Source:
Washington's Blog
Date: 12/11/2011
The
Federal Reserve banks are owned by private banks, and so the Fed
looks out for the banks, and not necessarily the people or the nation.
Similarly – as documented below – the nuclear agencies are owned and
controlled by the nuclear industry, and serve them, instead of public
health or safety.
Congressman: There’s Been an “Attempted Coup” at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
I
noted last week:
New US plant designs are very near being licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission without any Fukushima modifications.
Now we know why.
Congressman Markey
wrote yesterday:
As part of his ongoing investigation into U.S. nuclear
safety since the Fukushima meltdowns, today Rep. Edward J. Markey
(D-Mass.) … released a blockbuster new report that details how four
Commissioners at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) colluded to
prevent and then delay the work of the NRC Near-Term Task Force on
Fukushima, the entity tasked with making recommendations for improvement
to NRC regulations and processes after the Fukushima meltdowns ….
Rep. Markey’s office reviewed thousands of pages of documents,
including emails, correspondence, meeting minutes and voting records,
and found a concerted effort by Commissioners William Magwood, Kristine
Svinicki, William Ostendorff and George Apostolakis to undermine the
efforts of the Fukushima Task Force with request for endless additional
study in an effort to delay the release and implementation of the task
force’s final recommendations. Documents also show open hostility on the
part of the four Commissioners toward efforts of NRC Chairman Greg
Jaczko to fully and quickly implement the recommendations of the Task
Force, despite efforts on the part of the Chairman to keep the other
four NRC Commissioners fully informed regarding the Japanese emergency.
“The actions of these four Commissioners since the Fukushima
nuclear disaster has caused a regulatory meltdown that has left
America’s nuclear fleet and the general public at risk,” said Rep. Markey. “Instead of doing what they have been sworn to do, these four Commissioners have attempted a coup
on the Chairman and have abdicated their responsibility to the American
public to assure the safety of America’s nuclear industry. I call on
these four Commissioners to stop the obstruction, do their jobs and
quickly move to fully implement the lessons learned from the Fukushima
disaster.”
A copy of the report “Regulatory Meltdown: How Four Nuclear
Regulatory Commissioners Conspired to Delay and Weaken Nuclear Reactor
Safety in the Wake of Fukushima” can be found HERE.
Major findings in the new report include:
- Four NRC Commissioners attempted to delay and otherwise impede the creation of the NRC Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima;
- Four NRC Commissioners conspired, with each other and with senior
NRC staff, to delay the release of and alter the NRC Near-Term Task
Force report on Fukushima;
- The other NRC Commissioners attempted to slow down or otherwise
impede the adoption of the safety recommendations made by the NRC
Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima ….
- The consideration of the Fukushima safety upgrades is not the only
safety-related issue that the other NRC Commissioners have opposed.
The Hill’s energy and environment blog
reported yesterday:
[The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
Gregory Jaczko] believes the commission “has taken an approach that is
not as protective of public health and safety as I believe is
necessary.”
***
The commission has disagreed in recent months
over how to deal with the recommendations of a task force assigned to
reevaluate the country’s nuclear safety regulations in light of the
disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan.
The report called on the commission to make sweeping improvements to
NRC’s “existing patchwork of regulatory requirements and other safety
initiatives.”
Jaczko called on the commission to quickly evaluate the report and
implement the necessary recommendations. But the commissioners initially
resisted Jaczko’s call for swift action.
Rolling Stone
pointed out in April:
The NRC has long served as little more than a lap dog to
the nuclear industry, unwilling to crack down on unsafe reactors. “The
agency is a wholly owned subsidiary of the nuclear power industry,” says
Victor Gilinsky, who served on the commission during the Three Mile
Island meltdown in 1979. Even President Obama denounced the NRC during
the 2008 campaign, calling it a “moribund agency that needs to be
revamped and has become captive of the industries that it regulates.”
In the years ahead, nuclear experts warn, the consequences of the
agency’s inaction could be dire. “The NRC has consistently put industry
profits above public safety,” says Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear
executive turned whistle-blower. “Consequently, we have a dozen
Fukushimas waiting to happen in America.”
