The US and Japan are trying to raise acceptable radiation exposure limits. "If you can't decrease the water level, you elevate the bridge," says pediatrician and author Dr. Helen Caldicott. On today's podcast, Arnie and Helen discuss the associated health risks of various types of radioactive releases, how regulators and the nuclear industry are downplaying those releases, and the current state of the Fukushima clean up. "The recovery of the site will go nowhere as long as Tokyo Electric is in charge," says Arnie.

24 Mar 2013 l radioecoshock

From New York City: a dose of the awful truth from the long-term nuclear guardian, Dr. Helen Caldicott. In her time to speak on the second anniversary of the Fukushima Dai-ichi triple melt-down in Japan - Helen lays it out.

Due to increased radiation, toxic chemicals and climate change, life on earth is in the Intensive Care Unit.

Caldicott says it's up to us - we are all physicians for the Earth now. It's a powerful speech from a famous force for sanity.

Recorded at the symposium "The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident" by the Helen Caldicott Foundation and Physicians for Nuclear Responsibility. Edited for radio by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock. 31 minutes.

Download/listen here:http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/nuclear/ES_Caldicott_0313_LoFi.mp3

Symposium Update: online archive now available at live stream link: http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf

The online permanent archive is available now: Thanks to all who attended the symposium in person, and to the over 4300 people in more in 650 cities around the world who attended online. We have had many requests and questions for/about the online archive. It is now up at the Live Stream link: http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf . 

Click on presenter names to go directly to any individual presentation. Click on Documents to access available power points. Please share widely, but remember to give proper attribution to the speakers and their colleagues if that has been requested.

We are pleased to make this permanent archive available for free, but we still have work we would like to do. Among other things, we would like to translate the presentations into japanese and subtitle them so that the country under the most urgent duress from the Fukushima nuclear disaster will have greater and better access. To this end we ask that if you feel this is a service you appreciate, and that is useful to you and others, please consider donating toward our work on making it available to a greater audience. Even $5 from every person who views it would help go a long way towards making further translation possible.

Japan's long war to "shut down Fukushima" will never end in near human lifetimes. The damage it has done, the waste it has created, the radiation released and still releasing, will travel around the world, leak into the ground and water, contaminate Japan, in human terms, forever.The fact that some of this contamination will be called "low" or "slow" will not lessen the pain and extent of this damage one bit. 

The tanks from the cold war are leaking, the legacy of cancer from atomic testing is ongoing. Underneath its cracked sarcophagus Chernobyl is still happening. No nuclear accident ever really ends except, perhaps, in geological time frames. The waste and multigenerational mutagenic harm remain the legacy of the greed and hubris of the human race.

Reuters Insight l 5 March, 2013

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-japan-fukushima-idUSBRE92417Y20130308

"The Japan Center for Economic Research, a Tokyo-based think tank, has estimated that decontamination costs alone in the Fukushima residential area could balloon to as much as $600 billion.

Shutting down the 40-year-old Fukushima plant itself poses unique challenges. A Tepco-government roadmap envisages starting to extract spent fuel from the most badly damaged of the station's seven storage pools, which contain 11,417 new and used fuel assemblies, only later this year. Melted fuel debris is to be removed from the reactors from 2021 and the entire project wrapped up within 30 to 40 years.

Officials say the project is mostly on schedule and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government wants to speed up the timetable. Experts, however, say it may already be too ambitious.

"It's a pipe dream," Michio Ishikawa said of the four-decade target shortly before he retired last year as chief adviser at the Japan Nuclear Technology Institute, adding it could take decades more..."

Read full text

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-japan-fukushima-idUSBRE92417Y20130308

Symposium
シンポジウム
Save the Date:
ご案内

Update: Live stream link will be-   http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf

Symposium: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident l March 11-12, 2013
福島原発事故の医学的・生態学的影響
The New York Academy of Medicine, New York City, NY
2013年3月11日・12日
ニューヨーク医学アカデミー

A unique, two-day symposium at which an international panel of leading medical and biological scientists, nuclear engineers, and policy experts will make presentations on and discuss the bio-medical and ecological consequences of the Fukushima disaster, will be held at The New York Academy of Medicine on March 11-12, 2013, the second anniversary of the accident. The public is welcome.
福島原発事故から2周年にあたる2013年3月11日・12日に、ニューヨーク医学アカデミーにおいて、医学、生物学、原子力工学、政策の各分野で世界を代表する専門家が集い、福島原発震災の生物医学的・生態学的影響に関して講演と討論を行います。一般の皆さんのご参加をお待ちしています。（英語のみの予定）

Chaired by Donald Louria, MD, Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health of the University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey, the symposium is a project of The Helen Caldicott Foundation and co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility.
ドナルド・ルーリア（医学博士、ニュージャージー医科歯科大学予防医学部・名誉学部長）がシンポジウムの議長。ヘレン･カルディコット財団が主催。

