"Exposure: Radiation Victims Speak Out" Web Series Reveals Personal Struggles, Triumphs

Over 20 years ago, the Hiroshima newspaper Chugoku Shimbun sent a team of reporters to 15 nations around the world to gather personal accounts of people affected by radiation - from reactor accidents, accidental contamination, to nuclear weapons manufacturing and testing. The interviews were initially published as a series of eight newspaper features titled "Sekai no Hibakusha," or "Hibakusha (figuratively, "atomic bomb survivors") Around the World." This monumental series won a Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association award in 1990, and was subsequently published in book form the following year. Executive Director of the Chugoku Shimbun Yukio Ogata explains,

"Largely as a result of the articles' success in bringing the public's attention to the dangers of radiation, a number of victims of radioactive contamination from areas as far-flung as Chernobyl and Bikini Atoll were able to participate in the world convention held in Hiroshima by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in October 1989...[T]he convention heard details concerning the damage caused by nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, which until then had been shrouded in secrecy. In turn, this disclosure of widespread destruction of the environment prompted the Chugoku Shimbun to instigate the first-ever investigation of the testing area.

At the same time, the articles served to emphasize the role that Japan could play to help radiation victims around the world. The fact that the articles have prompted the exchange of information concerning the treatment of radiation victims in Japan to help those in a similar plight in other countries is a great source of satisfaction to us at the Chugoku Shimbun. We hope that, in the future, Japan will become known as an information center for radiation victims and the treatment of their illnesses."

In March 2013, the Hiroshima Peace Media Center re-released the entire series of 134 interviews free online as "EXPOSURE: Victims of Radiation Speak Out". From the English-language introduction by Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, Director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival at the CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice notes,

"There is compelling appropriateness in the project's being undertaken by concerned journalists from Hiroshima. From the time the bomb was dropped, the Chugoku Shimbun, as Hiroshima's leading newspaper, has been a prime source of information about the experiences and feelings of the people of that city over subsequent decades. Its editors and writers have taken on what I call a 'survivor mission' on behalf of the city's victims, a commitment to transforming the fear, conflict, and pain of the survivors into an active exploratory enterprise of profound significance.

Their contribution goes even beyond their descriptions of the human effects of radiation. In the way they have approached their study, they have demonstrated what I call a species mentality, a commitment that transcends immediate group or nationality and extends to all of humankind. They evoke in us a sense of shared fate, of universal susceptibility to a technology that knows no boundaries, geographical or temporal. We are all in this together, as potential victims and potential perpetrators as well.

Among the regions and incidents covered in these interviews are Chernobyl, the 1987 Goiânia Accident in Brazil, contamination from the Cold War weapons program at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation site in Washington State.

[Image courtesy Hiroshima Peace Media Center: "The mushroom cloud as seen from Kure, approximately 18 kilometers southeast of Hiroshima. This photo was taken by Masami Oki about 40 minutes after the bomb exploded."]

More:

• Peace Seeds: A virtual museum of photos, videos, essays and art by Hiroshima teens
• John Jay College Center on Terrorism: "Hiroshima in America," a book by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell

California Truck Crash Load Contained 4g Plutonium

If you think all the hazardous radioactive material being transported across the country is safeguarded - or at least properly packaged and prepared for shipment on public thorofares - think again. The circumstances of last Tuesday's truck crash near the Mojave National Preserve are truly frightening if they're any indication of how carelessly lethal materials like plutonium might be traveling, perhaps in a vehicle rolling alongside you. From the San Bernadino Sun:

Baking soda, bunk beds, fire extinguishers - and a drum with plutonium-238. The truck that crashed Tuesday near Needles [CA] with a load of radioactive waste was a plain old commercial truck carrying plain old products.

When emergency workers checked the truck's manifest they were surprised that radioactive material was being shipped with ordinary goods. "This, in and of itself, is very alarming," said San Bernardino County Fire Marshal Peter Brierty, who also directs his agency's hazardous materials unit. Government and industry officials say shipping radioactive materials by commercial carriers is a perfectly safe, perfectly routine practice. The containers, the routes and the shipping companies are all heavily regulated, and there has never been an accident that resulted in a release of radiation, they said.

