilot phase – they are now.commercialized with roughly 300 microgrids operational worldwide.

Overview
Within a microgrid are small power generators such as traditional fossil fuel generators, photovoltaic, wind and fuel cells. Different sources of power generation improve the microgrid’s reliability. The microgrid may be able to operate independently (such as in remote villages or military bases) or it could be connected to a larger utility power grid, in which case the microgrid then appears as one customer to the larger grid. The organization and management of the microgrid could be a cooperative arrangement for a community, coordinated by developers, or it may just be a large campus with one owner.

Microgrids improve the reliability of the older grid and the overall power system as well. Locally generated power lessens the burden on centralized generation and related transmission and distribution systems. Energy losses in the transmission process, which are significant in the larger grid, are negligible with a microgrid.

Potential Benefits
Microgrids will soon be a reality for each of us involved with designing, constructing, operating and managing buildings. So why would a developer or building owner be interested in a microgrid? Here are some compelling reasons:

Smartphone pictures pose privacy risks

Plant’s problems mobilize local anti-nuclear activists, residents and officials for the first time since the early ’80s.
By Elizabeth Douglass, InsideClimate News [1]
Jun 14, 2012
Home Page Title:
Nuclear Mishaps Awaken Activists
Plant’s problems mobilize local anti-nuclear activists, residents and officials for the first time since the early ’80s.

By Elizabeth Douglass, InsideClimate News

Ongoing troubles at Southern California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant have galvanized area residents, city officials and environmental groups—putting an emphatic end to a complacency that was unusual for a densely populated region with a nuclear plant in its midst.

These days, public meetings about San Onofre [3] are jammed with residents and media outlets. Local groups are calling for the plant’s closure, city councils are demanding assurances about safety, Friends of the Earth [4] and other national groups are re-engaged, and the actions and statements of both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [5] (NRC) and operator Southern California Edison [6] (SCE) are being examined like never before.

San Onofre’s most recent problem—a leak and excessive wear inside its new steam generators—is so troubling that both reactors have been shut down. Last week, SCE said the plant will stay off line through August, extending the outage to seven months and forcing utilities to cover the power loss during hot summer weather.

“It’s a new ballgame out there,” said Rochelle Becker, executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility [7], a San Luis Obispo-based group that focuses on California’s two operating nuclear power plants. “Now you’ve got a community that’s speaking out and that’s not going away, and you’ve got legislators who are concerned.”

This kind of scrutiny has been the norm in communities surrounding nuclear plants in New York, Vermont and even Central California, where the state’s other nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon [8], is located near San Luis Obispo.

Nuclear headache: What to do with 65,000 tons of spent fuel?
By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com

In a blow to the nuclear energy industry, a federal appeals court on Friday threw out a rule allowing plants to store spent nuclear fuel onsite for decades after they’ve closed, and ordered regulators to study the risks involved with that storage — 65,000 tons now spread across the country, and growing at 2,000 tons a year.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission “apparently has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository,” the unanimous ruling stated. “If the government continues to fail in its quest to establish one, then SNF (spent nuclear fuel) will seemingly be stored on site at nuclear plants on a permanent basis. The Commission can and must assess the potential environmental effects of such a failure.”

THURSDAY JUN 14, 2012 3:12 PM
Scabs Brought in To Run Nuclear Power Plant During Lockout in Mass.
BY MIKE ELK
On June 5, a number of replacement workers and outside managers were brought in to operate Entergy’s Plymouth Station nuclear power plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts. While the replacement workers have experience working as technicians in other nuclear power plants in the United States, the union claims that the technicians lack the site-specific experience needed to operate a plant as complex as Plymouth Station. One replacement worker who spoke to Working In These Times worries that a mix of replacement workers and Entergy managers with little experience operating the Plymouth Station could cause a catastrophe.

The lockout of 250 workers began after Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 369 and Entergy were unable to agree to a contract. Entergy had pushed for the elimination of disability insurance, of life insurance for workers over age 55, and of seniority in the plant, as well as for cuts to workers’ retirement and medical plans. The company also wanted to maintain the right to make unilateral changes to workers’ retirement and medical plans whenever it wanted.

“What we want is protection down the road for our family” says union member John Barilaro. “It’s a risky business and people do get sick. And they really don’t care. They are just concerned about the bottom line.”

Entergy locks outs nuclear power plant workers in Massachusetts

By Kate Randall
11 June 2012 – World Socialist Website

Entergy Corporation locked out workers at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Massachusetts on Tuesday. The company escorted workers from the plant at midnight, and barred others from entering the plant for the morning shift.

More than 240 members of Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 369 are affected by the lockout. Several hundred unionized workers, including technical and engineering workers, remain on the job. Entergy is continuing operation of the nuclear facility utilizing contractors and management personnel at a reduced level of staffing, with some reportedly sleeping inside the plant.

