Japanese Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima

I'm not a nuclear expert, but I do specialize in environmental impact avoidance, mitigation, and restoration. So I'm always looking at the relationship between humans and the environment, especially during disasters.

As we watch the nuclear disaster go from bad to worse following the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, I've been shocked and disappointed by the efforts of the media to downplay the risks. It reminds me of the propaganda of the Bush Administration leading up to the Iraq war--easy to see through as B.S., if you are paying attention.

Expert after expert from the nuclear industry has appeared on CNN and the other news networks telling us not to worry, downplaying the disaster with almost a cavalier attitude. It seems like in the absence of reliable information, the one talking point everyone agreed on was to try to avoid saying anything that could cause a panic--regardless of whether panicking was necessary or a good idea.

The news reports go from bad to worse and the information gets revised daily.
The comparisons with Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were ubiquitous, with all the experts saying it was much more like TMI. Now we hear that it has released as much as 50% of the cesium and 20% of the iodine as Chernobyl. After Chernobyl, PRBO Conservation Science documented songbird reproduction failure at Palomarin Field Station in Point Reyes, California--and Chernobyl was twice as far upwind as Japan! Large areas of the Japanese country may have to be quarantined as was done in Ukraine after Chernobyl. This link is well worth reading, citing significant human infant mortality as well that is not linear, but significant at low doses. You can also watch an excellent YouTube Video of an interview with Dave DeSante here. There were over 40,000 deaths in the US due to Chernobyl. The atmosphere is like a river (of air, not water), and we are all living downstream.

Experts repeatedly said that the radioactivity in the ocean is nothing to worry about--but how to they know? When has this happened before? With high levels of radioactivity in the ocean 1000 feet away from the plant, what is happening to the marine life and the food chain? Shouldn't we expect to see animal mutations, much like what happened at Chernobyl?

As an environmental and medical professional, I see two primary areas of concern:

1. Containment
The containment has been sloppy and ineffective, and while radiation in the atmosphere is miniscule (we are told), it is being spread far and wide by larger objects such as people. What about wildlife--birds and marine mammals--that are exposed, then go elsewhere? All you hear about on the news is averages, but (until watching the DeSante interview) my main concern is with the extremes--the pockets of high radiation concentration that will get spread around and cause locally high exposures. Obviously the main concerns are local and decrease rapidly as you get farther away, but the outliers could be quite dangerous. Even the low levels reaching the US are going to be a problem for the immuno-compromised: DeSante makes a point near the end of the interview that background levels of radiation already cause living things on our planet problems, and when you increase those levels, the effects increase logarithmically. DeSante also notes that human infant mortality spiked during the 4 months after Chernobyl, and then again 9 months later when the fetuses that were first developing during Chernobyl were born. Chernobyl was sealed in concrete in days--Fukushima continues to spew radiation as we approach a month after the first releases.

2. Plutonium
The most toxic element ever created by man, this element does not occur in nature--it is pure nuclear waste. The media assures us that the radiation reaching our shores on atmospheric currents is a fraction of what we are exposed to from nature, airline flights, and x-rays. But what if we ingest a particle? And what if one of those particles is plutonium? This uniquely toxic substance has no business existing. It is so toxic we should immediately stop creating it and storing it at nuclear plants all over the world.

My heart goes out to the Japanese people, especially the workers exposed to high amounts of radiation that are sacrificing themselves to save the rest of us from a complete meltdown. No one should ever have to be asked to do this--make the ultimate sacrifice--due to corporate greed and the need for utilities and governments to play with fire; to risk all of us for the opportunity to work with something as "sexy" and "prestigious" as nuclear energy. As a firefighter, I don't want this technology to even exist, because I never want to be called to sacrifice myself to save us from it--it is too dangerous. I don't want to risk my life because of the bad decisions of others. The #1 priority when responding to a call is "scene safety": make sure it is safe to enter. When you can't even get past #1, you can't respond. We should have no exceptions to that rule. Our firefighters risk enough, and bend that rule all the time already. They should not be asked to do more.

If Yucca Mountain in Nevada had been opened as a nuclear repository, I could have been called to accidents involving trucks carrying nuclear waste on the way there passing near or through Mono County. But if radiation were released in such an accident, all you can do is leave. Walk away. Cordon off from access and use the part of the earth that is affected. Hope it isn't too bad. And work to stop the use of this technology before accidents like this happen.

It is not worth it. An accident like this every 25 years somewhere around the globe is not worth it at all. We must phase out this technology before we create any more sacrifice zones. There isn't enough room for us on the planet already. Lets not make the habitable area of the planet any smaller through our recklessness.

We become firefighters because we want to be heroes. We are willing to put ourselves at risk in order to help people we don't know. Not to martyr ourselves for nuclear industry profits.

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