Nuclear Hotseat

Japanese National Cancer Institute
comic book telling kids that
half of them will get cancer...
and they need to practice "prevention."  Like what?  Smiling?

Dr. Jim Green is Nuclear Campaigner for Friends of the Earth in Australia.  What's that country's culpability for Fukushima?  How does the country function as a "nuclear umbrella" for the US?  How racist are Australia's nuclear mining policies?  And was "On the Beach" right, is it really safer from radiation Down Under than in the Northern Hemisphere?  All that and more...

• Scientists propose getting rid of nuclear waste by injecting it into fracking boreholes - two bad energy policies in one!
• TEPCO loses the plant schematics for Fukushima after 3/11/11 -- and no one has a duplicate copy!
• EVIL NUMNUTZ:  Japan's National Cancer Institute releases a comic book that tells children that half of them will get cancer but they need to practice "prevention."  Blame the victim much?

PLUS:

• 83-year-old Sister Megan Rice continues her anti-nuclear activism in jail while facing a possible 30-year prison sentence for last year's civil disobedience against the Oak Ridge Y12 National Security Complex.  There's a call for Pope Francis to acknowledge and champion her.

Sister Megan Rice, flanked by peaceful protesters Michael Walli and Gregory Boertje-Obed

• US Energy Department gives CA company $226 million to build "tiny" nuclear reactors - but how small are they?
• Indian anti-nuclear protesters complete 365 day relay hunger strike against proposed new reactor in Kovvada.

Indian anti-nuclear protesters at Kovvada

• Fukushima refugee Miki testifies about people dying from radiation in Japan:

Japanese citizens protest the newly-passed Secrecy Law

INTERVIEW:  Attorney Charles Bonner, one of the team representing sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan in their lawsuit against TEPCO for the health damages they sustained from Fukushima radiation during Operation Tomadachi, the humanitarian aid mission to Japan immediately after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. 

NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK:  Japanese government PR stunt feeds radioactive Fukushima rice to workers and executives in a Tokyo government office complex, while the farmer who grew it can only visit his fields, not live there because the area is still too contaminated for resettlement.  

Japanese Ministry officials chowing down on Fukushima Rice grown by farmers who can't live near their fields because it's too radioactive.

PLUS:

• RadCast w/Mimi German - the nuclear radiation "weather report"

Fistfights break out in Japanese Diet during PM Abe-baby's ramming through of state secrets act.

• Japanese citizens demonstrate, organize against state secrets act;
• How Japan ignored Chernobyl in setting nuclear safety standards;
• Explosion and fire in Arkansas nuke facility, more demands for radiation testing for food and the ocean;
• AARP going after Florida "advance fee" law;
• And who knew Mexico had a National Commission of Nuclear Safety and Safeguards? 

Japanese protestor holds up graphic by 281_Antinuke

INTERVIEW:  KEVIN KAMPS is Radioactive Waste Watchdog for
Beyond Nuclear.  He specializes in high-level waste management and transportation; new and existing reactors; decommissioning; Congress watch; climate change; federal subsidies -- in other words, all the complex issues at the top of the nuclear-industrial-governmental food chain.

NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK:  TEPCO, Fukushima Prefecture AND the Japan Football Association.  They plan to turn a soccer training center located so close enough  the nuclear accident that it was used as housing for Fukushima workers back into... a training center for elite athletes.  Just in time for the 2020 Olympics!  Elite athetes training in a radiation zone -- woo hoo! 

Fukushima is Here Baby - by Gail Payne

PLUS:

• Japan in uproar as PM Abe-Baby pushes Secrecy Act through the Diet;
• Strontium 90 from Fukushima predicted to start hitting the Pacific this week;
• World Bank sniffs, "We don't do nuclear energy," while Norwegian investment fund dumps TEPCO stock;
• Chernobyl getting new containment mega-building;
• NRC DUCK! and Cover report; 
• RadCast radiation "weather" report;
• and Japan plansto train its 2020 Olympic athletes where?!?!?   

Image by 281_Antinuke

LINK:

• Japan's Industry Ministry continued promoting nuclear power right after Fukushima accident:  http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201312020059