Systematic under-reporting of harm from ionising radiation
Mary Olsen: Disproportionate impact of radiation and radiation regulation.
Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (accessed) 9th June 2019 Abstract. Reference Man is used for generic evaluation of ionizing radiation impacts, regulation, and nuclear licensing decisions made by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US NRC).
The United States Code of Federal Regulations, 2018 edition, Chapter 10: Part 20 ‘Standards for Protection Against Radiation’ contains eight references to ‘reference man’ as the basis for regulation and calculation of radiation exposure.
particularly when exposed as young girls, than is predicted by use of Reference Man; the difference is a much as 10-fold. Since females have been ignored in regulatory analysis, this has resulted in systematic under-reporting of harm from ionizing radiation exposure in the global population.
A critique is also offered on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to include females in its regulation. Recommendations for interim regulation to provide better protection, and questions forfurther study are offered.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2019.160386
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The “Chernobyl” mini-series is a timely comment on today’s war on truth
Mazin says he intended Chernobyl as a comment on contemporary politics, and specifically on what he calls the “war on truth”. The subtext is relatively obvious: knowledge painstakingly acquired by scientists is discarded when it is politically inconvenient.
the topicality of Chernobyl derives from the inescapable fact that the bureaucracy’s inhuman behaviour is so familiar to us. The fatuous speeches about socialist morality shown in Chernobyl are just that country’s equivalent of our paeans to free markets and free people.
it is easy to recognise the system we have today: a managerial society run by bosses and bureaucrats who lie and kill to maintain their social dominance, and who threaten the whole world as long as they remain in power. The system of class domination and exploitation portrayed in Chernobyl lives on in free-market form today.
The Horrifying True Scale of the Chernobyl Disaster
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Chernobyl: an anti-capitalist nuclear horror story https://redflag.org.au/node/6814, Daniel Taylor
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Norway and Sweden still affected by radioactive fallout from Chernobyl nuclear accident
Chernobyl: 33 Years On, Radioactive Fallout Still Impacts Scandinavian Farmershttps://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2019/06/08/chernobyl-33-years-on-radiation-still-impacts-scandinavian-farmers/#390eeebd949f, David Nike 8 June 19
The smash-hit HBO series ‘Chernobyl’ has introduced an entire new generation to the nuclear disaster that shook the world in 1986. Initially covered up by Soviet authorities, the disaster only came to light when nuclear power stations in Sweden – hundreds of miles away – detected high levels of radiation and began to ask questions. 33 years later, radiation remains a problem in both Sweden and Norway especially for farmers.
“Who would have thought that a small northern Norwegian mountain village could be hit by a nuclear accident in Europe. Overnight we were powerless. The Chernobyl accident shows that our food production is vulnerable. It’s scary,” sheep farmer Laila Hoff from Hattfjelldal told Norwegian state broadcaster NRK. She said all meat had to be destroyed in the first year following the accident. But even now in 2019, animals in 37 Norwegian municipalities are subject to radiation testing and control before they can be slaughtered. One leading researcher says it will take “decades” for the controls to no longer be necessary.
How Chernobyl hit farming in Norway and Sweden
The radioactive substance cesium-137 takes many years to break down with an estimated half-life of 30 years. It still exists in the earth in the areas affected by the Chernobyl accident, including large parts of Norway and Sweden. The substance is taken up from the soil by plants and fungi, which in turn are eaten by sheep, reindeer and other grazing animals.
In the wake of the 1986 accident, cesium-137 spread over much of northern and central Scandinavia. The weather conditions were such that Norway and Sweden were two of the countries worst hit outside the Soviet Union. In Sweden, the areas around Uppsala, Gävle and Västerbotten were hardest hit, while in Norway the area between Trondheim and Bodø along with mountainous areas further south suffered, mainly because of rainfall.
The radiation impacted vegetation to varying degrees, but also led to radioactivity in grazing animals, primarily sheep and reindeer. In reindeer calf meat, up to 40,000 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) were measured, with up to 10,000 Bq/kg in sheep meat. Norwegian authorities set the highest acceptable level in meat at just 60 Bq/kg, which led to the widespread feeding of animals with non-contaminated feed. This process of feeding livestock from contaminated pastures with non-radioactive feed for a period to reduce radioactivity in meat or milk is known as nedfôring.
