If You Love This Planet
The four part series linked below with Helen Caldicott and Arnie Gunderson, broadcast on 'If You Love This Planet', regarding Fukushima Diichi nuclear plant's condition and the medical effect of radioisotopes is definetly worth your our to view.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMwrprh5x2g&feature=related
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odL_VTAIM_0&feature=related
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ3EiS76k8o&feature=related
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q17TsPPZQM0&feature=related
I am particularly interested in your comments Dr. Chivers, to Dr. Caldicott's comments, regarding 'There is no safe level of internal exposure' and your continued advocation of the 'safe' 'airplane model' with regards to internal vs external exposure. Her comments can be found in part 4 of the series. She points out that the medical industry has not been diligent in educating persons in the nuclear industry as to the effects of internal exposure. Since you continue to 'completely defend it' (airplane analogy), is it likely that you do not completly understand the medical effects, (as stated in your forum; 'We are not medical experts') and therefore fall into Dr. Caldicott category as those who have not been fully educated as to the effects of internal exposure. Nevertheless, I would appreciate your comments regarding part 4.
Mark, your request for more information on Arnie Gunderson's assertion that 'hot particles, 'fuel fleas' are present can be found in part 1. He describes the methodology for their detection. Please comment.


It's Caldicott that needs educating.
therefore fall into Dr. Caldicott category as those who have not been fully educated as to the effects of internal exposure.
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Once again we hear about the arrogant and self-righteous Dr. Caldicott saying that everyone else needs educating. The fact of the matter is that it is Caldicott that is more "out of step" with current scientific and medical thinking on the matter.
Perhaps it is Caldicott that should read the numerous reports from the American Medical Asssociation (AMA) and their Council on Scientific Affairs:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull322/32205892330.pdf
or the publications of the National Cancer Institute which contradicts many of the claims that Caldicott makes:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/nuclear-facilities
or the publications of the Health Physics Society for the education of physicians. Contrary to popular belief, unless the physician is a radiologist or specializes in nuclear medicine, your average physician or a pediatrician like Caldicott, actually get very little education in radiation and its biological efffects:
http://hps.org/physicians/
Understanding human test cases
Yes u are correct testing radiation in humans has been studied in depth by this university link to studies at bottom of link
http://www.albionmonitor.com/9-2-95/radiation.html
"Newly-released documents show that UC/Berkeley performed the most human radiation experiments of any laboratory funded by the Energy Department. Of the 425 known studies, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory conducted 93, almost all upon Bay Area residents.
Most tests were performed in the early 1950's, although some began as early as 1936. According to the Department of Energy's Office of Human Radiation Experiments, the last Berkeley study was in the 1980's.
In many of these studies, it is unclear if the patients granted permission or even knew they were part of a radiation study. Bay Area research including experiments upon pregnant women, children, mental patients, and prison inmates.
A 1946 memo declassified earlier this year suggests that it was not unusual to perform these experiments without the patient's knowledge and consent. This memo from an administrator at one of the national atomic research labs noted, "These doctors state that the injections would probably be made without the knowledge of the patient, and that the physicians assumed full responsibility...Such injections were not divergent from the normal experimental method in the hospital and the patient signed no release."
Besides County and University hospitals, Berkeley research was conducted at Veterans Hospitals, San Quentin prison, the psychiatric Langley Porter Clinic in San Francisco, and Laguna Honda Home, described as "a hospital for destitute patients."
bunk from the bankrupt - insuficient funds
the sources you sight are morally and or technically bankrupt.
National Cancer Institute
cancer.gov
Health Physics Society
All morally bankrupt taken as a whole. While there are no doubt good and honest individuals amongst, monied and military interests dominate.
Bunk from the bankrupt - insufficient funds in the TRUTH department period.
Don't fret though, filthy fission will be be composted. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukudai..... that's enough.
Why are the "bankrupt"?
Why are they "bankrupt", just because you don't like them?
First cancer.gov is the website for the National Cancer Institute,
and the National Cancer Institute is part of the National Institute of Health - it's part of the Government, namely the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama.
I note no evidence is given why these organizations are "bankrupt"; just unsubstantiated accusation, how typical of the anti-nuke.
Chemo-Gate NCI. From the playbook where joe public is pawn
National Cancer Institute ? LMFAO.
