Nuclear Power and the Nuremberg Code

The Nuremburg Code arose from legal proceedings against the notorious Nazi Doctors. Although it did not prevent human experiments, like radiological studies, it did eventually lead to the notion of “informed consent”, and some other good things.

Steve Breyer points out that nuclear power and the bomb from which it derived are human experimentation.Countless rushed experiments were necessary to complete the Manhattan Project. An explosion tested the first Bomb in the New Mexican desert; within weeks, Hiroshima and Nagasaki became radioactive laboratories (and sarcophagi).

Beginning with rushed experiments to complete the Manhattan Project the experimentation includes atomic testing in the Nevada desert, the Soviet Arctic, the Kazakh steppe, the Algerian Sahara, French Polynesia, and on “American” atolls in the South Pacific enabled the development of the hydrogen bomb and sundry innovations. Nuclear testing was done underground for Britain, the US, and the USSR after the enaction of the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963) . France continued atmospheric testing on Pacific islands, as they were not party to the treaty.

The number of victims of nuclear weapons manufacture and testing is unknown, but include Navajo uranium miners, soldiers, Utah sheep farmers, and residents around places like Rocky Flats, Colorado and Colonie, New York. Some New Mexicans. Helen Caldicott and Harvey Wasserman estimate 1000s of cancers result from civilian nuclear power annually. The recent book of collected studies on Chernobyl show nearly 1,000,000 deaths directly due to the accident.Time will reveal the toll Fukushima will take, although as with Chernobyl, great efforts will be taken to hide the data.

Countries employing nuclear power need to be held to the directives of the Nuremberg Code, as are social and medical scientists, we’d likely see a quick retreat from the nuclear brink.

The text of the Code
, here edited for brevity, comes from Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law, No. 10, Vol. 2 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), pp. 181-182. It is available online)

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.

3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.

4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.

5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a prior reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur.

6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.

7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.

8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.

9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.

10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

Credit to Steve Breyer’s article on Dianuke

Hurricane approaches: 20 Reactors are in the path

Reuters has reported that 20 nuclear reactors are in danger. See complete list

From south to north Beyond Nuclear recommends that the following reactors be shut down:

  • Turkey Point Units 3 and 4 near Miami, FL
  • St. Lucie Units 1 and 2 on Florida’s central Atlantic coast
  • Brunswick Units 1 and 2 in North Carolina
  • Calvert Cliffs Units 1 and 2 on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland
  • Salem Units 1 and 2, as well as Hope Creek, located just off the Delaware Bay
  • Hope Creek, located just off the Delaware Bay
  • Oyster Creek, New Jersey
  • Millstone Units 2 and 3 on Long Island Sound in Connecticut
  • Pilgrim in Massachusetts
  • Seabrook in New Hampshire

In addition many other reactors, just inland, are also at risk from Hurricane Irene. The electrical grid could be damaged by high winds, this could force nuclear power plants onto emergency generators, known to have a high failure rate.

US Government decided to downplay Fukushima radiation

Government agreed to downplay Fukushima radiation 
 Solar IMG Podcast 

According to Arnie Gundersen, a energy advisor veteran with 39 years of experience as a nuclear power engineer, Fukushima is still unstable and leaking. Gunderson told SolarIMG that Americans are unaware they are being rained on with Fukushima nuclear hot particles and eating Fukushima contaminated food because the US government has deliberately minimized the catastrophe. This is partially due to a pact Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed with Japan. Gundersen, is working with a team of other scientists to prove government statements about Fukushima are false.

“The United States came up with a decision to downplay Fukushima,” said Gundersen who is awakening the public with information such as hot particles in rain will continue falling in the U.S., not just in the Pacific Northwest, for another year, and mentioning high-level fallout in Oklahoma a few days ago.

Gundersen said that Hillary Clinton signed a pact with her counterpart in Japan agreeing for the United States to continue buying food from Japan, even thought that food is not being properly tested for radioactive materials. Gunderson got the information from high-level people in the State Department.”So we are not sampling the food coming into the United States./

The US government has come up with a decision at the highest levels of the State Department, as well as other departments who made a decision to downplay Fukushima,” stated Gunderson.

In April, one month after the powerful tsunami and earthquake hit Japan, Gunderson said that “Hillary Clinton signed a pact with Japan that she agreed there is no problem with Japanese food supply and we will continue to buy them so we are not sampling food coming in from Japan.”

Gunderson has asked Americans with Geiger counters to send samples to him for an independent research team’s study.

Gundersen is convinced that the new study will prove that what the U.S. government is telling Americans is false.

