Christian conference highlights the social tragedy of Fukushima
The science in play is not fiction. Children are growing up forbidden to play outdoors, young women worry that no one will want to marry them, a mother tests her rice harvest to see if she can share it with her children, families are paying off loans on radioactive homes they will never use. These are the kind of stories heard every day at a parish radiation information centre in Aizu Wakamatsu, Japan.
The conference concluded that “there is no safe use of nuclear power, no safe level of exposure to radiation, and no compatibility between nuclear power, life and peace.”
Nuclear tragedy finds a human face in Fukushima, Insights, ON 19 DEC 2012 BY STEPHENW
The everyday effects of radiation borne by survivors of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan add up today to an involuntary experiment with public health, community life and environmental affairs.
An ecumenical conference, called to listen to local residents, found that last year’s chain reaction of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear calamity has generated a “live” human tragedy, across a province, with no end in sight.
The Geiger counters that priests and parishioners pull out of their pockets like cell phones made the local anxieties and fears real for their visitors.
“I cannot tell my children that there will be something good if they live,” one mother told a Buddhist priest. Read more »
How USA experimented on its own citizens with radioactive contamination
COMMENTARY: 1949 nuclear experiment is an ugly legacy of Hanford
http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/29097307-57/green-hanford-run-nuclear-iodine.html.csp
BY SUSAN CUNDIFF AND PATRICIA HOOVER The Register-Guard December 2, 2012
Many of us in the timber-rich Northwest are familiar with such terms
as “pulling the green chain” and fresh-cut “green” wood. But how many
know the term “Green Run?” Never heard of it? That’s because it was a
secret.
On Dec. 2, 1949, officials at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in
southeastern Washington deliberately experimented on residents in the
area by releasing raw, irradiated uranium fuel. It was the largest
known single incident of intentional radioactive contamination ever.
It’s come to be known as the Green Run; in this case “green” meant
“uncured.” Read more »
Helping the damaged children of Chernobyl
Children of Chernobyl Airlifts 97th Group in Advance of 26th Anniversary http://www.chabad.org/blogs/blog_cdo/aid/1838545/jewish/Children-of-Chernobyl-Airlifts-97th-Group-in-Advance-of-26th-Anniversary.htm, April 25, 2012 By Joshua Runyan One week before the 26th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear explosion that rained down fallout across an entire swath of Eastern Europe, Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl brought 26 more children to safety and medical care in Israel, its 97th rescue mission.
“On this significant anniversary, thousands of children every day are still feeling the tragic consequences of the Chernobyl disaster,” said Nancy Spielberg, founding board member of CCOC, in a statement. “They are facing devastating illnesses from radiation contamination –radiation that will be with us for thousands of years. As we’ve seen from the recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, the impact from this kind of radioactivity is as devastating today as it was 26 years ago.”
To date, the Chabad-Lubavitch run organization, which was designed to rescue those most vulnerable from the April 26, 1986 meltdown that left thousands of square kilometers uninhabitable, has helped 2,822 children escape the contaminated living conditions surrounding that portion of Ukraine. Most are brought to a sprawling educational and residential complex in the central Israeli village of Kfar Chabad, where they’re provided with medical care and social services.
The organization also provides medicine, equipment and other needed items for those who
cannot leave Europe. Spielberg pointed to World Health Organization statistics, which show the rate of thyroid cancer in the contaminated areas surrounding Chernobyl as more than 200 times the world norm.
The medical and economic costs of nuclear power – On Line Opinion – 14/9/2009
The medical and economic costs of nuclear power
OnLine opinion By Helen Caldicott – 14 September 2009“……………….In the US, efforts to forge the nuclear industry renaissance has been thwarted in eight states from Kentucky to Minnesota to Hawaii, Illinois, West Virginia, California, Missouri and Wisconsin. When the Yucca Mountain repository for high level waste was vetoed by President Obama, Dave Kraft, Director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service in Chicago said “Authorising construction of nuclear reactors without first constructing a radioactive waste disposal is like authorising the construction of a new Sears tower without the bathrooms.
Neither makes sense; both threaten public health and safety.”How does this state of affairs relate to Australia? Well, as we know Australia sits on 40 per cent of the world’s high grade uranium; the ALP, in its wisdom, has determined that there should be no restrictions on uranium mining proceeding throughout the country. There are more than 60 potential uranium mines in Western Australia alone. In South Australia, the Olympic Dam mine owned by BHP Billiton is to triple in size to become the largest uranium mine in the world. Honeymoon, Beverley and the Four Mile deposit are all located in South Australia, the latter two are owned by an American company General Atomics, a weapons corporation which also manufactures the pilotless drones that are currently used by the military in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In the light of these two studies it is difficult to understand how Kevin Rudd and the Labor Government can have no moral scruples about our uranium exports.
