Do children worldwide suffer from atomic power? Absolutely. Join CCTV host Margaret Harrington, and from Fairewinds Energy Education: President Maggie Gundersen, Program Administrator Caroline Phillips, and Board Director Chiho Kaneko, for Part 2 of their discussion on the health risks to children around the world from operating atomic power reactors and their burgeoning waste. Highly radioactive waste from the meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi has been left for “interim storage” in a schoolyard, Japan’s Environment Ministry has approved the use of radiated soil to be recycled for use under paved roads, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has introduced new radiation limits for the public that are at least 25 times higher than current exposure limits. Learn more by watching this episode of Nuclear Free Future as the women of Fairewinds lend their voices to protect the children.
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MH: This is Burlington and here we are in the Channel 17 newsroom at the Center for Media and Democracy in Burlington, Vermont. This is our series Nuclear-Free Future Conversation. I’m your host, Margaret Harrington. And viewers, let’s welcome back the women of Fairewinds Energy Education. On my right is Chiho Konako, Caroline Phillips is next. Maggie Gundersen is here. And Maggie, you’re the CEO and Founder of Fairewinds Energy Education. Caroline, you’re the Program Administrator; and Chiho, you’re the very active and engaged member of the Board of Fairewinds. So our subject is part 2 of Children Suffer Nuclear Impact Worldwide. And Maggie, just lead us into this conversation again. It’s a continuation of all of the facts that were brought up on our last show. So tell us what comes to mind first for you with the nuclear impact on children.
MG: Thank you, Margaret, for having us, first, and thank you for looking at this subject, because the media is not covering it. And we appreciate your bringing the truth forward. Children are much more radio-sensitive than adults. And what that means is that the children are more susceptible to radiation. They get ill more quickly, they absorb it more quickly in their bodies, and it’s really a major concern. And all the standards for radiation are based upon a male of 160 pounds or more. So it’s really a tragedy that children aren’t considered – how close they are to the ground where the radiation is in the dirt, that they tie their shoes and often lick their fingers. And so all of that radiation is getting right on the inside and on the outside.
CK: I can also add that on top of the physical impact of radiation on people, there are some social impacts as well. And recently, I was reading news that the Fukushima Prefecture government did research survey of evacuee families, and they said 47 percent of responders are now having two households. In other words, fathers living in some area, and it may be the same area where they used to live; whereas mother and children, they live elsewhere. Because I think mothers, for the most part, their primary concern is their children’s health. And fathers often feel obligated to stay and work in the same place. Or sometimes they feel ashamed to tell their colleagues that their wives and children are living elsewhere, because it’s considered to be counter to the recovery effort, somehow dampening the spirit. So in that way, children grow up in a society where they’re getting two mixed messages. And not only that, they also have family that are fractured. So they don’t get to live in full family lives.
MH: And at the same time, the Japanese government is telling people that it’s okay to return to this area.
CK: Yes. That’s, again, part of the problem. On the one hand, they say it is okay. And on the other hand, they are doing this crazy rush to so-called decontaminate – scrape and cut down trees to reduce the radiation – surface radiation or air radiation level. So if they really say it’s okay, people should be just allowed to go without doing anything. And yet, the reality is that it’s not what they’re saying and not what they’re doing. They’re putting so much money into decontamination work. So how are you supposed to feel? Is it really okay or it’s not okay? And then we also recently – there’s a lot of news about the radioactive soil, waste, that stemmed from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. It’s all over Japan, especially in the northern part of Japan, but just really all over Japan. And – do you want to talk about the Fukushima school thing?
CP: (5:00) Well, yeah. So in Fukushima High School, they found that it contains lots of waste that a teacher even reported saying they did various tests on the soil using nonprofit groups – two nonprofit groups – one in the Fukushima Prefecture and the other in Tokyo, so that they could compare for better analysis. And the results shows 27,000 to 30,000 Becquerels of radioactive Cesium per kilogram in the soil. And the government’s response is, oh, yeah, we’re supposed to take care of radioactive waste that’s above 8,000 Becquerels, but this is interim storage, we need to take care of that and put it in a permanent place; we just don’t have that yet. But this is located on a high school grounds.