New Smartphone Comes With Radiation Detector

Jaymi Heimbuch
Technology / Gadgets
May 29, 2012
The concern over being aware of radiation contamination has gotten to the point that a new smart phone has been introduced that offers the capability as an accessory. Softbank unveiled a new phone that has a built-in radiation detector.
According to Reuters, “Mobile phone operator Softbank Corp said on Tuesday it would soon begin selling smartphones with radiation detectors, tapping into concerns that atomic hotspots remain along Japan’s eastern coast more than a year after the Fukushima crisis.”

Softbank’s president stated, “The threat from the nuclear accident cannot be seen by the human eye and continues to be a concern for many people, especially for mothers with small children.”

Essentially the phone will have customized IC chips that measure radiation levels in microsieverts per hour. A user can test a location, and keep track of what levels were recorded at each tested location. We can imagine that with the sheer level of fear about contamination, this could be a popular selling feature for the phone. Who knows, we might see the feature pop up in smart phones in other parts of the world as concern over the safety of nuclear power grows.

WE WON!! BREDL’s post on waste confidence victory!!!

FROM: Lou Zeller
RE: VICTORY on our petition of nuclear waste disposal

Today the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in our favor on nuclear waste! In NRC parlance, the issue is “waste confidence”; that is, how sure is the industry that it can manage nuclear reactor waste.

The Court vacated the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s waste confidence decision and remanded it back to the NRC for an environmental assessment or EIS on the environmental consequences of failing to establish a nuclear waste repository. Also, the Court ruled for the State of NY that the NRC’s analysis of temporary spent fuel storage impacts at reactor sites was insufficient. The court remanded on both the issues of (a) potential for future leakage and (b) potential for catastrophic fires.

The NRC has put out an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that would allow storage of spent fuel at reactor sites for 200-300 years. Today, the court kicked out two legs of the stool.

On February 10, 2011 Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League helped set this challenge in motion based on our interventions in nuclear power plant licenses. We provided standing and evidence from our license interventions at Bellefonte (AL), WS Lee (SC), North Anna (VA) and Vogtle (GA). The other two clients were Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, and Riverkeepers, Inc.

We thank Arjun Makhijani who provided a very thorough and hard-hitting expert report for our comments on the waste confidence decision and Geoff Fettus at NRDC, who collaborated with Diane Curran on the appellate brief. Most of all, we thank uber-attorney Diane Curran of Harmon Curran Spielberg and Eisenburg, LLP for their dedicated, excellent and tireless work done pro bono for us all.

We appreciate working with Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Riverkeepers; Teamwork pays off!

Today’s DC Circuit decision and our 2011 letter are attached.

Lou
Louis Zeller, Executive Director
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League
PO Box 88
Glendale Springs, NC 28629
BREDL@skybest.com

FUKUSHIMA: Pacific Ocean Will Not Dilute Dumped Radioactive Water
According to Previously-Secret 1955 Government Report:
by Washington’s Blog

The operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has been dumping something like a thousand tons per day of radioactive water into the Pacific ocean.

Remember, the reactors are “riddled with meltdown holes”, building 4 – with more radiation than all nuclear bombs ever dropped or tested – is missing entire walls, and building 3 is a pile of rubble.

The whole complex is leaking like a sieve, and the rivers of water pumped into the reactors every day are just pouring into the ocean (with only a slight delay).

Most people assume that the ocean will dilute the radiation from Fukushima enough that any radiation reaching the West Coast of the U.S. will be low.

…Indeed, an island of Japanese debris the size of California is hitting the West Coast of North America … and some of it is radioactive.
[map and animation inserts]

Remembering Rosalie Bertell
Author, distinguished scientist, environmental activist, international expert on radiation, sister of the Grey Nuns
by Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri

“There is no such thing as a radiation exposure that will not do damage. There is a hundred per cent possibility that there will be damage to cells. The next question is: which damage do you care about?” Dr. Rosalie Bertell, 1990

Dr. Rosalie Bertell, author, distinguished American scientist, environmental activist, international expert on radiation, and sister of the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, died yesterday after a long illness. She was 83. She had been battling cancer over the past two years. According to Sister Julia C. Lanigan, president of the Grey Nuns, Dr. Bertell “was hospitalized this past week for advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

In 1984, Dr. Bertell founded the Canadian-based International Institute of Concern for Public Health, dedicated to helping many communities “assess and improve their environmental health status.” She was also a founding member of the International Commission of Health Professionals and the International Association of Humanitarian Medicine. In addition, she was Director of the International Medical Commission on the 1984 Union Carbide methyl isocyanate [MIC] gas leak disaster in Bhopal, India, which investigated the horrific chemical aftermath. The devastation to the environment and people still continues 28 years later.

