16 January 2014 (02:17 UTC-07 Tango)/14 Rabi ‘al-Awwal 1435/26 Dey 1392/16 Gui-Chou (12th month) 4711
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) says it will conduct medical surveys of at least 71 U.S. military personnel suffering from radiation sickness, as a result of the 2011 Operation Tomodachi. At least 51 personnel report thyroid cancer.
But wait, the DoD isn’t doing this willingly! It took an act of Congress to kick the DoD in the ass. The U.S. House of Representatives mandated the radiation checks as part of the new government spending bill.
Three years later Tokyo Electric Power Company continues to refuse to compensate anymore victims of their nuclear disaster. TEPCo has rejected the latest arbitrated compensation deal with 180 people in Iwate Prefecture. TEPCo says the deal is vague.
TEPCo is also demanding that families of employees, who were evacuated because of the March 2011 nuclear explosions, to pay back their compensation!
The national government of Japan has approved TEPCo’s new ten year business plan, but one prefectural governor absolutely refuses. The governor of Niigata, Izumida Hirohiko, said he will not allow TEPCo to re-start their nuke plant in his prefecture because they’ve proven to be incompetant at Fukushima Daiichi.
Izumida also blamed Too Big to Jail banks and investors: “Shareholders and banks have not taken responsibility, and it is a ridiculous plan from a safety standpoint.”
By the way, TEPCo’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear complex in Niigata Prefecture is the World’s largest!
TEPCo’s ten year plan includes a name change because, company officials admit, customers are now bias against them. It also funds decommissioning of the disaster reactors with money meant for compensating victims, which explains why TEPCo suddenly is refusing to compensate anymore victims, and is actually demanding those already compensated pay them back! “I was surprised when I heard from an official of the industry ministry’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy at the end of last year. Compensation and decommissioning are two different worlds!”-Yamana Hajimu, decommissioning division
TEPCo also said it will raise electricity rates for Japanese, and TEPCo officials blame it on the new higher taxes in Japan. TEPCo also warns they will probably raise rates several times this year!
California assemblyman, Bob Wieckowski, wants the Department of Public Health to start publicizing radiation data concerning the Golden State’s beaches: “I think a lot of people’s questions can be answered if the department would conduct a study or post the results of other studies and monitoring that are already completed…..”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealed it will begin airborne radiation checks, on the U.S. east coast. Helicopters from the National Nuclear Security Administration will take air samples around Baltimore, Maryland. Homeland Security claims the operation is about protecting the U.S. from future nuclear attack!
Officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration admit that in order to determine if radiation contamination is happening, they need to establish “original background” radiation levels. Government officials also said the heliborne air sampling will take place several times a year for several years!
If you live on the west coast of North America, scientists with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are asking for your help: “We already have dozens of seawater samples from the coast of Japan out to the middle of the Pacific, but now we need new samples, from up and down the West Coast of North America and across the Pacific.”-Ken Buesseler
The problem is funding, and Woods Hole scientists hope people will raise the funds necessary for the project. In return anybody, or group, who provides $550 to $600 USD will get a 20 liter sample collecting kit (which also covers the cost of shipping). For more info contact ourradioactiveocean.org
Researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory (a major nuclear research facility) have come up with a smart phone App that turns your phone’s camera into a gamma ray dosimeter! It’s called CellRad.