I
noted in April:
Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, Duane Peterson
(president of VPIRG & coordinator for the campaign to retire Vermont
Yankee nuclear plant), investigative reporter Harvey Wasserman and Paul
Gallay (executive director of Riverkeeper) point out in a roundtable
discussion:
- The NRC won’t even begin conducting its earthquake study for Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York until after relicensing is complete in 2013, because the NRC doesn’t consider a big earthquake “a serious risk”
- Congressman Markey has said there is a cover up. Specifically, Markey alleges that the head of the NRC told everyone not to write down risks they find from an earthquake greater than 6.0 (the plant was only built to survive a 6.0 earthquake)
- The NRC is wholly captive to industry
- The NRC has never turned
down the request of a nuclear power plant to be relicensed in the
United States. Relicensing is solely a paper process; there is no safety
review.
- The NRC’s assumptions regarding a worst-case accident are
ridiculous. For example, the NRC assumes only 1% of the fuel could
meltdown, while 70% melted down at Fukushima. The NRC assumes no loss of
containment, while there has been a major loss of containment in
reactors 1-3 (especially 2) at Fukushima.
- “If there was a free market in energy, nuclear power would be over …
immediately”. Nuclear plant owners can’t get insurance; they can only
operate because the U.S. government provides insurance on the taxpayer
dime. The government also granted a ridiculously low cap on liability
- If we had no subsidies for nuclear, coal or oil, we’d have a clean energy economy right now
- We have 4 reactors in California – 2 at San Onofre 2 at San Luis Obisbo – which are vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis.
- No state or federal agency knows who would be in charge in case of an accident at Indian Point. It’s like the Keystone Cops
The precursor to the NRC – the Atomic Energy Commission –
was no better:
By any measure, Dr. John Gofman was one of the greatest
scientists of the 20th century. Gofman earned his doctorate in nuclear
and physical chemistry, and was also a medical doctor. He worked on the
Manhattan Project, co-discovered uranium-232 and -233 and proved their
fissionability, helped discover how to extract plutonium and led the
team that discovered and characterized lipoproteins in the causation of
heart disease.
Dr. Arthur R. Tamplin was a doctor of biophysics, who was tasked – as
a group leader in the Biomedical Division at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratories – with predicting the ultimate distribution within
the biosphere and in humans of each radionuclide produced in the
explosion of a nuclear device.
In 1963 the Atomic Energy Commission asked Gofman and Tamplin to
undertake a series of long range studies on potential dangers that might
arise from the “peaceful uses of the atom.” They told the truth, and
the AEC launched a campaign of harassment in response.
What did they say, and why was the AEC so hostile?
Gofman and Tamplin documented that low levels of radiation can cause cancer and other diseases, and they argued that federal safety guidelines for low-level exposures should be reduced by 90 percent.
Because Obama’s
top adviser and top funders are connected with the nuclear power industry, the White House has also aggressively pushed four new nuclear power plants in the U.S., even though
virtually all of the current nuclear reactors in the U.S. are of the same archaic design as those at Fukushima, and this design was not chosen for safety reasons, but because
it worked in Navy submarines, and produced plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. And even though
the same folks who built and run Fukushima will build and operate the new U.S. facilities.
(Other U.S. agencies are captured as well. For example, the
EPA and
FDA are playing politics with radiation. Indeed, Forbes’ blogger
Jeff McMahon and Truthout writer
Mike Ludwig
both note that FDA radiation standards for milk and other foods are 200
times higher than EPA standards for drinking water, and are based more
on
commercial than safety concerns.)
IAEA: Another Nuclear Industry Shill
The NRC is not the only captured nuclear agency. The International
Atomic Energy Agency is also just a booster for nuclear power.
I
noted in May
The entire purpose of the IAEA – according to its website – is to promote nuclear power:
The IAEA is the world’s center of cooperation in the nuclear field. It was set up as the world´s “Atoms for Peace” organization
in 1957 within the United Nations family. The Agency works with its
Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.