CK: So just to put the number in context, 8,000 Becquerels per kilogram – what does that mean? Well, prior to Fukushima Daiichi disaster, in Japan, if the soil or material contained more than 100 Becquerel per kilogram, it had to be contained in a barrel and stored on nuclear facility, because it’s considered to be nuclear waste. Now, that level of radioactive materials is all over in Japan. In fact, Arnie was just sampling soil in front of the Ministry Trade building in Tokyo and that was something like 4,000 or 5,000 Becquerels per kil – that’s 40 times higher than it should have been.
MH: This is Arnie Gundersen, the Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Energy Education, who made a trip to Japan recently, for at least a month –
MG: He spent a month there studying the soil. He worked with scientists both in Fukushima Prefecture and in Tokyo, and also took samples with them. And the samples have all been sent to a lab and Fairewinds will be issuing a report on that as soon as the study’s completed.
MH: So what you’re saying, Chiho, is that things are getting worse and not better.
CK: Yeah. Or things are not getting better, for sure. And what’s happening is that the radiation levels gradually decrease naturally because – like Cesium – they have a half life that’s –
MG: But that’s 300 years.
CK: That’s right. But some, like Cesium 134, they have shorter – like a 28 – no, shorter halflife.
MG: It’s shorter. It has a two-year half life, which would be 20 years before it’s all gone.
MH: And Cesium is what is found in food? In Milk?
MG: Strontium is found in milk and Cesium is found in meat and fish. And it’s absorbed into muscle like potassium, where Strontium is absorbed into bone like calcium.
MH: But to go back to the Cesium, you’re saying that even though it is less, the impact might be less now, but that’s a miniscule amount that it’s less. In the big picture, because you’re giving us the big picture here or how many hundreds or thousands of years these things remain in the soil and in the environment.
MG: There’s two things to refer to. First, understanding Becquerels. So when we’re talking about how many Becquerels. Arnie was talking with us recently and he said that it’s like taking a shower and having 8,000 raindrops pouring over you every minute of every day. This is the exposure they’re getting or the numbers Caroline was talking about on the playground – 24,000, you said?
CP: Yeah, I think it was 27 to 33,000 Becquerels.
MG: That means that much of radiation is coming to the children playing out on that playground off of this stuff as if they were standing in radioactive rain or radioactive shower, continuously.
CP: Repeatedly being exposed.
MG: And then Caroline has some more information to share about what’s happening here in the U.S. with the EPA.
CP: Well, what Chiho was saying with in Japan, how those radiation numbers exposure limits have changed from – I think you said – was it 100 to 8,000?
CK: It’s a little complicated. I’m going to talk about this a bit.
CP: Well, like in Japan, these exposure limits have changed and they have been raised. And the EPA earlier this month, in June, they have released a proposal to raise the limits in the United States for radiation exposure. It’s open for public comment until July 25th, and these exposure levels have been raised – beyond even being doubled. They’re being raised 25 times more than they were. So, for example, currently before it’s gone into action, the cap of public consumption of radiation is at 4 milirems per year. With the new EPA limits, 500 milirems per year for people over 15 and 100 milirems for younger children, the elderly and pregnant or nursing women will be allowable in emergency circumstances. So that means also that if there is some sort of meltdown in the United States, the exposure limits that people will be allowed by the government to be exposed to, has gone up 25 times more. And it’s an interesting thing where the EPA has said it’s only intended to help guide local communities and state and local officials in the event of a disaster. And they site for the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown. But it’s something where it leaves people, especially in the immediate days following a disaster, really unprotected and exposed. (CK: Yeah, that’s true0
MH: (11:58) And there really is no provision for – what is it –the iodine people have to take –
MG: Well, the potassium iodide, which allows your thyroid to absorb healthy iodine, only protects against thyroid cancer. It doesn’t protect against any of the other radioactive isotopes that you might be inhaling or be exposed to on your skin. It doesn’t do anything for that. It does do the thyroid and should be made available, especially for women and children, but a lot of – during the Bush presidency – the second Bush presidency, they took back some of the availability to potassium iodide because the industry didn’t want people to be afraid. And so instead of protecting people – and that happened also in Japan when Fukushima Daiichi had its triple meltdown. The bureaucracy stopped the release because they didn’t have an order from above to release the potassium iodide and give it to people. So a lot of children are developing thyroid cancer.