The following article is so important that it is reprinted from http://www.altcancer.com/lysis.htm.
It reveals the systematic suppression of legitimate proven or potential cancer cures by the Cancer Industry and all of the participants of that industry. In January 1986 (24 years ago!) the suppression was brought to light. Mary Yevchak (http://www.cancercontrolinfo.com/index2B.html) testified that she was forced to undergo chemotherapy treatment which almost killed her, and she left the country to seek non-toxic treatment which cured her. Still, 24 years later, this great country of ours is still pushing toxic treatments that do NOT work, and suppressing non-toxic treatments that DO work. Chemo-Gate must be exposed. Where are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein?
We must get to the tipping point where people realize in our collective consciousness that it is chemotherapy that is "experimental" and "controversial", and not the alternative treatments. The alternatives are actually beneficial and effective. We have been brainwashed and we need to expose the truth and get the word out.
"Everyone should know that the 'war on cancer' is largely a fraud." --- Linus Pauling, Nobel Laureate
Impossible Dream: Why the Cancer Industry
Is Committed to Not Finding a Cure
Dr. James Watson won a Nobel Prize for determining the shape of DNA. During the 1970's, he served two years on the National Cancer Advisory Board. In 1975, he was asked about the National Cancer Program. He declared, 'It's a bunch of shit.'
In 1953, a United States Senate Investigation reported that a conspiracy existed to suppress effective cancer treatments. The Senator in charge of the investigation conveniently died. The investigation was halted. It was neither the first nor the last of a number of strange deaths involving people in positions to do damage to those running the nation's cancer program.
In 1964, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) spent millions of dollars to stop an alternative cancer treatment which had cured hundreds, if not thousands, of cancer patients according to documented records. It was later disclosed that the FDA had falsified the testimony of witnesses. The FDA lost the court case because the jury found the defendants innocent and recommended that the substance be objectively evaluated. It never was. Instead, it was totally suppressed.
In the early 1960's, two New York City doctors, one associated with the leading cancer center in America and the other the medical director of a Brooklyn hospital, decided to inject live cancer cells into 22 unknowing patients. When they were discovered, Dr. Chester M. Southam of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Dr. E.E. Mandel of the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital of Brooklyn were put on "probation" for a year. The three physicians who "blew the whistle" on Dr. Southam and Dr. Mandel were dismissed.
For many years, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) coordinated their "hit" lists of innovative cancer reseachers who were to be ostracized. One investigative reporter declared the AMA and ACS "for a network of vigilantes prepared to pounce on anyone who promotes a cancer therapy that runs against their substantial prejudices and profits.
In the late 1950's, it was learned that Dr. Henry Welch, head of the FDA's Division of Antibiotics, had secretly received $287,000 from the drug companies he was supposed to regulate. In 1975, an independent government evaluation of the FDA still found massive "conflicts of interest" among the agency's top personnel.
In 1977, an investigative team from the prominent Long Island newspaper Newsday found serious "conflicts of interest" at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In 1986, an organized cover-up of an effective alternative cancer therapy, orchestrated by NCI officials, was revealed during Congressional hearings.
These examples are only the tip of a huge iceberg. The cancer establishment now has a 50-year history of vast corruption, incompetence and organized suppression of cancer therapies which actually work. Millions of people have suffered terrible torture and death because those in charge took payoffs, played it safe, had closed minds to the innovative, or simply were afraid to do what was obviously and morally right...
The doctor's union (AMA), the cancer bureaucracy (NCI), the public relations fatcats (ACS) and the cancer cops (FDA) are conspiring to suppress a cure for cancer.... It would be easy for any Congressional committee, major newspaper, television network or national magazine to confirm and extend the evidence presented here in order to initiate radical reform of the critical cancer areas--the hospitals, the research centers, the government agencies, and especially state and local legislation regarding cancer treatment.
But that will not happen without a struggle. Neither Congress nor the media desire to lift the manhole cover on this sewer of corruption and needless torture. Only organized, determined citizen opposition to the existing cancer treatment system has any hope of bringing about the long-needed changes. I expect the struggle to be a long, difficult one against tough, murderous opposition. The odds against success are heavy. The vested interests are very powerful....
found at
http://just-say-no-to-chemo.blogspot.com/2010/01/chemo-cash-cow-of-cance...