The radiation emitted by the truck's amount of plutonium-238 is trillions of times more than is allowed in drinking water, Brierty said. The four grams of plutonium involved in the crash would be roughly the volume of a pencil eraser. But that amount kicks out more than 60 curies, a measure of radioactivity. In contrast, the drinking water standard is 15 picocuries per liter, or 15 trillionths of one curie.
...
The truck, pulling two trailers, crashed into a guardrail on eastbound Interstate 40, rupturing the tractor's fuel tank and causing the rear trailer to overturn and split open. The driver was unhurt. Part of the freeway was shut down for 18 hours. The heavily shielded, 500-pound, 55-gallon drum with the plutonium was in the front of the damaged trailer, California Highway Patrol Officer Michael Callahan said. The entire cargo had to be unloaded to get at the drum.

The drum was undamaged, and there was no leakage of radiation. [But,] "What the hell is that doing in that truck?" said Robert Halstead, an expert in the transportation of nuclear waste. [read full article]

Got MOX?

Shikoku Electric Co.'s Ikata No. 3 reactor is likely to become the third facility in Japan to go "pluthermal" - to use MOX, or mixed-oxide, fuel for power generation. From the Asahi Shimbun:

Shikoku Electric Power Company...Monday informed the Ehime prefectural government of its plans to burn MOX nuclear fuel there by fiscal 2010.

Pluthermal power is controversial because it uses plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, or MOX. Under this method, plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel is burned in reactors originally designed for uranium fuel. Pluthermal power is key to the nation's nuclear-fuel recycling program.

Critics warn the pluthermal method carries more health and safety risks to reactors originally designed to burn only uranium fuel. Shikoku Electric Power's plan follows those of Kansai Electric Power Co. and Kyushu Electric Power Co. Kansai Electric Power got the green light from the Fukui prefectural governor in March for its plan to burn MOX at its Takahama nuclear power plant. Kyushu Electric Power in late April notified the Saga prefectural government and the town of Genkai that it plans to burn MOX as early as 2009 at one of its reactors there.

Under Shikoku Electric Power's plan, no more than 16 of the 157 uranium-fuel elements in what are called fuel bundles-groups of fuel elements burned in a reactor-will initially be replaced with MOX at the No. 3 reactor in Ikata. The number of MOX elements will eventually be increased to about one-fourth of the bundle, with the maximum set at 40.

Greenaction-Japan is a organization which opposes the use of "pluthermal" (a Japanese term combining the words "plutonium" and "thermal") power, citing increased safety concerns:

Over the last several years the government and electric utilities have argued that the pluthermal program is a method of recycling precious resources. They claim that it is in Japan's best interest to extract the uranium and plutonium contained in spent nuclear fuel rather than directly disposing of it as some countries do. The argument used is that Japan is an energy poor country which needs to conserve uranium resources and use plutonium for energy security purposes.

Recently promoters of the pluthermal program have begun to argue that the program is also necessary in order to reduce the amount of surplus plutonium accumulated as a result of overseas reprocessing. Since mid- 2001, the Japanese government and electric utilities have put forward yet another argument for the pluthermal program. They claim that without the pluthermal program Japanese nuclear power plants would be unable to continue to produce power...The use of MOX fuel increases the risk and severity of a nuclear accident. When using MOX fuel, the control rods' capacity to function is reduced and power output is less stable and harder to control.

The NRC has a quarterly publication called the MOX: Mixed Oxide Fuels Newsletter, "published quarterly to highlight recent news and events associated with the NRC's licensing of a mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility." The lastest March 2004 issue [PDF file] among other things, talks about the

...October 2003...DOE fil[ing of] an application for license to export up to 140 kilograms of plutonium dioxide to the Cadarache and MELOX MOX fuel fabrication facilities in France. The plutonium would be used to fabricate four MOX fuellead test assemblies, which would be returned to the U.S. for proposed MOX fuel qualification tests in the Catawba Nuclear Power Station. [a two-unit power plant located on Lake Wylie in York County, S.C.]

MOX is (pardon the pun) a highly-charged topic in the United States as well, as the anti-mixed-oxide site Nix-MOX clearly demonstrates with its "Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Use of MOX":

"MOX IS A BAD IDEA!! MOX infrastructure supplies all the pieces needed for making plutonium a desirable commodity, while it claims to dispose of it. MOX legitimizes the production of plutonium by foreign countries, and creates a market for something that could used in a weapon of mass destruction. Plutonium is dangerous and should be kept out of our economy and out of our commercial reactors."