MH: That’s to get back – viewers, we’re talking about a raised number of percentage of thyroid cancer in children in Japan because of the triple meltdown and Chiho, can you elaborate on that?
CK: Yes. So Fukushima Prefecture is doing a follow-up thyroid cancer checks on children, 18 or under, at the time of the disaster. And something like 300 children – 300,000 children. Now the latest numbers shows that there are 172 people, children, now some young adults, are now considered to either have thyroid cancer or have serious suspicion that they do. And 131 people have already gone through removal surgery. And this is a significant number because compared to what the statistics were prior to Fukushima Daiichi disaster, which was one or two in a million people, it’s a lot of number.
MG: And at that time, Fukushima Prefecture has the lowest rate of thyroid cancer in Japan. And now it has the highest rate by far.
CK: The problem is the experts who are tasks to analyze what this means. They kept saying, even today – they say it’s difficult to conclude that this elevated statistics has anything to do with radiation.
MG: And that’s just patently untrue. There’s nowhere in the world except around Chernobyl has there been such a high rate of thyroid cancers, and it’s definitely the iodine comes out in the early days of a nuclear meltdown, or radiation released from any type of radioactive pipe or water, that it comes out, it leaks out, and that attacks the thyroid right away.
MH: (15:41) So this is organized denial of the affects of radiation. And we see it – President Obama went to Hiroshima in this historic visit recently. And let’s speak – please talk about that. What do we take away from the fact that he did not mention radiation in Hiroshima and he didn’t mention the Fukushima meltdown at all. There was just a denial that it happened.
MG: Well, for me, I was terribly disappointed because he didn’t apologize to the Japanese people for dropping the bomb, which state department records show was done not because the war needed to be ended; it was already ending. But the bombs were dropped to show the Russians that we could do that and we had this technology. And that’s just a devastating, devastating thing, and we should have apologized for that, I believe. And secondly, he didn’t mention anything about Fukushima Daiichi. I believe that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy, the U.S. agencies, are complicit in the coverup in Japan. They give money to keep a refabrication facility open and it’s our tax dollars going for that. And in that case, almost 80 percent of the people want the reprocessing facility closed. And so you look at all these things and it’s just about power and money, from my standpoint in the U.S. Chiho, I don’t know from your standpoint in Japan.
CK: So last year, I worked as a volunteer interpreter for the A-Bomb Victims Organization called Hidankyo, who came to UN for the 5-year NPT – Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. And so I have a slightly different take on that – Mr. Obama’s visit. It’s good that he went. Because it’s historic. And people are generally touched that this happened with a sitting president. So it’s a start. But I think they are feeling that the – Mr. Obama, President Obama as an individual, he might be actually more nuanced and sensitive person, and yet his position as the president of the United States, he has a lot of limitations, restrictions, posed on him. And so they like to pull that human side of him more, come out to see, feel as a fellow human, what a horrible thing it is – radiation and a nuclear bomb does to humans, to each other. And they wanted to sort of seize on that individual instinct. And in this trip, that didn’t quite happen. So they’re hoping for maybe a future, another visit by Mr. Obama. That’s what they’re saying. And I understand why President Obama didn’t want to talk about Fukushima, because that just opens a whole can of worms for the industry. And the United States government has a lot at stake also by jeopardizing its commercial interests in nuclear power.
