Shut Down Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor! Protest on the Beach Pt.II

Santa Cruz activist Becky Johnson has been rallying the people of Santa Cruz to build MORE nuclear power plants. She has been writing comments in local publications about how safe nuclear power is and how it is the best option for our energy needs. Here is a recent example of what she is writing.

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"I support building more nuclear power plants to deal with our energy crisis.

Comparing emmissions from coal-fired power plants with nuclear power plants is no contest. Nukes are clean and coal-fired plants are KILLING our planet!

As for radiation, coal-fired plants spew tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere as coal contains many such elements.

About Japan. Those reactors were 40 years old. They are an old design. Newer designs would not have the problems they are currently experiencing. We should decommission all plants with this design. And we are studying and learning from this accident to build better, safer power plants.

Newer designs cannot become a Chernoble, a 3-mile-Island, nor a Fukushima.

Yes, uranium, plutonium, and cesium are very hazardous materials. But this is precisely why they are so valuable for power production.

We fear radiation because it is invisible. But that is ignorant. HEAT is invisible too, but we don't fear it. The sun radiates. A fireplace radiates. A hot stove radiates. can this radiation do tissue damage? Yes. It's a matter of dosage.

Also, radioactive dust can be collected. It is DUST after all. Dust can be picked up. Where in the old days, if a truck got irradiated it had to be buried (see: Silkwood). But now, we can use electro-plating technology (in reverse) to remove those particles and decontaminate a truck."

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Obviously this woman is not informed about the issue. Please contact the Santa Cruz organization HUFF to request that she become informed about the hazards of nuclear energy or stop spreading false information.

I don't have a web page for it yet, but I am considering forming an organization called "Men For Peace". Our subtitle would likely be "We don't take 'No' for an answer." Read into that a slightly sexist bent if you like, with the good old boys club finally banding together and saying they have had enough of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Women are welcome to join of course.

The Mothers For Peace organization should be commended for hanging in there all these years protesting against nuclear power at Diablo Canyon and against nuclear weapons. However, their latest forays into trying to engage the NRC in discussions fall short of what is needed. We need to petition Congress to pass a bill shutting down all nuclear power plants and replacing them with wind and solar power plants. Nothing less than this will do. And we won't take 'No' or president Obama's veto as an answer. As the message from Helen Caldicott that was read at the April 16th rally suggested, we need to pull an Egypt type of response here in the US.

Mothers For Peace is also a 501c3 non profit, which as Becky Johnson is so fond of pointing out about such organizations, they can't engage in real political debate, such as endorsing candidates for office. Maybe Men for Peace should at least be a non tax deductable non profit which can engage in politics and lobbying or an outright political action committee.

I like that tag line: "We don't take No for an Answer". Women can appreciate the humor (and truth) in that!

Apparently 501 c 3 orgs are allowed to lobby, within certain limits. They can even share office space with affiliated orgs that are not tax deductable that can do unlimited lobying (except PACs). They can not endorse candidates or distribute question and answer polls about politicians on narrow one subject issues. For more info see: http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/whitepaperdetail.cfm?ItemNumber=12202

It seems that 4 out of 4 respondents liked the tag line "We don't take No for an answer". The hard part is forming a PAC, which can be a considerable undertaking with lots of pitfalls in FEC law. This probably won't happen in time for 2012.

Have we learned nothing? Nuclear bombs and nuclear power do nothing for peace. Look at the disaster in Japan. Shut that place down. And every other nuclear plant. I was at an anti-nuke concert/demonstration about 30 years ago. I can't beleve that we are stlil having this same argument in 2011. Shut it down. Thanks to Raging Grannies for being there. PEACE!

Here is a letter that I dashed off to Physicians For Social Responsibility after having some discussions on Facebook concerning how do we test for exposure to Plutonium and what are the risks from the fallout from Fukushima.

This message is for Dr Helen Caldicott or Elinor Mills:

Helen Caldicott in one of her recent videos (the 45 minute one on Youtube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLSX5KEHC4A&feature=player_embedded
says that 10^-6 to 10^-9 grams of Plutonium is carcinogenic (presumably causing cancer if inhaled).

I decided to do a very rough "back of the envelope" calculation to determine the world wide cancer risk from the Plutonium so far released from Fukushima. I assumed that the amount of Plutonium released was the same as the amount of Iodine 131 and that the Iodine 131 goes to the same places as the Plutonium. If you then assume that the maximum amount of Iodine 131 detected in the air samples at UC Berkeley occurs every day for a year and that the Plutonium is present in the same amounts for a year, what then is the cancer rate for the year caused by the Plutonium? The answer when I first did the calculation was only 1000 cases of cancer worldwide. That was assuming that 10^-6 grams of Plutonium is the minimum amount needed to cause cancer (with 100% probabilty). However, if I use the 10^-9 gram estimate, that number goes up to one million.

The calculation goes something like this: From the intensity of the radiation detected at UCB [ see http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling ] and from the half life of Iodine 131 it is determined that on the day when the radiation from Iodine 131 in the air was at its highest, there were approximately 3 molecules of radioactive I2 per liter of air detected at UCB. Given a human respiration rate of 10 liters per minute, it would take about 6 million years for the average adult male to inhale 10^-6 grams of Iodine 131. If Plutonium were inhaled at the same rate for a population of 6 billion people and each particle of Plutonium were 10^-6 grams, then 1000 cases of cancer would result within one year (or would begin incubating by the end of one year). If the particle size needed to produce cancer (and the asumed particle size for the Plutonium) is reduced to 10^-9 grams, then the incidence of cancer goes up to as high as one million cases per year. That is worldwide at places far away from Fukushima. At places closer to Fukushima the incidence is expected to be much higher.

I would like to know if you have any comments about what I just said. And would you mind doing your own "back of the envelope" calculations for cancer rates expected from the release of Plutonium from Fukushima and for any other radiocative isotopes you can do simillar calculations for? If you believe the estimates to be reliable, could you please publicize them. At least one of my friends on Facebook has been calling for the safety experts to be more forthcoming with their estimates of risk from the fallout from Fukushima. Thanks.

Sincerely,

John Thielking

According to the following web site

http://www.potrblog.com/

the radioactvity due to Plutonium 239 in the air of the San Francisco Bay Area 3/15/11 to 3/18/11 was equivalent to a concentration of 260 atoms per liter, not 6 atoms per liter. Since this event occurred over a period of 4 days, plugging the numbers into the previous calculation yields a cancer rate 43 times the original estimate and over a 4 day period instead of 365 days gives a total number of cancers incubating of about 1/2 of the previous estimate for an entire year, or a maximum of 500,000 cases worldwide.