The Christian Science Monitor
noted in March:
[Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreev, who
as director of the Soviet Spetsatom clean-up agency helped in the
efforts 25 years ago to clean up Chernobyl ] has also accused the IAEA
of being too close with corporations. “This is only a fake organization
because every organization which depends on the nuclear industry – and
the IAEA depends on the nuclear industry – cannot perform properly.”
Bloomberg
reported yesterday:
The [IAEA] classifies safety as one of its top three
priorities, yet is spending 8.9 percent of its 352 million-euro ($469
million) regular budget this year on making plants secure from
accidents. As it focuses resources on the other two priorities —
technical cooperation and preventing nuclear- weapons proliferation —
the IAEA is missing an opportunity to improve shortcomings in reactor
safety exposed by the Fukushima disaster, said Trevor Findlay, a former
Australian diplomat.
“The IAEA did not seize the opportunity of this dreadful event to advance the agency’s role in nuclear safety,” said Findlay ….
The IAEA was founded in 1957 as the global “Atoms for
Peace” organization to promote “safe, secure and peaceful” nuclear
technology, according to its website. A staff of 2,300 work at the
IAEA’s secretariat at its headquarters.
***
Its mission statement encapsulates the same conflict
as Japan’s failed nuclear-safety regime: playing the role of both
promoter and regulator of atomic power, according to scientists,
diplomats and analysts interviewed by Bloomberg News.
About half of the IAEA’s budget is devoted to
restricting the use of nuclear material for military purposes, and the
agency has spent a decade investigating Iran’s atomic program because of
suspicion the country is developing weapons.
As the agency targeted weapons, the meltdowns at Tokyo
Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant capped years of
faked safety reports and fatal accidents in Japan’s atomic-power
industry. The country’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was in a
conflict of interest because it was under the control of the Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Industry, which had a mandate to promote nuclear
power.
***
The IAEA “accepted for years the overlap between
regulation and industry in Japan,” said Johannis Noeggerath, president
of Switzerland’s Society of Nuclear Professionals and safety director
for the country’s Leibstadt reactor. “They have a safety culture problem.”
***
Since coming to office in 2009, Amano has spent five
times more money fighting terrorism and preventing proliferation than on
making the world’s 450 nuclear reactors safer, UN data show.
The agency’s safety division garnered little respect in U.S. diplomatic cables that described the department as a marketing channel for countries seeking to sell atomic technology.
***
They also questioned the credentials of Tomihiro Taniguchi, the IAEA’s former head of safety who helped create the regulatory regime in Japan, which is being blamed for failings that led to the Fukushima disaster.
***
The IAEA’s nuclear-safety division had downplayed the
threat from natural disasters. In 2010, the director general’s first
full year in office, anti- terrorism spending rose at three times the
rate of safety expenditure.
“Tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes have
affected many parts of the world and nuclear installations everywhere
responded admirably,” Taniguchi said in a December 2005 speech. “The
design and operational features ensured that extreme natural conditions
would not jeopardize safety.”
Taniguchi was also an executive of Japan’s Nuclear
Power Engineering Corp., which promotes public acceptance of the
operation of atomic-power plants, before joining the IAEA.
***
The IAEA’s own mission to promote atomic power may also contradict the Convention on Nuclear Safety.
“Each contracting party shall take the appropriate
steps to ensure an effective separation between the functions of the
regulatory body and those of any other body or organization concerned
with the promotion or utilization of nuclear energy,” says article 8.2
of the convention.
IAEA Controls World Health Organization on Radiation
I
noted in April:
Certainly the World Health Organization is a neutral voice?
One would think so. But as physician Helen Caldicott points out:
There is widespread confusion about the roles of the
World Health Organisation and the International Atomic Energy
Commission. Monbiot expresses surprise that a UN-affiliated body such as
WHO might be under the influence of the nuclear power industry, causing
its reporting on nuclear power matters to be biased. And yet that is
precisely the case.
In the early days of nuclear power, WHO issued
forthright statements on radiation risks, such as its 1956 warning:
”Genetic heritage is the most precious property for human beings. It
determines the lives of our progeny, health and harmonious development
of future generations. As experts, we affirm that the health of future
generations is threatened by increasing development of the atomic
industry and sources of radiation.”