MG: Right. It’s building – Westinghouse is building all the new nuclear plants in China and they’re touting and marketing their things all over the world. And Japan is also. And so even while we see the tragedy of Daiichi and the meltdowns and what that’s doing to the Japanese people, Japan is selling nuclear plants and nuclear services other places around the world like the U.S. is. And the nuclear industry is one of the United States’ biggest exports. It’s a huge money maker. I just feel really strongly as a woman, a mother, a grandmother, that it’s morally wrong. And I was in the nuclear power industry. And I promoted nuclear power plants and I think they’re morally wrong. Their connection to the atomic bomb and the way the industry is, is just not what we should be practicing as a human race.
CK: (20:46) So I’m sorry to just go back to what we were talking about, but I promised to follow up on the 8,000 thing. So recently, the Ministry of Environment in Japan, they issued a new guideline to allow radioactive soil up to 8,000 Becquerel per kilogram to be used in public works construction. So they can be used underneath the layer of roads, construction – anywhere in Japan. What that means, the reality is, that Japan is now inundated with radioactive material that they don’t know what to do with.
MG: Oh, this is terrible, because at the last discussion, you said that there were these plastic bags of the radioactive material. And you’re saying now –
CK: They’re going to sift it through and they’ll say okay, well, this pile over here is just under 8,000 Becquerel – it’s going to be covered with concrete or something so it’ll be okay. So that’s what the situation is. And that’s how the world has become. And it’s not just in Japan, I don’t think.
CP: No. Actually we were learning when we went to the Uranium Symposium last April, actually, in Quebec City, there were houses that were built with sand from various uranium mining tailings, and they had done this similar method of disbursing this uranium waste in concrete floors. So people’s homes – the foundation of their home were made with this concrete. And there’s a frightening record in Canada of people who discover that they’re living on these radioactive foundations and they have health consequences from it. And they have no idea. You haven no idea that that’s a valid practice apparently, according to their governments.
CK: Arnie was saying that even in this country today, if 100 Becquerel per kilogram level of soil was sitting here, it has to be put into a barrel and shipped to – what, Texas? –
MG: Texas for Vermont. (CK: Vermont Yankee) Well, and if we found it here in Vermont, because each state has a different repository, so there’s these highly radioactive sites of waste all around the country and most of them are leaking. Dr. Marco Kaltofen who we work with at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, he’s doing several studies at several of the waste sites and the exposure to the workers and what’s leaking off into nearby rivers and what’s moving towards precious aquifers is terrifying.
CP: Especially in New Mexico. In the EPA announcements of raising their radiation exposure, that’s really rough for places like New Mexico, who have a lot of nuclear waste storage facilities, and they’re located shockingly close to aquifers. And of course, in New Mexico, that is precious, precious resources.
MH: (24:32) And that goes back to the uranium mining also, which of course impacted the aquifers, too, and the people’s health. But meanwhile, what studies are being done – what official studies are being done by governments –
MG: The U.S. has blocked any official studies, and the NIH was doing one on radiation exposures in conjunction with the NRC. And the NRC has said that it doesn’t have the money to continue the study so they’ve shut it – they’re shutting it down. But they never wanted to do it to begin with. The industry has refused in the U.S., where in Germany, the did have studies done. Concentric circles around all the operating nuclear plants showed extensive leukemias and right here in Vermont, I heard the founder of that study speak at the University of Vermont Med Center and give lectures and how the doctors were there and asking questions and it was amazing what they found and what they uncovered. And this country had sponsored the study because the thought that it would show that the industry was fine and it’s fine to keep operating these nuclear plants. Every operating nuclear plant releases radiation into the environment that we all breathe in or contaminates water and soil nearby and we eat it or drink it. And the industry has wanted to prove that it’s okay. So in Germany, that’s what they did, and proved that it’s not okay. And here in the U.S., they refused to complete the study.
MH: I remember that was Doctor Eisenberg who was on this program several years ago. And what impact did it have on the German nuclear industry?
MG: I think that it really, behind the scenes, helped color Chancellor Merkel’s viewpoint. She is a physicist, she was originally very pro-nuclear, she knew all that data, she was familiar with it, and then the meltdowns happened in Japan. And Germany made the decision to begin shutting all their reactors down, and they’ve done a phenomenal job converting to solar and wind. And their solar – they’re financing solar on rooftops all over, and Germany is not a really sunny country. And they’re getting phenomenal – there was a whole 16-hour time period that they ran solely – the whole country on solar.
