6/1/2012 Japan’s Nuclear Industry: The CIA Link

Source: Japan Realtime
Date: June 1, 2012, 10:18 AM JST
by: Eleanor Warnock

Bloomberg News

In the 15 months since the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan’s relationship with nuclear power has changed dramatically.

Once the world’s third-largest producer of nuclear energy, the country faces the prospect of electricity shortages this summer as all 50 of its plants remain offline. Restarting reactors — a step the government says is necessary to support the economy — is proving to be politically tricky as a skeptical public questions the safety of atomic energy.

Rewind almost 60 years and the government had a similar problem: how to persuade the public to support its ambition to become a nuclear nation only nine years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
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5/29/2012 Should We Hide Low-Dose Radiation Exposures From The Public?

Source: Forbes
Date: 5/29/2012 @ 1:59PM
by: Jeff McMahon

When fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster began appearing last Spring in U.S. air, rainwater, drinking water, and milk, many U.S. media outlets ignored the story. It was a difficult story to cover. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was releasing raw data erratically, sometimes late on Friday afternoons, and reporters either had to possess radiation expertise or take a crash course in picocuries, millisieverts, MCLs and DILs.  ... Read the rest here

Ruriko Sakuma, daughter of dairy farmer Shinji Sakuma, rubs a cow at their farm in the village of Katsurao in Fukushima prefecture, 25 kms west of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant on May 3, 2011 after returning to feed their livestock from a shelter in Fukushima City. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)