Questions for Government, Nuclear Experts and Media

Questions for Government, Nuclear Experts and Media
From Dan Youra, author of RadiationSurvivor.com

I have a few questions for you government officials, nuclear experts and thousands of reporters throughout the world concerning your daily reports on radioactivity blowing out of the exploded nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan.

I want to be upfront about my self interest here. I am one of the canaries sniffing the air and sipping the water at the entrance to the mine on the upper, lefthand corner of the lower, forty-eight United States. Whereas, Alaska and Hawaii, a few thousand miles to the north and west, are early warning states, Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, where I live, regularly gets the first whiff of weather from Japan to make landfall on the contiguous United States.

You officials, experts and reporters drum it into our brains that the levels of radioactivity from the world’s most damaged nuclear complex are low, tiny, minuscule, safe, not harmful to humans, below acceptable limits and within safety margins.

QUESTION: At what point precisely will we know when the radioactivity levels have moved from your low and safe levels to the not-so-low and not-so-safe levels? We, John Q and Jane Q Public, get your point that everyday we are bombarded by, what you call, benign background radiation from bricks, microwave ovens and stars. QUESTION: Dr. Gupta, are you trying to tell us that breathing a tiny spec of uranium into our lungs is not as dangerous to our health as sniffing a brick of your benign background radiation?

We hear you say that background radiation doesn’t hurt us, but my dermatologist tells me to cover my body and wear my baseball cap when I am outdoors in the background radiation?

QUESTION: Dr. Regina, according to the Surgeon General’s office how many human beings get skin cancer from the sun each year and, thus, die from background radiation?

Pardon me for pointing out that the EPA hasn’t been real clear on the cumulative nature of radiation. I’m learning that it sneaks in through my nose and lodges in my lungs. It gurgles into my gut. It pours through my pores and all accumulates into potentially lethal doses. QUESTION: Ms. Jackson, at what point do all your low, tiny, minuscule, safe, not harmful, acceptable, within limits accumulate in my body to “Woops! too much, too late, too bad?” Would two months of "tiny" equal too late? Five months? Five years?

You report that the nuclear mess may take years or decades to clean up? I heard one of your experts project that you’ll need 50 to 100 years to clean this up.

QUESTION: Would a few decades of low, minuscule amounts of radioactive particles accumulate in a child’s body to equal too much, too late?

Please forgive us not-so-educated readers and viewers for being a bit unfamiliar with the meanings of the many scientific terms you use to measure the levels of radiation.

QUESTION: Mr. Holdren, is there anyone among you who is a Jargon Czar, who can explain the esoteric world of radiation measurement to us: Rems, millirems, Sieverts (Sv), milliSieverts, microSierverts, Roentgen (R), Gray (Gy), Rad, Curie (Ci), millicurie, microcurie, picocurie, becquerel (Bq), coulomb/kilogram (C/kg), microcoulombs/kilogram (µC/kg), Common Units and SI units?

Officials at Fukushima’s wrecked reactors report that radiation levels in the waste water are 1,000 milleSieverts. A Wall Street Journal article reports that the recording devices used to monitor the radiation at the plant only go up to 1,000 milleSieverts.

QUESTION: Mr. TEPCO, if you were to travel to the sun with my backyard thermometer that goes up to 100 degrees F to measure the temperature of the sun, how hot will you tell me the sun is? 100 degrees F, right? So, how much higher above 1,000 milleSieverts is the radiation really? Can you really answer this, I mean REALLY. And, whatever, how do you what's safe? You don’t know, do you? How do you know what’s safe? You’re guessing, I mean, hoping, right?

We read your reports one day that sea water is 750 times more radioactive than normal, then 7,500 times beyond safe, then 75,000 times off the charts. We hear you tell us that these levels are safe. Are you surprised that we are all confused now and that residents of Tokyo have begun demonstrating against nuclear power? QUESTION: Mr. Prime Minister, could you please tell us what level of radioactivity is NOT SAFE? 750,000 times normal? 7.5 million? 7.5 billion? If the radiation gets to 7.5 billion, is the government going to raise the safe level to 7.5 trillion times?

You can’t blame us – the public – for being a bit confused about how you determine the line between low and high, safe and dangerous, acceptable and intolerable. Exposure to the nuclear death rays in the air is one thing, absorbing the particles which emit them is entirely another dimension to the problem, which nobody is explaining very well.

QUESTION: Can you tell us how many Curies we can breathe, how many coulomb/kilogram we can eat and how many Rems or Sieverts we can absorb through our skin before we are cursed with radiation poisoning and cast into a fate of painful, nuclear death?

Doubtless, the half life thing about radioactive particles is a little tricky to grasp. We hear you assure us that Iodine-131 degrades very fast and disappears in a few days, whereas plutonium hangs out for a few billion years. QUESTION: Larry, What is the difference between the death caused by a quick dying ion, for example Iodine-131, and a slow dying ion, say plutonium 238?