MH: so this is one very good example of how education and studies can turn the story around. By the story, I mean the impact of nuclear on people, and especially as we’re speaking here, on children.
CK: Well, I side with the mothers’ instincts over what the society puts in a priority. Because mothers say what’s good the health of children, which is the future of our species basically – I mean not just society. And we need to heed their voice –
CP: Their impulse. We got a call, actually, on Monday of this week – maybe it was Tuesday – from a concerned mother in British Columbia. Her child was – is attending elementary school, she didn’t say what grade, but in their elementary school they’re being taught the benefits of nuclear power. And she was upset and so she contacted Fairewinds Energy Education to ask if we had something for elementary aged students, which is something we’re working on and we’d like to do. And so her concern was, she said, as a mother, I want to go to my school and I want to give them other material to talk about for our children to say, no, we need to help end climate change, but nuclear is not the only option; it’s not the one we need to be teaching our kids. We have these other resources. And her concern was so passionate and she sees this as this next generation of children, they need to know and be educated that there are other paths. And she was just so devastated that that was starting at such an early age and that was something that they weren’t providing alternatives to.
MH: (29:33) You’re saying that it is part of the syllabus. This is –
MG: The Nuclear Energy Institute – the lobbying arm here in the U.S. of the nuclear industry, prepares all the materials and it’s used in the curriculum in all the public schools that want to access it from K through grade 12, and even in colleges. It’s their curriculum that trains nuclear engineers and nuclear operators. So it’s a very in-a-box one-sided, very pro nuke. They don’t know how to look at things in any other way.
MH: So we have denial, we have misinformation. And we have downright propagation of lies about this industry. And right before us is, as you are showing us and our viewers, this is every day, the people in Japan, in Ukraine, in Chernobyl are facing this. And for generations.
MG: So Caroline uncovered some things in Chernobyl about the lunch program.
CP: We had discussed last time the lunch program is one where the only food the children received that was not contaminated was from the government. And these government subsidies for lunch programs, they were cut off. They’re in an economic state where they can’t – well, at least they choose no longer to provide those school lunches. And so mothers are forced to feed their children farmed food from their surrounding area, and they live in the area outside of Chernobyl that was kind of that gray area of evacuation where it was like, okay, we’re not going to evacuate you but we’ll provide you with government subsidies, that they’re no longer providing. And it is affecting the food that the children are eating. And so now they’re forced to eat food that is radioactive.
MG: Radioactive berries, vegetables that are grown in the radioactive zone.
CP: And the mothers know and they’re devastated by it, but there’s nothing –it’s that or starvation for these children, because they don’t have food.
CK: (32:06) And people who are poor and marginalized, they’re the ones who suffer most because they don’t have alternatives.
MH: Well, the last time, you ended the program with – Chiho – you said isn’t it okay to say we don’t want this. And I think that, let’s end it again like that, with each of you saying we don’t want this, in your own words. Maggie, do you want to start it?
MG: I think that that’s the main reason that I founded Fairewinds and Arnie and I continue to do this work, is we want the truth out and we want to protect the families around the world. It’s pretty simple.
CP: We don’t want our government to enforce exposures on us or lead us to believe that these exposures are okay. With the new EPA exposure limits that they’re proposing, it’s the equivalent of 250 X-rays a year that you don’t need. I don’t want that in my body. We don’t want this.
CK: Well, it’s a larger problem, I guess. It’s not just about nuclear industry, but it concerns other things, GMO and chemicals. But problems usually are created over there, at the top, and the people who have a lot of power and money. And people who suffer are the people like us on the periphery. And I think as more people’s voices need to be stronger. I don’t know, maybe it’s too optimistic for me to say that, though.
MH: While you’re saying it, there’s optimism, there’s action in your voice and viewers, we’re listening to the women of Fairewinds and we will come back to you again to be – for more education and enlightenment. Thank you very much for coming again. Thank you, viewers, for watching. Goodbye for now.