Comments on: Dr. Helen Caldicott: Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown Much Worse Than Chernobyl

By: Diane Whitmire

Diane Whitmire — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:31:33 +0000

I hope all those who understand the consequences of nuclear and breeder reactors and the threat of them, will please sign the petition to Remove Nuclear Reactors in America by 2022 at http://www.change.org. If you agree with the petition, please sign it and pass via Facebook, Tweets, and other social blogs, etc. I’m a senior and this is the best I can do. Thank you!

By: Maurice

Maurice — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:20:09 +0000

I would imagine it poisons both the soil and ground water; and animals and humans feel the effects for decades, if not longer.

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:14:47 +0000

Can anyone tell me what happens if the nuclear fuel enters the ground and can anything be done about it, this is a worrying factor that I can’t find any info on.
I would like to thank Dr Caldicott for all the work she does on nuclear issues.

By: Maurice

Maurice — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:54:07 +0000

Hi Helen,

First of all, I feel very humbled that you read and replied to this article. I am sorry for the adverse comment made by one of the readers, but like all sites where readers comments are invited, not all are favorable, unfortunately. I agree that a lot is being “undisclosed” by the Japanese in the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdown incident. But I wonder whether this might also happen elsewhere, including the USA and also Australia. Governments often try to cover things up to either allay fears from their citizens; as well as to prevent too much adverse publicity that would result in fewer tourists and other people coming to their countries and the boycotting their food and other exports. Keep up the good work and hopefully this will help spread the message regarding the dangers of nuclear energy.

By: helen caldicott

helen caldicott — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:07:33 +0000

How dare you asteroid ,call me a coal industry shill when I wrote a definitive book on global warming and the evils of coal etc in 1992 called IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET, which has recently been updated and published by WW Norton, and have interviewed James Hansen among many other notable scientists on coal and global warming on my weekly radio program IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET that can be downloaded at ifyoulovethisplanet.org

By: Maurice

Maurice — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 09:12:42 +0000

Is it really fear mongering, or stating the unpleasant facts about an energy power source that can have very dangerous consequences for people and animals if an accident or natural disaster occurs. Speaking of natural disasters, this almost occurred recently in New Mexico when a nuclear research facility there was in danger of being burned in a series of wildfires that were in the vicinity. Fortunately, this didn’t happen; but it could have happened.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:41:17 +0000

About the alarmist thyroid cancer statement here… what’s the cure rate for those cancers under treatment which is being provided? Could it be 99+%? Isn’t the highly effective cure for thyroid cancer the administration of high doses of radioactive iodine? Thyroid cancer patients do not suffer additional cancers from the radiation treatments used to cure them. This woman has made her life ruthlessly fear mongering and cashing in on that fear mongering. Yes radiation contamination from nuclear plants is bad… but far more radiation exposure to the public comes from the burning of coal which is naturally rich in radioactive minerals.

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 04:05:30 +0000

Renewable energy MUST sustain a normal society. It is dangerous to assume our lack of conservation and energy demands deserve to be sustained. We don’t NEED half of what we use. It’s not nukes vs. coal. It’s all about conservation and living within our means. This is the root of our problem and it’s a human condition which we must learn to accept.

By: Maurice Picow

Maurice Picow — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 07:41:15 +0000

This is the “brave new world” that we now live in. Just think what would be the case in the aftermath of a “dirty bomb” – or worse.

By: Asteroid Miner

Asteroid Miner — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:00:32 +0000

Dr. Helen Caldicott is a coal industry shill. She is trying to get nuclear power plants replaced with coal fired power plants. Chernobyl put as much radiation into the environment as a coal fired power plant does in 7 years and 5 months.

Coal contains: URANIUM, ARSENIC, LEAD, MERCURY, Antimony, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Selenium, Barium, Fluorine, Silver, Beryllium, Iron, Sulfur, Boron, Titanium, Cadmium, Magnesium, Thorium, Calcium, Manganese, Vanadium, Chlorine, Aluminum, Chromium, Molybdenum and Zinc. There is so much of these elements in coal that cinders and coal smoke are actually valuable ores. We should be able to get all the uranium and thorium we need to fuel nuclear power plants for centuries by using cinders and smoke as ore. Unburned Coal also contains BENZENE, THE CANCER CAUSER. We could get all of our uranium and thorium from coal ashes and cinders. The carbon content of coal ranges from 96% down to 25%, the remainder being rock of various kinds. See:
http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html

“Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII – Phase 2” National Academies Press page 66, 331, 80, 70
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11340.html
page 66 in pdf or page 49 in hardcopy: “[T]he extrapolation of dose-response data for genomic instability to radiation-induced cancers in the low-dose range <100 mGy is not warranted." 100mGy= 100 millisieverts = 10 rem.

If I lived at Fukushima, and my house had not been damaged by the tsunami, I would not evacuate. The radiation from the reactor has not exceeded natural background radiation in many inhabited places on Earth.

book: “Power to Save the World; The Truth About Nuclear Energy” by Gwyneth Cravens, 2007 Gwyneth Cravens is a former anti-nuclear activist.

Page 77: Natural gas contains radon, a radioactive gas.

Page 86: Among 80000 nuclear bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cancer rate was only 6% higher than expected. Radiation is very weak at causing cancer.

Page 98: There is a table of millirems per year from the
background in a list of inhabited places.
Chernobyl: 490 millirem/year
Guarapari, Brazil: 3700 millirem/year [=3.7 rem]
Tamil Nadu, India: 5300 millirem/year [=5.3 rem]
Ramsar, Iran: 8900 to 13200 millirem/year [=8.9 to 13.2 rem]
All are natural except for Chernobyl.

Don’t take iodine pills unless your doctor tells you to. You are not getting enough radioactive iodine [iodine131 or Iodine 129] from Fukushima to cause you any harm. There has always been natural background radiation. We date ancient mummies by the radioactive carbon they ate thousands of years ago. The half life of iodine131 is 8 days. That means that every 8 days, iodine becomes only half as radioactive. Iodine129 has a half life of 17 million years. It decays so slowly that it is almost not radioactive. Iodine 131 is the highly radioactive one. Cesium has a more dangerous half life because its half life is comparable to half a human lifetime, but cesium is not an element needed by living things. Iodine pills have side effects.

EVACUATE DENVER!!!!
If you live in Chernobyl the total radiation dose you get each year is 390 millirem. That’s natural plus residual from the accident and fire. In Denver, Colorado, the natural dose is over 1000 millirem/year. Denver gets more than 2.56 times as much radiation as Chernobyl! But Denver has a low cancer rate.

Calculate your annual radiation dose:
http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/dosechart/

The Average American gets 361 millirems/year. Smokers add 280 millirems/year from lead210. Radon accounts for 200 mrem/year.
http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/rp/factsheets/factsheets-htm/fs10bkvsman.htm

http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/doses-daily-lives.html

See: “RENEWABLE ENERGY – CANNOT SUSTAIN AN ENERGY-INTENSIVE SOCIETY.”
http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/RE.html
by Ted Trainer. University of NSW, Kensington.