 
Registration Information: Registration and check-in will begin at 8am on both days. The program will begin at 9am. Please arrive early to register or check in.
登録方法

Registration in advance is $60. This includes attendance and lunch for both days. Please fill out the on-line form and choose the secure PayPal option to pay.
事前登録は60ドル（2日間の参加費・ランチ代を含む）。オンライン申込書に記入し、PayPalで支払いをお願いします。

Students with a valid student ID: $50 (includes attendance and lunch for both days). Student ID must be presented at the door at check-in.
学生は50ドル（2日間の参加費・ランチ代を含む）。学生証を当日受付で提示して下さい。

Registration at the door: $60 (includes attendance only for both days). A limited number of à la carte lunches may be available for purchase. As time for networking is limited, we encourage people to register in advance in order to take advantage of the complimentary lunch and use this time to speak with participants and other attendees.
当日会場での登録は60ドル（2日間の参加費のみで、ランチはなし）。ランチは当日、会場で買うこともできますが、数が限られています。シンポジウム当日は講演以外の時間があまりないので、事前登録をして、講師や他の出席者との対話のためにランチ時間を有効に使うことをお勧めします。

Registration forms must be filled out completely and accurately in order to insure easy check-in. The registration process will generate an e-ticket. This ticket MUST be presented at the door. If you lose your ticket you must provide photo ID that matches your registration information.
登録用紙は、受付をスムーズに行うために、正確に全部記入してください。オンライン登録の後、各自がEチケットを印刷して、当日受付でお見せ下さい。Eチケットをなくした場合、登録時の情報が入った写真付きのIDを提示して下さい。

Food preference: Vegetarian or non-Vegetarian. At the time of registration you MUST specify whether you are requesting a vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal. Your request will be valid for both days. You cannot request a vegetarian meal for one day but not the other.
食事の選択：ベジタリアンか、ベジタリアンでないか、登録時にリクエストしてください。リクエストした後は、2日間とも同じ種類の食事になります。
 
To Register and puchase tickets click on link below, enter ticket quantity, and click "Buy Now":
登録とチケットの購入は、チケット数を入れて、Purchaseをクリックして下さい。

 TO REGISTER & PURCHASE TICKETS CLICK HERE

Complete information about the event, including directions and hotel information, can be found in english at: http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/symposium.html

For further information about the symposium contact: Mali Lightfoot, Executive Director, The Helen Caldicott Foundation.
Email: MaliLightfoot@gmail.com, t) 617-650-5048

シンポジウムに関するご質問は、Mali Lightfoot, Executive Director, The Helen Caldicott Foundationまでお願いします。
メール：MaliLightfoot@gmail.com 電話：+1-617-650-5048

The presentations from the Fukushima Ocean Impacts 
Symposium held in Tokyo on Nov 12-13, 2012:

http://www.whoi.edu/website/fukushima-symposium/presentation-files

Ken Buesseler will be presenting at the symposium: The Medical and Ecological Impacts of Fukushima March 11-12th, in NYC. Details on that upcoming symposium here: http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/symposium.html

Read his paper below.

Ken Buesseler (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) and Michio Aoyama 
(Meteorological Research Institute (JMA), Japan): "Fukushima Results" 
(Fukushima-derived radionuclides in the ocean) 
Direct link to pdf (FYI, this is a download for those of you who do not like automatic downloads):
http://www.whoi.edu/fileserver.do?id=138584&pt=2&p=141569

A related presentation:

Jota Kanda, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology: "Long-term 
Sources: To what extent are marine sediments, coastal groundwater, and 
rivers a source of ongoing contamination?"
Direct link to pdf (this is an automatic download link):
http://www.whoi.edu/fileserver.do?id=138570&pt=2&p=141589


Public colloquium held on Nov 14th:
http://www.whoi.edu/tokyoevent/

Attempts to decontaminate Fukushima Prefecture  have been plagued by failure, corruption, cover-ups, and shoddy work. Contamination has been spread around, not cleaned up according to this 3 part report by Asahi Shimbum.

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN l January 04, 2013

Cleanup crews in Fukushima Prefecture have dumped soil and leaves contaminated with radioactive fallout into rivers. Water sprayed on contaminated buildings has been allowed to drain back into the environment. And supervisors have instructed workers to ignore rules on proper collection and disposal of the radioactive waste.

Decontamination is considered a crucial process in enabling thousands of evacuees to return to their homes around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and resume their normal lives.

But the decontamination work witnessed by a team of Asahi Shimbun reporters shows that contractual rules with the Environment Ministry have been regularly and blatantly ignored, and in some cases, could violate environmental laws....

CROOKED CLEANUP (1): Radioactive waste dumped into rivers during decontamination work in Fukushima

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201301040058

CROOKED CLEANUP (2): Some decontamination workers sorry for following orders

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201301040073

CROOKED CLEANUP (3): Reporters document extent of shoddy decontamination practices

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201301040076