Arnie Gundersen tells tall tales to 1600 chiropractors
The email introducing the below video included the following description.
The attached film is so ridiculous and the author is an idiot.
The second clause of that sentence is not quite true; the author is an intelligent man who has created a few tall tales for a nefarious purpose. I’d like to crowd source an analysis of this presentation and develop a comprehensive list of the inaccuracies and exaggerations packed into the 22 minute talk.
As noted in the introduction, this talk was provided to an audience of 1,600 people, each of whom probably talks to a dozen or more people every day. At least some of the audience members are seen as knowledgeable, authoritative figures, so they have some influence.
The effort to effectively contradict Gundersen’s tales may be an important way to spend a half hour over the next week or so. After we have developed the response it will be important to promote it so that people can compare reality to the Gundersen tall tales.
At the WAVE Conference – Arnie Gundersen’s Presentation from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.
Unfortunately (?) not able to view the video as I’m currently behind the Great Firewall at another conference – thankfully not involving alternative medicine (other than a great alternative for the planet), but surely once a person has bought into the nonsense of chiropractic they’re already going to be susceptible to much of all the other stuff that goes with the lifestyle? I’d have thought the best plan would be to encourage critical thinking in the majority who have not already committed to this nonsense. Chiropractors are probably already a lost cause.
@JohnGalt
Can you name the last five fatal fossil fuel accidents? Hint – you don’t have to go back more than a few months.
Oct 20 marked the 70 year anniversary of the Cleveland natural gas explosion. A 90 million cubic feet tank of liquid natural gas contributed to a explosion and fire that killed 130; 61 burned beyond identification
( http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/10/70_years_after_the_east_ohio_g.html ).
That one incident killed far more known to die as a result of the “list” above, combined. No one even remembers it.
Shows you what a little ignorance, fear and hype can do.
Also more than the combined total of casualties from that list; coming up in a few days will be the 51 year anniversary of the 1963 Indiana fairgrounds coliseum explosion that occurred during a ice skating show on Halloween night. A propane tank leaking in the concessions area lead to a explosion that killed 74 and injured over 400.
( http://archive.indystar.com/article/99999999/NEWS06/80817011/RetroIndy-1963-Coliseum-explosion )
– the photos in the essay are rather graphic but illustrate the force of the explosion, from what was a rather mundane fossil fuel energy (heat) source.
It looks like JohnGalt isn’t up to the task but neither am I. After crafting a decent search string for Google, I came up with hundreds of news stories throughout the world about mining accidents, explosions and so forth for the last 5 months.
Along the way, one article I stumbled upon had this tidbit:
The oil and gas industry has more deaths from fires and explosions than any other private industry, according to an EnergyWire review of federal labor statistics. It employs less than 1 percent of the U.S. workforce, but in the past five years it has had more than 10 percent of all workplace fatalities from fires and explosions. – See more at: http://wyofile.com/ee_daily/drilling-industrys-explosion-problem/#sthash.z16PANbg.dpuf
Let’s do a crowd-sourced transcript here. At one minute at a time, we can get this done in a day.
[00:08] Narrator: “Is nuclear power a sustainable or safe solution to on-going energy demands around the world? FaireWinds’ Arne Gundersen was invited to speak in August at the WAVE conference, sponsored by Life Chiropractic College West.
[00:20] “More than 1600 chriropractors attended the conference near San Francisco, California, to hear speakers like Arne Gundersen and Erin Brockovich talk about speaking truth to power.”
[00:31] “Arne spoke about the 4 problems that will be created world-wide by building more nuclear plants. As you will see in this video, Arne is using the iPad app Keynote for his TED-like presentation.”
[00:45] Emcee: “So our next speaker, uh, gave me this DVD, and uh, ’cause I know he wasn’t gonna talk about it, he’s been forty years in nuclear science, and he has a very, very powerful message. And if we’re gonna talk about visionaries and talk about worlds, and, uh, just a global perspective, we’re about to hear a very, very powerful segment.”
Resume at 1:06.
I’ll contribute:
[1:06] MC: What he did was he put up all these free YouTubes, hundreds of them, and he took the best twelve clips and he put it together on a DVD for us to be educated and to educate our patients on what is going on on a radiation level and on how it is affecting the health of humankind.
[1:27] MC: And so he’s giving these away at his booth afterward. Signing copies of it and he is just asking for a tax-free donation. He’s not selling them, but he is asking for a donation. And I think if we are going to spread the message of vitality throughout this world, it’s no problem to donate to a great cause.
[1:43] MC: So I want to bring this gentleman up, Mr. Gundersen. To share with us. Give a round of applause, stand to our feet and bring the energy.
[Applause and energetic music]
[2:03] Gundersen: Thank you very much for having me. And welcome from the State of Vermont, the state with the first GMO labeling law. I’m excited about that.
Resume at 2:13
One more minute:
[2:13] Gundersen: Quick shout out. I have to thank the audio visual guys. They’ve been breathtakingly phenomenal through this whole thing.
[Applause]
[2:25] Gundersen: Today I’d like to talk to you about my observations from the data that has come out of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Basically, radiation knows no borders. There’ll be four topics I’d like to cover real quickly
[2:42] Gundersen: The first is that accidents happen frequently, nuclear accidents happen frequently. The second is that the accidents are getting worse with time, not better. Third is that as bad as Fukushima Daiichi was and continues to be, it could have been much worse.
