ROBERT ALVAREZ, kitbob at starpower.net
AP is reporting: “Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan’s crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away — the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.”
Available for a limited number of interviews, Alvarez is a former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy and now a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. He said today: “Radioactive cesium from the Fukushima nuclear accident deposited over 600,000 square-miles of the Pacific, as well as the Northern Hemisphere and Europe. With a half-life of 30 years, cesium-137 mimics potassium as it concentrates in the food chain until it reaches Bluefin Tuna which are at the top. In addition to mercury, Cesium-137 has become another reason why pregnant women, should be discouraged from eating this fish.” Alvarez recently wrote the piece “Why Fukushima Is a Greater Disaster than Chernobyl and a Warning Sign for the U.S.”
KARL GROSSMAN, kgrossman at hamptons.com
Professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, Grossman is author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He just wrote the piece “Meltdown at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Nuclear Denial and the Resignation of Gregory Jaczko,” which states: “The resignation last week of the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is another demonstration of the bankrupt basis of the NRC. Gregory Jaczko repeatedly called for the NRC to apply ‘lessons learned’ from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster in Japan. And, for that, the nuclear industry — quite successfully — went after him fiercely.
“The New York Times in an editorial over the weekend said that President Obama’s choice to replace Jaczko, Allison McFarlane, ‘will need to be as independent and aggressive as Dr. Jaczko.’
“That misses the institutional point.
“The NRC was created in 1974 when Congress abolished the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission after deciding that the AEC’s dual missions of promoting and at the same time regulating nuclear power were deemed a conflict of interest. The AEC was replaced by the NRC which was to regulate nuclear power, and a Department of Energy was later formed to advocate for it.
“However, the same extreme pro-nuclear culture of the AEC continued on at the NRC. It has partnered with the DOE in promoting nuclear power.
“Indeed, neither the AEC, in its more than 25 years, nor the NRC, in its nearly 30 years, ever denied an application for a construction or operating license for a nuclear power plant anywhere, anytime in the United States.”