US court weighs if climate change violates children’s rights
US court weighs if climate change violates children’s rights Business Mirror, By The Associated Press, June 10, 2019 PORTLAND, Oregon—In a courtroom packed with environmental activists, federal judges wrestled last week with whether climate change violates the constitutional rights of young people who have sued the US government over the use of fossil fuels.Oh dear, things are looking crook for the uranium industry
Top Uranium Producer Is Gloomy About Nuclear Power, for Now, Bloomberg, By Will Wade, 
June 7 2019, Don’t expect an upswing in the global uranium market anytime soon.
“In our models, we don’t get excited on the demand side,” said Galymzhan Pirmatov, chief executive officer of Kazatomprom, Kazakhstan’s state-owned mining company that’s the world’s biggest supplier.
With construction of nuclear power plants at a 10-year low, uranium demand remains weak. That’s holding prices so low that mining companies have been wary of increasing production. Kazatomprom’s output will increase about 5% this year, to as much as 22,800 tons, and then will be flat in 2020, Pirmatov said Wednesday in an interview in New York. While he hasn’t yet made a decision on 2021, he doesn’t see much to get excited about, at least in the short term.
“I do believe prices are too low,” he said. Uranium has slumped 15% this year to $24.35 a pound as of Wednesday. Kazakhstan controls about 40% of the world’s supply of the metal, and Kazatomprom accounts for half of that, making it the biggest producer………
U.S. Closings
In the U.S., flush with abundant and cheap natural gas, utilities are closing nuclear plants. The U.S. is also considering whether to impose tariffs on uranium, after two small domestic mining companies filed a trade case last year, arguing that imports are a threat to national security. The Commerce Department concluded its investigation in April, but the results haven’t been made public……..https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-05/top-uranium-producer-is-gloomy-about-nuclear-power-for-now
USA govt to reclassify some radioactive wastes, to save money, and time
US to label nuclear waste as less dangerous to quicken cleanup, Guardian, 6 June 19, Energy department says labeling some waste as low-level at sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina will save $40bn, The US government plans to reclassify some of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste to lower its threat level, outraging critics who say the move would make it cheaper and easier to walk away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina.The Department of Energy said on Wednesday that labeling some high-level waste as low level will save $40bn in cleanup costs across the nation’s entire nuclear weapons complex. The material that has languished for decades in the three states would be taken to low-level disposal facilities in Utah or Texas, the agency said………
Critics said it was a way for federal officials to walk away from their obligation to properly clean up a massive quantity of radioactive waste left from nuclear weapons production dating to the second world war and the cold war.
The waste is housed at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, the Idaho National Laboratory and Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state – the most contaminated nuclear site in the country.
Washington’s Governor Jay Inslee, a Democratic presidential candidate, and the state attorney general, Bob Ferguson, said the Trump administration was showing disdain and disregard for state authority.
“Washington will not be sidelined in our efforts to clean up Hanford and protect the Columbia River and the health and safety of our state and our people,” they said in a joint statement.
The new rules would allow the energy department to eventually abandon storage tanks containing more than 100m gallons (378m liters) of radioactive waste in the three states, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The change means that some of the “most toxic and radioactive waste in the world” would not have to be buried deep underground, the environmental group said.
“Pretending this waste is not dangerous is irresponsible and outrageous,” the group’s attorney Geoff Fettus said.
Tom Clements of Savannah River Site Watch, a watchdog group for the South Carolina nuclear production site, called the reclassification of waste “a cost-cutting measure designed to get thousands of high-level waste containers dumped off site”. He said moving the waste to Utah or Texas is a bad idea involving “shallow burial”.
The old definition of high-level waste was based on how the materials were produced, while the new definition will be based on their radioactive characteristics – the standard used in most countries, the energy department said……..
The nuclear site 200 miles (322km) south-east of Seattle contains about 60% of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste that’s stored in 177 ageing underground tanks, some of which have leaked.
Cleanup at Hanford has been under way since the 1980s, at a cost of more than $2bn a year.