Arnie Gundersen featured on his Fairwinds website a new documentary short titled, “Dial ‘M’ For Meltdown.” The video was created by Brian Rich to ensure the history of commercial nuclear power was documented and presented in an exciting way to a younger generation.

“I found most of the public was turned off by the complex nature of Nuclear Physics, even if what they didn’t know was going to kill them and their loved ones,” said Rich.Is Fukushima stabilized? Many children to suffer thyroid cancer in three to five years

“The reactors are better than since the accident,” reported Gundersen, but “they all have holes on them, so they are not holding water.”

“Until a couple of weeks ago, they had to constantly add water. Now there’s a system in place that’s cleaning the water enough that they can pump it back into the reactor.”

The reactors are still creating “an enormous amount of waste,” said Gunderson, and that “the filters are hotter than a pistol.”

“I still believe water is leaking into the ocean and I know water’s leaking into the ground table.”

Gundersen is concerned about indications that there is still iodine on site plus, “enormous amounts of iodine have been in the water.”

“There’s an awful lot of kids that are going to have thyroid problems in the next three to five years as the result of this.”

Kicking the nuclear can, On the Edge: Unit 4, Contaminated food and water, Children and cancer

Gundersen is “becoming increasingly concerned” about Fukushima’s impact on Americans.

He listed his major concerns related to Fukushima impact in the United States: Unit 4; radioactive beef, soil and rain; burning contaminated materials; and raising dose amounts.

Gunderson believes that Fukushima’s Unit 4 is “very fragile and could topple” in another earthquake.

Rather than a whole of government approach of resolving the radiation problem and protecting the people each Japanese prefecture is “doing its own thing”

“There is radioactive beef. There’s radioactive soil. There’s going to be radioactive straw.”

“The Japanese are not sampling enough,” said Gunderson, and Fukushima food is being bought by unwitting Americans.

The Japanese government arbitrarily increased the amount of “acceptable limits of radiation” a person can have, including raising child amount to the same as adults.

“For every 250 REM, you can expect a cancer,” he said. “So for every 10 men… one of those 10 will get cancer as a result of working at Fukushima.”

“They’ve got 8,000 people on site,” so the chances are 50:50 an individual worker will get cancer.

Gunderson stated “I’m estimating over the next five years, you’re going to see a 20% increase in lung cancer. You’re not going to be able to say a person’s individual cancer came from Fukushima, but when you look at northern Japan, whatever the rate would have been, there will be a 20% more.”

Burning contaminated materials results in what Gundersen referred to as “kicking the can.”

“The Japanese are allowing the contaminated material to be burned as long as it’s less than 7000 Becquerels. What they’re also allowing is, if you have a high concentration material and a low concentration material, you can average those two out.”

The radioactive contaminated material being burned in one prefecture in Japan contaminates the neighboring prefecture.

“It eventually ends up into the Pacific Northwest, either into B.C., Oregon, Washington or California. The process of burning the radioactive material means they’re kicking the can down the road.”

Gundersen added, “The accident isn’t over. It’s continually throwing back up the cesium which is already on the ground and getting into plants.”

“It’s going to get worse now with the straw harvest,” he said, speaking about the Japanese rice harvest beginning in September.

“After the rice is harvested, the straw, like the rice it grew, will be contaminated. With a half-life of 30 years, you’re not going to let it set in your barn for 300 years. You’re going to burn it.”

As the contaminated straw is burned and kicked into the next prefecture, etc, it will eventually make its way over to the United States and Canada where it will come down in the rain.

So continued Gunderson, “Kick the problem to Hawaii or British Columbia or Oregon.”

“A rainout is when a radioactive cloud passes over an area and, due to a coincidental rainstorm, the hot particles get dropped on the soil.”

“We’re going to see another year of these rainouts.”

 “Geiger counters were going off the scale” a few weeks ago in British Columbia, said Gundersen, who added that the “only conclusion you could come to was industrial burning in Japan.”

Proving government wrong calls for citizenry participation

“I’m working with scientists to definitively prove what the government health officials say is wrong,” Gundersen stated, adding that the public can help do that.

He added, “now with lots of citizens having Geiger counters,” they can help with the new study by wiping a surface one meter by one meter with a cloth after a rainout, and placing that cloth under the Geiger counter.

“If you get a positive reading on the cloth, I’d like to see the cloth,” he said.

Gundersen advises people taking samples to note the location and time the sample was taken. He also requests that people wrap the sample in a triple layer of foil before mailing it to Fairwinds.

“Their constant truthful testimony against the nuclear industry… should be a real awakening to the public at large,” said Brian Rich. He also said that “Meeting Arnold Gundersen and his wife Maggie only opened my eyes to the dangers our country and civilization face because of decisions made decades ago and the lies created to further the nuclear agenda.”