Fukushima operators can’t find a safe place to store the radioactive waste water. The temptation is great to dump it into the ocean and sure enough, that is what they are doing. Your reporting assures us that the ocean is a big place and so the radioactivity will dissipate rapidly and its effects will be harmless on sea life and humans.

QUESTION: Brian, what does General Electric tell NBC to tell you to tell us about the safety of the Pacific Ocean? Since Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were not near an ocean, how do you know for sure what nuclear fallout does to the ocean? Where does a particle of radioactive plutonium hang out for its first billion years? If it gets inside a salmon and two years later I eat the salmon, will it keep me alive for a billion years? Just asking.

A few years ago the scare about toxic mercury taught us how mercury concentrates in tuna as it elevates up the food chain. It is not a difficult leap to understand how radioactive atoms behave in a similar manner, potentially concentrating a more deadly punch in a fillet of salmon than in a microscopic plankton.

QUESTION: Christiane, when you assure us gullible readers and viewers that radioactive seawater is not harmful to humans, you mean before it travels up the food chain, right? What about after? During the 1950s the United States government attempted to educate us dolts about the threat of a Russian atomic bomb. Civil Defense forces in every community warned us citizens of The Big One. As kids, we were drilled on how to dive under our desks at school. Our families were encouraged to build bomb shelters in our basements.

QUESTION: Mr. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, why is there no effort to educate us on the potential threat of the effects of this Japanese blowout? If the Fukushima complex were to hit “criticality” (that is what you call it, right?) would an atomic chain reaction blow hundreds of tons of radioactive material high into the atmosphere? Wouldn’t it rain down all over the northern hemisphere? If a few pounds of plutonium can cause millions of cancer cases, how many cases would a ton cause?

Mr. United Nations, Sir, we are numbed by all your assurances that the Fukushima meltdown is only threatening to the people living within the evacuation zone a few miles from the reactors. QUESTION: What will happen when the Nuclear Dragon’s bad breath forces the evacuation of the Northern Hemisphere? Should we all evacuate to UN Plaza in New York?

Soon the media may have to speculate on a link between the blown up nuclear plant in Japan and radioactive rainwater in California. Can you hear Wolf intoning, “Maybe there’s a potential, unproven, possible, alleged, hypothetical, non collaborated, connection between radioactive milk in Spokane and the cracked containment vessel in Japan?” QUESTION: Why is the Fukushima Big One any less real or less threatening than a commie attack in the 50’s? What should we do when bubbles of nuclear gas are falling onto our heads? Do we dive under our desks?

To my media friends: you like reporting on the cute, little Iodine isotopes with half lives of a few hours or days. Reporting on premature births of deformed babies in west coast hospitals won’t be as fun.

QUESTION: When the devil’s sperm, namely radioactive plutonium, shows up in American women’s wombs and deformed bodies of American babies, will the devil’s handlers release the news to you and will you tell us?

Until the evening news can show photographs of deformed newborns in America’s maternity wards and roll video of children who are not allowed to go outdoors, the Nuclear Concentration Camp won't be real.

QUESTION: How long do you think it will take for the government-science-media cabal to crack and admit that the Fail Safe limit had been breached within the first fews days of the Fukushima explosion?

We’d all like to believe that government officials, scientists, reporters and editors are actual human beings with beating hearts that are capable of experiencing compassion for others.

QUESTION: If this genie can’t be stuck back into the bottle and it kills a few million people, including possibly your own family member or friend, would you feel that you should accept any of the responsibility, the blame, for having failed to alert us in time "to dive under our desks"?

Mr. Bill, you’ve already cost us four weeks of precious, lost time. It is precisely in this early stage, when people need accurate, helpful information to prepare themselves for what is potentially coming. We don’t need condescending pabulum. What we need is for you to use your giant media machine to help people learn how to defend ourselves against radioactive fallout. We want to know how to prepare our bodies to fight the Ion Invasion.

QUESTION: Why don’t you help direct people to information that can save lives? Why don’t you help people become radiation survivors rather than radiation targets?

We planetary plebs need help. We need vital, life-saving information RIGHT NOW! We watch you showcase pink-clad, cancer survivors at rallies on evening news shows. How about giving us a hand, so that more of us can don the pink armor of victory and attend some of your rallies as Radiation Survivors.

QUESTION: Please, can you urge people to go to RadiationSurvivor.com to find helpful information to reduce their risks of nuclear exposure and to increase their chances of being radiation survivors? Go Pink!

I look forward to your answers. Leave a comment on this page or email me at dan [at] youra[dot]com

Thank you,

Dan

Dan Youra is chairman of the board of JC MASH clinics on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Dan worked as managing editor of Current Thought on Peace and War at the United Nations headquarters in New York. He is editor of The Alcohol Distiller’s Manual for Gasohol and Spirits and publisher of RadiationSurvivor.com.