The energy department said it would immediately begin studying one waste stream at the Savannah River Plant to see if it should be reclassified as low-level waste. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/05/us-to-label-nuclear-waste-as-less-dangerous-to-quicken-cleanup?fbclid=IwAR1NuNSVrKbw8rn_rLUwOZlx
The pros and cons of changing the classification of nuclear waste radiation
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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DOWNGRADING TOXIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS WASTE TO CUT DISPOSAL COSTS—SHOULD WE BE WORRIED? https://www.newsweek.com/trump-toxic-nuclear-weapons-waste-disposal-reclassify-1442573 BYON 6/6/19 The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it is moving forward with plans to reclassify toxic nuclear waste from Cold War weapons research, downgrading some of it from the highest level, in order to cut costs and quicken the disposal process.The waste under review is currently located at three DOE Defense Reprocessing Waste Inventories: the Hanford Site in Washington, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the Idaho National Laboratory.
Environmental campaigners hit back, accusing the Department of Energy (DOE) of risking the health and safety of Americans through what it characterized as a reckless and dangerous departure from decades-long convention in the country’s handling of its nuclear waste. But an expert in nuclear waste management said DOE’s shifting approach is both reasonable and desirable—provided it is transparent with the American public in order to build confidence that it is disposing of the toxic material responsibly and safely. Currently, DOE treats most of its radioactive waste as “high-level” (HLW) because of how it was made rather than classifying it by its characteristics, such as radioactivity. HLW must be buried deep underground when it is disposed of. DOE said in a release that this “one size fits all” approach to waste management has caused delays to permanent disposal, leaving toxic waste stored in DOE facilities, which causes health risks to workers and costs the taxpayers billions of unnecessary dollars. Now, DOE will seek to lower the classification of waste of lesser radioactivity, meaning it can be disposed of with greater ease because it does not need to be stored deep below ground—and both sooner and at a lower cost. Professor Neil Hyatt, an expert in nuclear materials chemistry and waste management at the U.K.’s University of Sheffield, told Newsweek this is potentially a positive change by the DOE. “DOE is proposing to manage waste on the basis of risk rather than how it was produced, which is quite reasonable—and desirable. We would want resources to be focused on dealing with the waste of highest risk,” Hyatt said. “That said, it is important that this is achieved with regard to the risk to health and the environment over the full lifecycle of waste management—including the period of waste disposal, which is some 250,000 years.” Hyatt added: “The new interpretation has the potential to radically change the location, inventory, and nature of waste disposed of, which will be of concern to local communities.” For the new interpretation of HLW to succeed, Hyatt said, those communities will need to be engaged by authorities in a transparent way. “The problem is that the action will be seen as moving the goalposts, for unfair means, whilst the game is in progress,” Hyatt told Newsweek. “If you have agreed that waste is to be classified and managed in a certain way for decades, how do you now build confidence in a new approach? “This cannot be taken for granted. Transparency, effective public engagement and independent expert scrutiny, in evaluating the risk, will be key. But with a new approach comes a new opportunity to get that right.” Another expert concurred. Pete Bryant is a consultant in nuclear waste management and president of The Society for Radiological Protection in the U.K. He also teaches in the field at the University of Liverpool. “By characterizing the waste and classifying it according to its radioactivity and ultimately the risk it poses to human health and the environment, it is possible to dispose of some of the less hazardous waste, reducing the burden of managing them all of HLW,” Bryant told Newsweek. “As long as this is done under appropriate arrangements and checks this will not present a risk to members of the public and the environment,” he said, adding that this is all in line with global standards of toxic waste management. After DOE’s announcement, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRD), an environmental campaign group, hit out at the imminent reclassification of some HLW. “The Trump administration is moving to fundamentally alter more than 50 years of national consensus on how the most toxic and radioactive waste in the world is managed and ultimately disposed of,” Geoff Fettus, a senior attorney at NRDC, said in a statement. “No matter what they call it, this waste needs a permanent, well-protected disposal option to guard it for generations to come. Pretending this waste is not dangerous is irresponsible and outrageous.” DOE said the change will bring its practices in line with international standards on nuclear waste disposal. |
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It is absurd to question whether we can afford to keep our planet liveable
Guardian Fiona Harvey 7 June 19, The chancellor has warned against cutting UK emissions to net zero. But failing to act will have dire consequences.
he chancellor, Philip Hammond, has written to the prime ministerto warn against adopting the strict targets on greenhouse gas emissions recommended by the government’s advisers.