Contact Gundersen through Fairwinds for further instructions about helping with the research: fairewinds.com/.     See ENENEWS Energy News for regular radiation updates from Fukushima and United States nuclear power plants. 

Knocking on the Devil’s Door

Intro to Knocking on the Devil’s Door

Following the energy reactor catastrophes of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and most recently Fukushima in Japan, nuclear energy remains a terrible specter hovering over the safety, health and well-being of millions of people around the globe.  Not only is the proliferation of nuclear weapons a lingering threat, but so is every nuclear station a ticking bomb awaiting a terrorist attack.

Yet after the all the lessons of history, the deaths of a million people following Chernobyl, according to numerous Russian studies, and the likely long-term toll of the Daiichi Fukushima plant being dramatically higher, why is the US with the most reactors in the world, so blinded by the lobbying paybacks and erroneous science of the nuclear industrial complex. Contrary to the propaganda released by the Obama administration and the energy cartel and parroted the media, nuclear energy is neither clean nor renewable.  Moreover, nuclear energy, across the stages from mining that contaminates natural habitats, rivers, and our already stressed aquifers , leaves an immense carbon footprint. It is an energy source that is utterly unsustainable for the future ahead.

In Knocking on the Devil’s Door, by award winning director Gary Null, these other disturbing issues to are treated by an extraordinary cast of scholars, scientists, physicians, activists, and global ethicists, to reveal nuclear energy as a gross violation of human rights, and an industry corrupted by money, greed and deception.

Why should terrorists bother smuggling bombs into the U.S. when, over 100 nuclear facilities lie virtually unprotected all over America – waiting to be “detonated”?

Why are licenses for worn out nuclear plants being extended behind closed doors for another 20 years, increasing the risk of a meltdown?

Many of these re-licensed plants are leaking or have leaked, polluted, radioactive, carcinogenic, tritium water.  A quarter of all US reactors have leaks.

Did you know the government plans to use $54 billion dollars, as just a down payment, to build 200 new nuclear power plants, next to every major city in America? If there were to be an accident, the liability falls completely on the taxpayers, as no insurance company will cover them. Accidents will happen; it’s only a matter of time.

We get less than 9% of our total energy needs from nuclear power.

Is it worth it?

Knock on the Devil’s Door.

Sooner or later someone is going to answer.

Fukushima makes Hiroshima look like a B-B gun

Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama, head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo, gives emotional testimony and demands action.

From Professor Kodama’s plea:

“When we research the radiation injury/sickness, we look at the total amount of radioactive materials. But there is no definite report from TEPCO or the Japanese government as to exactly how much radioactive materials have been released from Fukushima.

“So, using our knowledge base at the Radioisotope Center, we calculated. Based on the thermal output, it is 29.6 times the amount released by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In uranium equivalent, it is 20 Hiroshima bombs.

“What is more frightening is that whereas the radiation from a nuclear bomb will decrease to one-thousandth in one year, the radiation from a nuclear power plant will only decrease to one-tenth.

“In other words, we should recognize from the start that just like Chernobyl, Fukushima I Nuke Plant has released radioactive materials equivalent in the amount to tens of nuclear bombs, and the resulting contamination is far worse than the contamination by a nuclear bomb.”

UK’s MOX fuel plant closing

The highly controversial Sellafield MOX fuel plant in Cumbria is closing. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) made the announcement today. An uncertain future was in store for the plant as TEPCO was due to purchase 50% of the fuel, and all other potential customers were Japanese businessmen. Six hundred jobs will be lost. BusinessGreen.com

SILENT SPRING MEETS THE LONG HOT SUMMER by Kim Roberson

Kim Roberson’s latestpost on NuclearFreePlanet.org, an organization run by the Helen Caldicott foundation.

This excellent piece is both a personal journey as well as the story of an industry that is willing to lie, cheat, and sacrifice humanity in the name of profit.

From the About page of NuclearFreePlanet.org:
“The goal of Nuclear-Free Planet is far-reaching public education about the often underestimated and poorly understood medical hazards of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Our focus is on the grave danger posed to public health by radiation, by the contribution of nuclear power to global warming, and by the real capacity of nuclear weapons, technology, and waste, to render parts or all of the earth uninhabitable forever.”

Who is monitoring the consequences of Fukushima?

Not WHO, the World Health Organization.

This article by Alison Katz explains why the World Health Organization (WHO) is failing humanity. The agreement made by WHO to let the IAEA review anything related to nuclear power has led to the cover-up of Chernobyl’s human cost, as well as near silence about the unfolding Fukushima disaster.

Read the full article here.