Dr. Bertell also assisted the people of the Philippines with problems stemming from toxic waste left by the US military on their abandoned military bases, “worked with the government of Ireland to hold Britain responsible for the radioactive pollution of the Irish Sea, and assisted Gulf War Veterans and Iraqi citizens dealing with illnesses caused by the Gulf War. She served as a consultant to local, provincial and federal governments, unions and citizen organizations.”

From AceHoffman.com
6/15/2012
Dear Readers,

This morning I learned of the passing yesterday (June 14th, 2012) of Dr. Rosalie Bertell, author of some of the most widely-read articles and books about nuclear issues including No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth. She was 83.

Dr. Bertell was a Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart, the founder of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health (IICPH), the recipient of numerous honors (such as the Right Livelihood Award in 1986) and held several honorary degrees.

In the nuclear industry, every life has an exact value, and every vote can be bought. (That’s one reason so many nuclear waste sites are located in sparsely populated poor communities. It’s cheaper.)

A life’s value is measured in dollars in America, yen, in Japan, euros in most of Europe, and so on. The exact amount is plugged into various computer programs which then calculate the expected loss from an “unexpected” accident.

(That’s why they know not to transport spent nuclear fuel from San Onofre through Los Angeles, and wanted to build a “toll road” to Yucca Mountain instead (State Route 241 extension straight from SanO to Las Vegas/Yucca Mountain). But Yucca Mountain is on hold, and so the toll road, heavily opposed by locals for other reasons, is also on hold. But if Yucca Mountain is ever built, then Route 241 is sure to be bulldozed through shortly thereafter… because of a computer program which puts an exact value on each human life.)

But it is impossible calculate the value to society of the late Dr. Rosalie Bertell, who passed away peacefully from “severe respiratory distress due to advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease” (see below for the official death announcement from GNSH). (You can be sure she was not a smoker; she had merely been breathing our global polluted air all her life. So are you.)

Dr. Bertell was a biometrician, environmental epidemiologist, and cancer researcher. For a decade she was senior cancer research scientist at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Dr. Bertell wrote and spoke about Depleted Uranium (“you’re basically throwing radioactive waste at your enemy…”) and many other topics. After the Union-Carbide chemical spill in Bhopal, India, she went there as Director of the International Medical Commission to study the effects of that disaster (the largest non-nuclear industrial accident in history). She also looked into the technical aspects of “HAARP” (America’s “High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program”), of which she wrote in 1996: “The ability of the HAARP / Spacelab/ rocket combination to deliver a very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, [is] frightening.”

And every so often she wrote to me — about a dozen times in the last 15 years, the last time being about a month after Fukushima. Every letter was a treasure, and two are shown below.

It is impossible to calculate the value of someone who so relentlessly spoke truth to power, science to dogma, fact to falsehoods, and reason to propaganda. And was so technically savvy while doing it.

We will miss Dr. Bertell with all our collective hearts. She was awesome.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

———————————————–
At 09:32 AM 4/13/2011 -0400, the month after Fukushima, Dr. Rosalie Bertell wrote:

Dear Ace,

I am telling people to use distilled water. It can leach out the radioactive heavy metals from cooked products. Fruits can be soaked in it. If there is some internal contamination it is safe to drink even for a pregnant woman. Do not reuse the cooking water but throw it on the ground where no food is raised. Internally keep up hydration so that the nuclear debris does not go back into storage in the bone. See enclosure!

Rosalie Bertell
————————————————-

My favorite letter from Dr. Bertell was this one, of course:

At 02:36 PM 11/27/2008 -0500, Dr. Rosalie Bertell wrote:

Dear Ace, Thank you for sending me a copy of: The Code Killers.
It is quite a work of condensing and making clear what has been very obscure
(deliberately) and complex! I appreciate your work! Thank you! […]

Rosalie Bertell

(The Code Killers is available as a free download from: www.acehoffman.org )

From: “Rosalie Bertell, GNSH”
Subject: Notice Re: Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 08:55:14 -0400

Dear Friends and Colleagues of Rosalie Bertell,

It is with sadness that I‚m writing to inform you that our dear Sister Rosalie died early this morning, June 14, 2012, after a week or so in the hospital with severe respiratory distress due to advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Despite her illness, she remained in good spirits and most interested in all of the works of justice she strove to support throughout her life right to the end. She died very peacefully.

Her funeral Mass will be here at our Motherhouse Chapel on Monday, June 17th at 10 a.m.

We will be remembering all of you as well as Sister Rosalie in our prayers that day, along with all the people who were victims of nuclear disasters and the many other societal ills that were the concerns of her heart and her life‚s work at the International Institute of Concern for Public Health.

Sincerely,

Sister Julia
Sister Julia C. Lanigan, GNSH
President
Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart
1750 Quarry Road
Yardley, PA 19067
215-968-4236
Website: www.greynun.org

Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart
Creating a Compassionate World

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To help keep EON’s work going, please check out all the support options on our Donation Page or you can also send a check made out to EON to EON, POB 1047, Bolinas, CA
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