His intervention, first reported by the Financial Times (£), raises the important question of whether or not it makes economic sense to save the planet.
If the question sounds absurd, that’s because it is. If we fail to move to a low-carbon economy, the consequences will be dire. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists convened by the UN, we must drastically reduce our emissions in the next decade to avoid a catastrophic situation in which droughts, floods, heatwaves and extreme weather across the globe devastate lives, destroy agriculture, lay waste to wildlife and force millions to flee.
Set against that, the costs – of £50bn a year in investment, according to the Committee on Climate Change(CCC), which set out the case last month for a target of net-zero emissions by 2050, or £70bn a year, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – of maintaining our current lifestyles and orderly existences are trivial. The UK’s economy is worth roughly £2tn a year at present, so Hammond’s estimate of a £1tn cumulative cost by 2050 amounts to less than half of one year’s GDP in three decades.
Doug Parr, the chief scientist for Greenpeace UK, said: “The Treasury is putting their ideology before our wellbeing, and trying to shape the public debate for political ends. If you want to know whether a policy is good, include the benefits as well as the costs. In this case, the benefits include an economy fit for the 21st century, cleaner air, warmer homes, and maximising the chances of civilisation surviving. If reality doesn’t fit with the Treasury models, it’s the models that need to change.”…….
When we ask whether we can afford to tackle climate change, we are really asking – as the IPCC report and decades of climate science show us – whether we want humanity to survive in anything like our current structures. If our economic system stands in the way of doing so, perhaps it is the economics that are at fault. And economics, like politics, are just a human construct. The physics of the earth’s atmosphere are not. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/06/it-is-absurd-question-whether-we-can-afford-keep-our-planet-liveable
RADIATION WILL MAKE MARS MISSION DEADLY
EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY: RADIATION WILL MAKE MARS MISSION DEADLY, https://futurism.com/the-byte/space-radiation-mars-mission-deadly JUNE 5TH 19__DAN ROBITZSKI__
Slow Down
Elon Musk once said he’d likely move to Mars in his lifetime. But before we settle the Red Planet, the European Space Agency (ESA) urges extreme caution.
That’s because it lacks the natural barriers that protect us Earthlings from cosmic radiation, which would put astronauts at risk of deadly health conditions. But they’re working on it — the ESA says it has partneredwith particle accelerators to recreate cosmic radiation in a controlled setting and build shields that can protect future explorers.
Harsh Conditions
“The real problem is the large uncertainty surrounding the risks,” said ESA physicist Marco Durante in the press release. “We don’t understand space radiation very well and the long-lasting effects are unknown.”
Shields Up
The ESA found that a six-month stay on Mars would expose astronauts to “60% of the total radiation dose limit recommended for their entire career.”
As it stands today, we can’t go to Mars due to radiation,” said Durante. “It would be impossible to meet acceptable dose limits.”
READ MORE: Radiation Makes Human Missions to Mars Too Dangerous: ESA [ExtremeTech]
America Never Had a Chernobyl. But It Came Close.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a27729387/chernobyl-broken-arrows/
The U.S. kept nuclear accidents like the Damascus Incident secret for decades.
HBO’s Chernobyl is over, but if you’ve seen the series, you’ll remember it for a long time.
Coming on the heels of the mega-hyped Game of Thrones series finale, the five-part miniseries—created and written by Craig Mazin, and directed by Johan Renck—quickly overtook the fantasy story with its astonishing performances and commitment to its immersion in a world that Americans never really understood.
The focus in the discussion around Chernobyl lies where the miniseries has gone: nuclear reactors meant for peaceful energy. The safety of nuclear plants is of upmost importance, but that’s not the only place nuclear energy is located. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Department of Defense maintains an estimated stockpile of approximately 4,000 warheads. Mishaps with these weapons of mass destruction are referred to as “Broken Arrow” accidents.
The United States has officially had approximately 32 of these incidents, often involving the transport of weapons from one location to another. None of these incidents caused a major disaster, let alone a Chernobyl-like event. Two nuclear weapons were dropped on Goldsboro North Carolina in 1961 and are now commemorated with an historical marker. But there’s no such memorial for the 1980 accident in which a Titan II missile carrying a thermonuclear reactor exploded near Damascus, Arkansas.