Marco Kaltofen has not
Marco Kaltofen has not detected any fuel fleas in the analysis he has performed in Japana. He found Cesium 134 & 137, but nothing else that didn't belong to naturally occurring isotopes. I think Gundersen jumped the gun on that one.
fallout
Ash. Particulate. Condensate. All these are often absent directly adjacent to parts of a forest fire. I used to spend my entire summer in the mountains so I witnessed this phenomena several times. Drawing a circle around the point of emission is NOT the way to work up honest statistics for an event that is largely CONTROLLED by atmospheric conditions. Other then the now dated explosions and stupid incinerators we thankfully have had very little that would throw particulate very far. Start with the explosions and atmospheric conditions if you want to track the bulk of the particulates ....
Mr. Kaltofen has not said
Mr. Kaltofen has not said that. In fact, see last sentence of this paragraph.
" Marco says:
Thursday June 30th, 2011 at 02:04 PM
The broad sodium iodide gamma detector peaks shown are for the two gamma peaks of cesium 134 and the single peak for cesium 137. The same peaks are visible as sharp lines in the germanium gamma spectrum in my more recent post. This is a total filter result. The hot particle analyses take much longer to get, so these will be in a follow up post."
I am curious if Gundersen jumped the gun as well. Also, there are the semantics here - are "hot particles" necessarily "fuel fleas"? Or could any radioactive particle (Cs134/137, I-131, everyday radon) be considered a "hot particle"?
Gundersen, in "Hot Particles
Gundersen, in "Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable When Inhaled or Swallowed", describes the following:
"[H]ot particles. What are they? Cesium, Strontium, Plutonium, Uranium, Cobalt 60 and many, many others. When you go outside and you are in a cloud of noble gasses, you could pick it up with a radiation detector, because you are bombarded by gamma rays.
But when you are in hot particles, unless there are many, many, many, it is very difficult to detect a single hot particle. But that doesn't mean it is not dangerous. We are discovering by scientists, independent scientists, using air filters in Japan, that the average person in tokyo breathed in about ten of these hot particles every day all the way through the month of April. Those same scientists, using air filters, are discovering that in Fukushima, people were probably breathing in 30 or 40 times more radiation than they were in Tokyo, again in the form of a hot particle. What surprised me is that the air filters in Seattle, indicate that the people there were absorbing 5 hot particles every day for the month of April...."
http://fairewinds.com/content/hot-particles-japan-seattle-virtually-unde...
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I know the above is not an actual definition of "hot particle", but at least Arnie Gundersen gives examples of what he means by "hot particles".
In another video (can't remember which), Gundersen says that "hot particles" are what the nuclear industry refers to as "fuel fleas". So, "hot particles" and "fuel fleas" appear to be one and the same thing.
As to whether or not Gundersen jumped the gun, I suspect that he has many, many sources from which he gets his information, as he is well connected with other nuclear engineers, scientists, epidemiologists, doctors. Marco Kaltofen is just one among many of Gundersen's sources. An excellent source, but still just one among the many.
Angus- Yeah, I have heard
Angus-
Yeah, I have heard and read all that. But here's what gets me - a particle of cesium dioxide (or whatever salt the cesium has formed) is NOT a "fuel flea". A fuel flea is reactor fuel, right - think U and Pu and Americium. So it is not linear to me to think that all "hot particles" are "fuel fleas".
In a practical way, I wonder what is worse to inhale - a tiny little piece of plutonium that shoots off an alpha particle very rarely or a tiny little piece of cesium 134 that is going bang bang bang all day long. It could be that materials with a high specific activity are more dangerous than the long half life isotopes.
Then there are the physical characteristics of the airbourne junk. Maybe if you breathe in a cesium salt, it is solouble and dissolves in your lung, goes into your system, and gets flushed out eventually. Versus a plutonium particle, not soluble, stuck there forever (but again, with a low activity). Hard to know. The opposite scenario could play out for ingestion - plutonium has very low uptake for ingestion, which means you are quite unlikely to have it do any harm if you inget very small quantities. But cesium has a high uptake, so if you eat some, it's gonna be with with you for while.
I will say this - I am far more concerned about the inhalation issue.
BTW, I hope I did not come off as argumentative, I just have a slight difference of opinion here.
You got it correct.