After 1959, the organisation made no more statements on health and radioactivity.
What happened?
On May 28, 1959, at the 12th World Health Assembly,
WHO drew up an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. A
clause of this agreement says the WHO effectively grants the right of
prior approval over any research it might undertake or report on to the
IAEA – a group that many people, including journalists, think is a
neutral watchdog, but which is, in fact, an advocate for the nuclear
power industry. Its founding papers state: ”The agency shall seek to
accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace,
health and prosperity through the world.”
The WHO’s subjugation to the IAEA is widely known
within the scientific radiation community, something which Monbiot chose
to ignore. But it is clearly not the only matter on which he is
ignorant, after his recent apparent three-day perusal of the vast body
of scientific information on radiation and radioactivity. The confusion
that he and other nuclear industry apologists sow about radiation risks
is very similar to the way that the tobacco industry propounded
misinformation and lies about the true effects of smoking.
Despite their claims, it is they, not the
”anti-nuclear movement”, who are ”misleading the world about the impacts
of radiation on human health”.
Radiation expert Dr. Christopher Busby agrees:
The last thing [proponents of nuclear weapons and nuclear
energy] wanted was the doctors and epidemiologists stopping their fun.
The IAEA and the World Health Organisation (WHO) signed an agreement in
1959 to remove all research into the issue from the doctors of the WHO,
to the atom scientists, the physicists of the IAEA: this agreement is
still in force. The UN organisations do not refer to, or cite any
scientific study, which shows their statements on Chernobyl to be false.
There is a huge gap between the picture painted by the UN, the IAEA,
the ICRP and the real world. And the real world is increasingly being
studied and reports are being published in the scientific literature:
but none of the authorities responsible for looking after the public
take any notice of this evidence.
Indeed an agreement between IAEA and WHO states that WHO cannot
research health effects of radiation or effects of nuclear accidents if
IAEA does not agree (2:30 into the following video) and the former head
of WHO
admits that WHO answers to IAEA (7:00 into video):
ICRP: Another Industry Mouthpiece
The International Commission on Radiological Protection is also tied to the nuclear industry. I
reported in April:
The Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients wrote in 2002:
One of the original five ‘health physicists’ to set
radiation safety standards was Karl Z. Morgan. Dr. Morgan served on the
International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), which set up
most radiation standards. He also directed the Health Physics Division
at Oak Ridge from 1944 until his retirement in 1972. In recent years,
Dr. Morgan has publicly criticized the ICRP for failing to protect human
health. In a 1994 article for the American Journal of Industrial
Medicine, Dr. Morgan wrote: “The period of atmospheric testing of
nuclear weapons by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the
USSR is a sad page in the history of civilized man. Without question,
it was the cause of hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths. Yet there
was complete silence on the part of the ICRP. During these years
(1960-1965), most members of the ICRP either worked directly with the
nuclear weapons industry or indirectly received most of their funding
for their research from this industry.”
The ICRP’s alliance with the nuclear industry includes ties to the
International Congress of Radiology. In his 1999 autobiography, The
Angry Genie: One Man’s Walk Through the Nuclear Age (ISBN
0-8061-3122-5), Dr. Morgan related his concern about the ICRP’s refusal
to address the danger of excessive X-ray exposure during diagnostic
procedures and dentistry. Until the passage of the Radiation Control for
Health and Safety Act of 1968, some X-ray equipment used in the 1950s
and 1960s delivered 2 to 3 rem per X-ray. X-ray doses as low as 1.6 rem
increase a woman’s chance of developing cancer, according to a 1974
study by Baruch Modan [Lancet (Feb. 23,1974), pp 277-279]. The Act did
not address the cumulative effect of multiple, routine, and often
unnecessary X-rays. 
Worldwide Failure
The
IAEA and
NRC
knew pretty quickly that Fukushima was an extreme radiological
disaster, but they kept that information from the public for months, and
all nuclear agencies worldwide have downplayed the severity of
Fukushima.
Indeed, governments around the world have been
covering up nuclear meltdowns for 50 years.
Secretary of State Colin Powell peddled Curveball’s lies at the United Nations. 