Chernobyl offers a new chance to examine these Broken Arrows. Fortunately, both the stories of Goldsboro, the Damascus Incident, and other Broken Arrows have already been documented in the film Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner and based on a book by Eric Schlosser.
Available on PBS, Netflix, and other streaming services, the documentary shows that the story of lies and of nuclear mismanagement is not limited to Soviet borders.
On September 18, 1980, routine maintenance on an Titan II went awry. A Propellant Transfer System (PTS) team was working on the missile under the authority of the Air Force. A ratchet was used instead of a torque wrench, and that was all it took for a socket from the missile’s oxidizer tank to fall 80 feet down, where a freak bump allowed it to puncture the missile’s first-stage fuel tank.
Efforts to stabilize the missile failed, and late into the night, it exploded. Two men sent in to vent the gas were presumed dead. One of them, Senior Airman David Livingston, died 12 hours later. The nuclear warhead was later found in a field.
There are many differences between Damascus and Chernobyl, of course. Honesty was maintained within the chain of command, although the man who dropped the socket had trouble articulating the truth of the situation for half an hour afterward. And while safety protocols couldn’t keep the 7-story missile from exploding, they did keep the warhead in check.
But when it comes to nuclear incidents, Command and Control makes it clear that the U.S. shares more with the scientists of Chernobyl than many feel comfortable to admit.
There may not be a deeply embedded culture of lying stateside, but the U.S. was as willing to cover up the truth of Damascus, as well as thousands of other nuclear accidents, for decades. And when it came down to the final decision making in Damascus, the documentary paints a picture of an out-of-touch Strategic Air Command that issued commands without any understanding of the situation on the ground—decisions that resulted in Livingston’s death.
Mazin has made it clear that his Chernobyl is not primarily focused on nuclear power. It’s a complex subject, as Valery Legasov, played masterfully by Jared Harris, makes clear in the final episode. But perhaps the greatest similarity between Damascus and Chernobyl was the confident belief that nuclear power could be safely managed at all.
Explaining how nuclear power works in a Soviet court, Legasov describes a dance that can generate tremendous energy. But as Adam Higginbottom shows in Midnight in Chernobyl, it’s a dance that people have been trying to get right for many years.
The Soviet system might have set up the scientists at V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant for failure. But even with the best dancers in the world, there’s eventually a missed step.
Vulnerability of Holtec’s nuclear waste canisters
Halting Holtec – A Challenge for Nuclear Safety Advocates, CounterPunch, 7 June 19, The loading of 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel has been indefinitely halted at the San Onofre independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI), operated by Southern California Edison and designed by Holtec International.Last month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) fined Southern California Edison an unprecedented $116,000 for failing to report the near drop of an 54 ton canister of radioactive waste, and is delaying giving the go-ahead to further loading operations until serious questions raised by the incident have been resolved.
Critics have long been pointing out that locating a dump for tons of waste, lethal for millions of years, in a densely populated area, adjacent to I-5 and the LA-to-San Diego rail corridor, just above a popular surfing beach, in an earthquake and tsunami zone, inches above the water table, and yards from the rising sea doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense from a public safety standpoint.
The near drop incident last August, revealed by a whistleblower, has drawn further attention to the many defects in the Holtec-designed and manufactured facility. It has been discovered that the stainless steel canisters, only five-eights inches thick, are being damaged as they are lowered into the site’s concrete silos. Experts have warned that the scratching or gouging that is occurring makes the thin-walled canisters even more susceptible to corrosion-induced cracking in the salty sea air, risking release of their deadly contents into the environment and even of hydrogen explosions.
Furthermore, critics point out, these thin-walled canisters are welded shut and cannot be inspected, maintained, monitored or repaired.
Systems analyst Donna Gilmore is the founder of SanOnofreSafety.org, and a leading critic of the Holtec system. She explains her concerns this way in a recent email:
The root cause of the canister wall damage is the lack of a precision downloading system for the canisters. Holtec’s NRC license requires no contact between the canister and the interior of the holes. The NRC admits Holtec is out of compliance with their license, but refuses to cite Holtec for this violation.