The medical and economic costs of nuclear power – On Line Opinion – 14/9/2009
Helen Mary Caldicott, MD, One Of My Personal heroes.
Helen Mary Caldicott MD, one of my personal heroes
TimesUnion.com August 22, 2009 by
August seems like an excellent month to celebrate Helen Caldicott’s 71st birthday along with 35 years of educational, organizational, inspirational, and scientific work as an antinuclear activist, who opposes both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Read more »
Why Australian Ethical won’t invest in Uranium Mining
Why Australian Ethical won’t invest in Uranium Mining
Article from Australian Ethical Investment and Superannuation’s bi-annual
newsletter. November 2005.
Some investment managers who call themselves socially responsible are keeping their BHP Billiton shares, despite the company’s takeover of uraniummining operations. Australian Ethical has no such shares. Our criticism of uranium mining is not a finely balanced judgment, as many ethical issues can be. It extends from the beginning to the end of the product cycle. Each stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, uranium mining, the safety of nuclear power plants, the disposal of radioactive waste and the implications for society of a future where atomic bomb-making material is more broadly available threatens the environment, workers and society as a whole. Read more »
ethical investment alert
Radioactive alert on ethical investment
The Age Frances Howe September 2, 2008
A RECENT Corporate Watch Australia survey reveals that many so-called ethical investment funds invest in uranium mining. Read more »
Call for ethics to BHP
BHP Billiton shareholders call for moral stand on lucrative trade
Jan Mayman in Perth October 1, 2007 The Guardian The world’s biggest mining company is facing a revolt from shareholders who want the group to stop excavating uranium.Activist plan to use the annual meeting of BHP Billiton, which last year made record-breaking profits of $13.4bn (£6.7bn), to force the company to take a “moral stand” and pull out of the highly profitable trade in uranium,
Led by John Poppins, a retired engineer whose family controls more than A$1m (£434,000) worth of stock in the company, the BHP Billiton Shareholders for Social Responsibilities group hope to enlist support from conservationists, churches and unions on the shareholder register.Mr Poppins has 60 of the 100 signatures he needs to get the issue on the agenda of the AGM in Adelaide next month, with more pledged.BHP Billiton’s outstanding commercial success and market pre-eminence carries an equally large moral obligation to provide leadership on issues of uranium production and nuclear proliferation,’ he said……….
………He is concerned that the Australian government has recently declared its support for uranium sales to Russia and India. And the notion that uranium was a clean fuel was wrong, he said. ‘Claims that uranium is ‘carbon-free’ completely ignore the substantial carbon costs of its mining, processing, power station construction, protection and disposal,’he said.Mr Poppins was an engineer in computing and aviation before retiring to take up ethical investment issues………………………..”
Tags: BHPB, uranium, nuclear, antinuclear
Corporate Watch survey re BHP
Radioactive alert on ethical investment
The Age Frances Howe September 2, 2008 A RECENT Corporate Watch Australia survey reveals that many so-called ethical investment funds invest in uranium mining.Some fund managers justify investment in uranium with questionable arguments about nuclear power and climate change, but the primary reason for the shift is probably BHP Billiton’s entry into the uranium industry with its 2005 acquisition of WMC Resources, which owns the Olympic Dam uranium mine in South Australia.Of 16 ethical investment funds studied, just two allow absolutely no investment in uranium or nuclear power.The rest either have no policy on the matter or allow limited investment in the nuclear industry…………………………rapid growth (in ethical investment) is accompanied by a crisis of definition and a dilution of its original principles. The concept “ethical investment” is vaguely defined: fund managers make their own rules, and their definitions of “ethical” vary………………..Some fund managers rule out investment in companies that get more than 5% of their revenue from uranium mining or nuclear power. This means that AMP’s ethical portfolio can still include shares in BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto — the world’s fifth and third largest uranium miners respectively………………………….There is no attempt to refute the large and growing body of scientific literature that demonstrates how the expansion of renewable energy sources, coupled with concerted energy-efficiency programs, can generate major reductions in greenhouse emissions without recourse to nuclear power.Nor have most fund managers dealt with the ethical problems associated with uranium mining and nuclear power. The uranium mining industry has a poor track record in its dealings with Aboriginal communities — failing to consult traditional owners, using divide-and-rule tactics, and ignoring sacred sites.In the words of Yvonne Margarula, Mirarr senior traditional owner in the Northern Territory: “Uranium mining has taken our country away from us and destroyed it. Mining and the millions of dollars in royalties have not improved our quality of life.”
Tags: BHPB.uranium, nuclear, antinuclear
Half-truths and evasions: BHP Billiton attacked for human rights, environmental record
Half-truths and evasions: BHP Billiton attacked for human rights, environmental record Report of the BHP Billiton plc AGM, 23 October, London Report by Richard Solly, Co-ordinator, London Mining Network. Opinions expressed or implied in this report do not necessarily reflect those of all member groups of London Mining Network. Read more »
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