Democracy Now: Japan Facing Biggest Catastrophe Since Dawn of Nuclear Age

Japan Facing Biggest Catastrophe Since Dawn of Nuclear Age
Democracy Now

Japan remains in a state of emergency three days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit the country. An estimated 10,000 people have died, and Japan is facing the worst nuclear crisis since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On Monday, a second explosion hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and a third reactor lost its cooling system, raising fears of a meltdown. Radiation levels have been detected as far as 100 miles away. Dozens of people have tested positive for radiation exposure, and hundreds of thousands of have been evacuated, with the number expected to rise.

Yurika Ayukawa, Professor of Climate, Energy, and Environment at Chiba University of Commerce in Japan. She is formerly with the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center.

Harvey Wasserman, longtime anti-nuclear activist and the editor of nukefree.org. He is also a senior adviser to GreenPeace USA and the author of the book SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth.

Kevin Kamps, specialist in nuclear waste at the nuclear watchdog, Beyond Nuclear. Last year he was in Japan assessing the state of its nuclear facilities.

Arnie Gundersen, nuclear industry executive for many years before blowing the whistle on the company he worked for in 1990, when he found inappropriately stored radioactive material. He is now chief engineer at Fairewinds Associates.

Japan Al Jazeera English report on Minami Sanriku,

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Lindsay Beyerstein: Pilots’ Unions Say ‘No’ to Invasive TSA Airport Scans

[This is what the government spent 200+ million dollars of "recovery act" funds on? Come on Americans, is this how you want to live your lives?]

Pilots’ Unions Say ‘No’ to Invasive TSA Airport Scans
By Lindsay Beyerstein
In These Times

The nation's largest pilot's union, the Allied Pilots' Association, urged its 11,500 members to boycott the TSA's whole body scanners, which use x-rays to render a very lifelike nude portrait of the subject. The TSA installed new "Advanced Imaging Technology" scanners in 65 more airports earlier this month.

For those passengers who refuse to play a nude bit part in the security theater, the TSA has launched a new line of more invasive body searches in October, Consumerist reports:

"To call it a pat-down is a euphemism," said a spokesman for the ACLU in Massachusetts. "They really go for it."

He says that -- unlike the antiquated pat-down, which required TSA screeners to use the back of their hands when searching sensitive regions of your person -- the enhandced pat-down allows them to use their palms and fingers to feel and prod passengers.

Dave Bates, president of the Allied Pilots Association, told ABC News that pilots are already exposed to high levels of radiation simply from flying. Radiation exposure is cumulative. The union is concered about the potential consequences of piling even more raditiation into their day-to-day routine.

The unions point out that pilots fly an average of 15-18 days each month and may face two or three scans each day. The radiation exposure from a scan is about 1/2000th the amount of a chest x-ray.

The alternative isn't appealing to pilots, either. In a message to his brother and sister pilots, Bates described the "enhanced" pat-down as a "demeaning experience."

"In my view, it is unacceptable to submit to one in public while wearing the uniform of a professional airline pilot," he wrote, "I recommend that all pilots insist that such screening is performed in an out-of-view area to protect their privacy and dignity."

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Tell Somebody: Helen Caldicott - Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Power, & Kansas City; Ivory Mae Thomas - Exposed to radioactive promethium; Jason Klumb

Tell Somebody (KKFI: Kansas City)

Dr. Helen Caldicott - Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Power, & Kansas City

Caldicott, a pediatrician, has, according to her biography at If You Love This Planet, "devoted over 35 years to educating the public and policymakers about the medical hazards of nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, and ecological collapse, and the necessary remedy of citizen participation."

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Exposed to radioactive promethium - Ivory Mae Thomas

A little over twenty years ago, Ivory Mae Thomas was at work on the night shift cleaning offices at the Kansas City branch of the US nuclear weapons complex when someone came to her and said "I've got bad news for you. ...our machine had a little leak, and we discovered you stepped in radiation." They took her to an emergency room at the plant, took her clothes, scrubbed her down, and came to her house in the middle of the night and scrubbed it down. Thomas says she was never told exactly what she had been exposed to until a local television reporter dug it out with FOIA requests twenty years later.

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Jason Klumb - Regional Administrator, General Services Administration

Jason Klumb, Administrator for the Heartland Region of the General Services Administration, sat down with Tell Somebody in his south Kansas City office to talk about how he called in doctors from the Centers for Disease Control to look into health concerns among former and current workers at the Bannister Federal Complex.

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