NRC staff said the scraping of the stainless steel thin canister walls against a protruding carbon steel canister guide ring also deposits carbon on the canisters, creating galvanic corrosion. The above ground Holtec system has long vertical carbon steel canister guide channels, creating similar problems.
Once canisters are scraped or corroded they start cracking. The NRC said once a crack starts it can grow through the wall in 16 years. In hotter canisters, crack growth rate can double for every 10 degree increase in temperature.
Each canister holds roughly the radioactivity of a Chernobyl nuclear disaster, so this is a critical issue people need to know about. Continue reading
‘A horrible way to die’: how Chernobyl recreated a nuclear meltdown
Guardian, Julie McDowall, 5 June 19, From ‘painting on’ radiation sickness to making the explosion less ‘Die Hard’, the acclaimed drama has gone to great lengths to evoke the chaos and terror of the Soviet-era disaster.
We were lucky to have survived the Cold War without a nuclear attack. The pop culture of that chilly era warned what the bomb would do: the crisping of the skin; the slow agony of radiation sickness; the pollution of the land; and the death of cities.
The bomb didn’t explode, but some people experienced a fragment of this horror. The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 brought explosions, radiation sickness, evacuations, contaminated earth and, finally, medals awarded and memorials erected. It was war after all – but not against the west; this was another type of nuclear enemy.
Sky Atlantic/HBO’s drama Chernobyl unfolds over five distressing episodes that show the 1986 explosion was more than just another disaster in a decade horribly cluttered with them: it was a ghastly taste of nuclear war, a monstrous cover-up and, finally, an event that helped bring down the Soviet Union.
So it is fitting that the series begins with the explosion, as if to get it out of the way so that we might focus on what happens afterwards………..
Surprisingly, Parker didn’t look to photos of Hiroshima or Nagasaki victims for examples of radiation damage, as he suspects these were tempered by wartime propaganda. He went instead to medical textbooks, and this allowed him to pioneer a technique for Chernobyl where he “layered” the skin: painting the actors’ bodies with wounds, then putting a semi-translucent layer on top, giving the impression that sores are forcing themselves to the surface as the body degrades from within. The effect is dreadful to see. Yet, Parker was strict in saying these men must not be relegated to Hollywood “zombies”, and he explains that the director made sure sympathy stayed with these characters: even as they lie rigid on the bed, gurgling and fading, they still speak, and a wife may still hold her husband’s rotting fingers.
“It’s the worst way to die,” says Parker. “Beyond anything you can imagine. The most horrible way to die. I think it’s the worst, in line with medieval torture.” What makes it particularly atrocious is that the victims were denied pain relief. In the latter stages of radiation sickness you cannot inject morphine, he explains. “The walls of the veins are breaking down.”
So the Chernobyl disaster produced agonising deaths without pain-relieving drugs, which brings us back to the horror of nuclear war. Plans for the NHS after a nuclear attack show drug stockpiles would quickly be exhausted, and those who were hopelessly injured would be allowed to die without the tiny mercy of a supermarket paracetamol.
The final episode of Chernobyl airs Tuesday, 9pm on Sky Atlantic. The whole series is available to view on Sky Go and NowTV
{also in Australia – on Foxtel Showcasw – first episode 12 June]
Space travel: journey to Mars a killer, due to ionising radiation
The radiation showstopper for Mars exploration https://phys.org/news/2019-06-showstopper-mars-exploration.html, by European Space Agency 3 June 19, An astronaut on a mission to Mars could receive radiation doses up to 700 times higher than on our planet—a major showstopper for the safe exploration of our solar system. A team of European experts is working with ESA to protect the health of future crews on their way to the Moon and beyond.
Earth’s magnetic fieldand atmosphere protect us from the constant bombardment of galactic cosmic rays—energetic particles that travel at close to the speed of light and penetrate the human body.
Cosmic radiation could increase cancer risks during long duration missions. Damage to the human body extends to the brain, heart and the central nervous system and sets the stage for degenerative diseases. A higher percentage of early-onset cataracts have been reported in astronauts.
“One day in space is equivalent to the radiation received on Earth for a whole year,” explains physicist Marco Durante, who studies cosmic radiation on Earth.