In a practical way, I wonder what is worse to inhale - a tiny little piece of plutonium that shoots off an alpha particle very rarely or a tiny little piece of cesium 134 that is going bang bang bang all day long. It could be that materials with a high specific activity are more dangerous than the long half life isotopes.
Then there are the physical characteristics of the airbourne junk. Maybe if you breathe in a cesium salt, it is solouble and dissolves in your lung, goes into your system, and gets flushed out eventually. Versus a plutonium particle, not soluble, stuck there forever (but again, with a low activity). Hard to know.
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You got it correct. ALL the concerns you have above are factored into the calculation of "dose" for ingested radionuclides. It's part of the calculation that the shorter half-life Cesium is more "active" than long half-life Plutonium. It is taken into account that the alpha with a charge of +2 deposits energy faster than an electron with charge -1. The energy of the particles is also taken into account.
Additionally, as you point out; the biological lifetimes are also included in the calculation - is the body going to flush out that radioisotope, and if so, how fast vis-a-vis the particle being retained.
So many people here have objections to the dosage numbers, and all the while they have absolutely no idea how the number is calculated and what effects it includes. They only "know" that it doesn't include the effect that they are hyping.
@ BC: "Yeah, I have heard
@ BC: "Yeah, I have heard and read all that. But here's what gets me - a particle of cesium dioxide (or whatever salt the cesium has formed) is NOT a "fuel flea".... BTW, I hope I did not come off as argumentative, I just have a slight difference of opinion here."
Not to worry, BC. No offense taken by Angusmerlin. Your thoughts are interesting to me. I, myself, am a neophyte just learning. I seem to remember hearing that Cesium was a by product of radioactive criticality. So, I checked the venerable Wikipedia re definition of where Cesium comes from. And, here is what was reported by the great Wikipedia:
"Caesium is mined mostly from pollucite, while the radioisotopes, especially caesium-137, are extracted from waste produced by nuclear reactors...." "Caesium-137 (137 55Cs, Cs-137) is a radioactive isotope of caesium which is formed as a fission product by nuclear fission."
So, I believe by definition, Cesium - 137 is a "fuel flea". And, therefore, is a "hot particle". Not surprising, therefore, that Cesium is identified by Gundersen as one of the "hot particles", along with the others he mentions (i.e., Strontium, Plutonium, Uranium, and Cobalt 60).
Re your query as to which is worse to inhale: "a tiny little piece of plutonium that shoots off an alpha particle very rarely or a tiny little piece of cesium 134 that is going bang bang bang all day long." According to Gundersen, Cesium is the most dangerous of the "hot particles". Prevalence maybe? I don't know. None of them sound too good to me. I am still stuck on the radioactive peaches found in Los Angeles last week! Forgive me for going off course. But, radioactive peaches is a related topic dear to my heart. Eating peaches during the summer should be wonderful. And, now some are coming up radioactive! Sorry, I digress...
Some peaches radioactive???
Eating peaches during the summer should be wonderful. And, now some are coming up radioactive! Sorry, I digress...
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Some peaches radioactive? More like ALL peaches are radioactive, and have ALWAYS been.
Those peaches contain more radioactivity in the form of Carbon-14, Potassium-40, and other radioisotopes due to Mother Nature than anything that came from Fukushima.
Our food has always been radioactive, which is why we can do "Carbon-14 dating" on even the ancient Egyptians.
I might suggest you get the book by UC-Berkeley Physics Professor Richard Muller called "The Instant Physicist" and it will tell you why alcoholic beverages are actually required to be radioactive in order to be sold legally in the USA.
You can even read that part by going to the Amazon page for "The Instant Physicist" and reading the free "Look Inside" sample.
But how long has he been
But how long has he been working with the samples, three months? In the mean time Tepco has released several reports on Plutonium, Uranium, Americium, Strontium present at several points within the plant.
I know Marco Kaltofen has way less financial back up, but at least one sample showing the plutonium and americium concentrations in Tokyo or Ibaraki?
The issue may be the
The issue may be the extremely small amounts of the material present. Small quantities take very long counts to get an accurate result, and also, many of the alpha-emitters (such as U, PU) have very long half lives which means, yet again, that a long count time is necessary.
Likely TEPCO has some much more concentrated samples to work with.
I am as anxious as anyone about this. I especially would like to see "hot particles" given a precise definition.
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