Following the triple explosions and meltdowns at Fukushima
in 2011, Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, bowing to the cultural principle
of face saving, announced that the Olympic games would be held in Japan in
2020, thereby demonstrating to the world that Japan had triumphantly managed
what no nation had managed before, namely overcoming radiation. Does it sound
like an aria from The Mikado? In a less
than musical sense, it was.
Despite the operatics, Tokyo’s upcoming 2020 Olympics next
year are guaranteed to be especially hot. They’re being held in many still
radioactive locations around Tokyo, with events like swimming, triathlon.
slalom canoeing and volley ball exceptionally hot. The map below gives sports
fans all the particulars. And whereas presumably PM Abe has plans to insure participating
athletes will also overcome radiation, especially in the hot spots as they
swim, canoe, run, jump, and play volley ball, those expensive thousand dollar
tickets are not guaranteed to protect their buyers from dangerous levels of
exposure.
The Japanese phenomenon casts an ironic spotlight on
radiation matters closer to home, namely the United States, and in particular
California, with an especially bright spotlight on the San Luis Obispo area,
where Diablo Canyon, California’s last operating nuclear power plant, remains under
the operation of the utility company known as PG&E, responsible through
negligence for 8 deaths in a 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California;
with a higher 2018 death score in Paradise, California with 81 deaths, and the
destruction of 15,000 acres of woodlands before the Camp Fire could be
contained. Skies as far as the Bay Area, remained under a pall of smoke for
nearly ten days—a truly apocalyptic event.
What further complicates the negligent,
manslaughter-inclined stewardship of PG&E is that both it and Southern
California Edison have purchased and continue to purchase HOLTEC canisters to
store nuclear waste generated by their plant operations, fully aware that they
cannot hold their loads safely and indefinitely because HOLTEC canisters develop cracks as the sea air corrodes
them, but they can
never be inspected, and they can never be repaired. Other nuclear countries store their waste
in casks with 9 and 19 inch thick walls, but not HOLTEC! HOLTEC canisters are 5/8
of an inch thin. Moreover, they become damaged automatically when they are
lowered into place. Records obtained
under the FOIA show that in connection with a TVA-owned Alabama nuclear plant, HOLTEC
slipped the manager there, a $54,000 bribe to obtain a no-bid contract in the
early 2000s.
This week, I received a letter from one of San Luis Obispo’s
Mothers for Peace founded in 1973 as an activist group fighting to close Diablo
Canyon, long before its contested final start up in 1984. (For the full timeline
of events leading to its first fueling, see https://mothersforpeace.org/data/20090321timeline; and http://www.energy-net.org/01NUKE/DIABLO1.HTM
where you will find encapsulated a history of the Northern California
anti-nuclear movement.)
My colleague’s
letter describes how earlier this year, alarmed by radiation levels
particularly at the Santa Susana site, owned by Boeing 30 miles north of L.A.
after the 2018 Woolsey Fire, she obtained a Geiger counter in order to take
readings in the San Luis Obispo/Diablo Canyon area and in particular readings
of radiation levels in the nearby area where she keeps her ranch. She discovered
a hot spot exactly in the place where she had been in the habit of harvesting
chanterelle mushrooms for consumption.
But even more
telling is her observation based on the radiation map of Tokyo (see above). She
writes: “See those numbers in red? They are NORMAL in California. Many
areas…have radiation levels of 0.11=0.16 µSv/h!! The “hotspot” I mentioned
is an area that gets readings of 0.18µSv/h.” (µSv/h refers to microSieverts per hour. About 0.12µSv/h is considered the "safe" threshold for ambient radiation by the ICRP (the International Commission on Radiological protection). That figure translates to ~1 milliSievert per year, which is also considered safe by the IRP. (After the explosions at Fukushima, the Japanese government raised that threshold to 20 mSv/year, the maxium dosage for nuclear industry workers, in complete indifference to evidence that women are much more susceptible to radiation damage even than men, and children even more so, especially female children.)
While those athletes will be swimming
and canoeing and playing volley ball in areas around Tokyo indicated on the map
as hotspots, we in California will be quietly going about shopping and mall
grazing and farming and raising kids, and practicing amateur sports of one kind
or another—in the same hot, but undocumented conditions.
Is there something(s) your government colluding
with the nuclear industry would prefer you didn’t know?
Get busy now demanding that your elected officials shut down
the camps and reunite families at 1-202-225-3121.
Urge your members of congress in your state to visit a
detention camp in your state at:
In France in WWII, the French called them “les collabos.”
Collabos inhabited the lower orders of pre-vertebrates. Demand California Hotels
quit collaborating with ICE at:
Add your name: Congress must hold the Customs and Border
Patrol accountable for inhumane child detention at:
House of Representative passes amendment barring #45 from
striking Iran without congressional approval.
The House votes 236-193 to prohibit the administration from
using funds to support the Saudi-led military operations either with munitions
or intelligence.
UAE pulls out of Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.
Turkey defies U.S. as Russian S-400 missile defense arrives.
Japanese spacecraft lands on asteroid in a mission to bring
back rock samples to Earth.
Morales welcomes Russia to Latin America to counter
Washington’s would-be hegemony.
Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela developing crypto to
challenge U.S. financial domination.
New coup attempt in Sudan fails.
UN reports that India lifted 271 million people out of
poverty in ten years between 2006 and 2016
France passes tax on tech giants despite U.S. threats.
House of Representatives creates requirement that there must
be some national security basis for any foreign U.S. base or foreign military
operation.
California bill AB 392 establishing one of the strongest use
of force bills in the country passes in the Senate on its way to the governors
desk.
Lawyers working under AG Barr in the DOJ just staged an
insurrection in response to Barr’s reactionary measures.
Following the U.S. Women’s Team winning the fourth world
cup, as the postgame ceremony began the stadium erupted in chants of “equal
pay.”
Leading Senators Feinstein, Schumer, Harris & Blumenthal
submit bill restoring local control over the deployment of 5G and abolishing FCC regulations.
More than 100 Jewish and immigrant activists gather outside
Elizabeth, NJ Contract Detention Center saying “Never Again.” 36 protestors are arrested.
After 35 years, and freed from their union-busting coercive
influence, Washington D.C.’s DASH bus drivers win their first ever union
election 97 to 13.
Manila’s Mayor orders solar panels and water collectors for
his city’s schools.
Shakopee, Minn. Amazon warehouse workers to stage six-hour
strike demanding better pay and working conditions, reduced workloads, and on
site safety.
Federal court blocks #45 Administration’s arbitrary
detention of asylum seekers.
A group of Japanese women, farmers from the San Diego Area
originally incarcerated at Topaz during WWII, become the first ever activists , protesting immigrant detention at Ft. Sills, Oklahoma, leading the way for native Oklahomans to take up the cudgels.
A close-the-camps demonstration this week, Friday at San
Francisco’s ICE headquarters, 630 Sansome Street attracts over 200 protesters
from all walks of life, including 5 Japanese women, the oldest of them 89, all
of them originally incarcerated at Topaz Concentration Camp in the 40s.
HAPPY BASTILLE DAY!
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