Marco points out that most of the changes in the astronauts’ gene expression are believed to be a result of radiation exposure, according to the recent NASA’s Twins study. This research showed DNA damage in astronaut Scott Kelly compared to his identical twin and fellow astronaut Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth.
A second source of space radiation comes from unpredictable solar particle events that deliver high doses of radiation in a short period of time, leading to “radiation sickness” unless protective measures are taken.
Europe’s radiation fight club
“The real problem is the large uncertainty surrounding the risks. We don’t understand space radiation very well and the long-lasting effects are unknown,” explains Marco who is also part of an ESA team formed to investigate radiation.
Since 2015, this forum of experts provides advice from areas such as space science, biology, epidemiology, medicine and physics to improve protection from space radiation.
“Space radiation research is an area that crosses the entire life and physical sciences area with important applications on Earth. Research in this area will remain of high priority for ESA,” says Jennifer Ngo-Anh, ESA’s team leader human research, biology and physical sciences.
While astronauts are not considered radiation workers in all countries, they are exposed to 200 times more radiation on the International Space Station than an airline pilot or a radiology nurse.
Radiation is in the Space Station’s spotlight every day. A console at NASA’s mission control in Houston, Texas, is constantly showing space weather information.
f a burst of space radiation is detected, teams on Earth can abort a spacewalk, instruct astronauts to move to more shielded areas and even change the altitude of the station to minimize impact.
One of the main recommendations of the topical team is to develop a risk model with the radiation dose limits for crews traveling beyond the International Space Station.
ESA’s flight surgeon and radiologist Ulrich Straube believes that the model should “provide information on the risks that could cause cancer and non-cancer health issues for astronauts going to the Moon and Mars in agreement with all space agencies.”
Recent data from ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter showed that on a six-month journey to the Red Planet an astronaut could be exposed to at least 60% of the total radiation dose limit recommended for their entire career.
“As it stands today, we can’t go to Mars due to radiation. It would be impossible to meet acceptable dose limits,” reminds Marco.
Measure to protect
ESA has teamed up with five particle accelerators in Europe that can recreate cosmic radiation by “shooting” atomic particles to speeds approaching the speed of light. Researchers have been bombarding biological cells and materials with radiation to understand how to best protect astronauts.
“The research is paying off. Lithium is standing out as a promising material for shielding in planetary missions,” says Marco.
ESA has been measuring the radiation dose on the International Space Station for seven years with passive radiation detectors in the DOSIS 3-D experiment. ESA astronauts Andreas Mogensen and Thomas Pesquet wore a new mobile dosimeter during their missions that gave them a real-time snapshot of their exposure.
The same European team behind this research will provide radiation detectors to monitor the skin and organ doses of the two phantoms traveling to the Moon onboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
UK Labour launches a national green jobs tour around the UK
Business Green 3rd June 2019 Labour launched a national green jobs tour around the UK this 
weekend, in abid to ignite national support for its ‘Green Industrial Revolution’
agenda. Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey visited Morecambe in
Lancashire on Saturday to discuss the area’s potential for “green jobs” in
sectors such as offshore wind, tidal power and community-owned renewable
energy.
and ideas of people throughout society”. “That’s why we’re talking to
unions, businesses and communities across the country to prepare detailed
and ambitious plans to deliver a Green Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Alongside the tour, Labour is hosting an online call for evidence, asking
for input from trade unions, businesses, public sector bodies, party
members, civil society groups and members of the public on its plans to
develop the green jobs market around the UK. The consultation is open until
the end of 2019.
https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3076624/labour-launches-green-jobs-tour
Capitalism, Fukushima, Creative Reconstruction and The History Of Olympics
Fukushima and Chernobyl: The Art of the Cover-up
Capitalism, Fukushima, Creative Reconstruction & The History Of Olympics by Labor Video Project Monday May 27th, 2019
Professor George Wright discusses the history of the Olympics and how privatization and control by the corporations of the world have led to in allowing the Olympics going to Japan and the contaminated Fukushima. The three broken nuclear reactors still have melted nuclear rods which must be cooled with water. He discusses the systemic corruption of the Olympic Committee and how it is now ignored the safety of the athletes and the public.
Thomas Bach, The Head of The Olympics
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 