[3:05] Gundersen: And finally, radiation knows no borders.
[3:11] Well, the guy on the screen here, there’s 42 years of difference between the guy on the screen here and the guy on the stage here. And a lot of grey hair. But the real difference is, when I got out of school, you know a lot of intellect but not a lot of wisdom. And I think over those 42 years, I’ve gained a lot of wisdom and perhaps lost a little intellect. [Chuckle]
Resume at 3:32
(If anyone is interested but worried about working on a minute that someone else is also doing, please let me know. I’ll take volunteers and assign time marks.)
Rod,
I’ll have some time later this afternoon and I’d like to contribute to the transcript if possible. Any specific minute mark?
Derek
@The Defender
Please start at 5:32.
[9:04] The first one is a time lapse. This whole event happened in two seconds. It’ll take me maybe 15 seconds to get through it. But this is Fukushima Daiichi 2, 3, and 4. Those white boxes from left to right. Units 2, 3, and 4. Unit 1 had already blown up. It’s a little bit to the left on this scale. I want you to keep your eye on the white box in the middle.
[9:29] Okay. Right there. That flash is something that the day before Fukushima happened, no one believed that it was possible. It’s called a detonation shock wave and it destroyed the building in a period of 2 seconds.
[9:47] Silence while time lapse runs
[10:02] Kind of looks like a face.
[10:17] That whole event happened in two seconds. It was one of six explosions at Fukushima Daiichi and released an enormous amount of radiation. But it wasn’t just these explosions that released the radiation. It was the chronic and long lasting radioactive releases that are contaminating Japan even until today.
[10:38] I have two geeky pictures to show you. This is an infrared picture looking down on Fukushima Daiichi unit 3. The big white spot in the middle is the boiling nuclear fuel pool. but what’s more important, just to the right of that is a little tiny white spot and it’s labeled 128 C.
[10:59] That’s 128 centigrade or 250 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you remember your high school physics, water boils at 212. That’s not steam being released from the containment at Fukushima Daiichi. That’s hot radioactive gases.
[11:17] Next picture is a piece of dust. It was found in Nagoya, which is 300 miles away from the accident. What makes this piece of dust unique is that it is highly radioactive.
[11:28] If instead of a fleck of dust, I had a pound of it in my hand, the front rows would be dead in about a minute or two and the back rows would probably be dead in about 20 minutes. That’s hot nuclear fuel that wound up 300 miles away in Nagoya.
[11:45] We call that a “hot particle.” We saw them in Japan but also in Seattle. These are air filters from cars in Japan. The lab.. Fairewinds and the lab that we worked with asked people to send us their air filters. On the far right is an air filter from Fukushima City, about 12 miles away, and those black spots are spots where the radiation has actually burned the photographic film.
[12:15] A car engine breathes about the same amount of air in the course of a day as a human lung. So imagine what’s in the lungs of the people in Fukushima City. The middle one is Tokyo; again, highly contaminated with hot particles. And the lab we worked with at Fairewinds set up a filter in Seattle. And we can pretty clearly show that from the end of March all the way through April of 2011, the average person in Seattle breathed in about 10 hot particles a day. And you’re an athlete and out running, it might be as high as 20 hot particles a day. This is the saddest picture in the bunch.
Resume at [12:57]
[12:57] Gunderson: We asked for people to send us sneakers, kids sneakers, and the, the bars on the left are, are sneakers from Japan. The bars on the right are sneakers from the US. The minimum level of detection is 10, so the sneakers from the US are clean. Kids were in those sneakers. And kids tie their shoes and put their hands in their mouth. So the kids are contaminated.
[13:20] Gunderson: Now this is just the airborne radiation that’s continuing to come out of Fukushima. Then there’s the ocean. Unlike Chernobyl, and unlike TMI, Fukushima continues to bleed into the ocean, because those nuclear cores have melted down and are in direct contact with the groundwater. It will bleed for centuries, perhaps, and certainly decades to come. So when you compare these nuclear accidents, we have to say, outta (?), TMI was, was, uh, a partial meltdown, all contained.
[13:58] Gunderson: Then came Chernobyl. Um, Chernobyl. Full meltdown but didn’t hit the groundwater. And then came, uh, Fukushima, with, with its, uh, [stammers. pauses and looks up as if searching for a certain phrase or word] contamination in the ocean.
[14:11] Gunderson: Well now, your, your health professionals, what does this mean to health professionals? How, what’s the impact of this radiation. And uh, this is my favorite comic of all time.
[Dilbert comic strip appears on screen]
Gunderson: It’s a Dilbert. The pointy headed boss asks for an analysis. Dilbert says, “I can do this feasibility analysis in two minutes.” And then Dilbert says, “It’s the worst idea in the world. Numbers don’t lie.” And the boss says, “But our CEO loves the idea.” And Dilbert says, “Luckily assumptions do lie.”
[14:38] Gunderson: And, the bottom line here is that if you talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about Three Mile Island, on their website they say no one died. And Dr. Wing’s analysis clearly shows that lots did.
[14:50] Gunderson: If you talk to the International Atomic Energy Agency about, about Chernobyl they’ll say that 28 people to 100, uh, died. But Dr. Alexey Yablakov, who was the science advisor to Boris Yeltsin, when the Soviet, when the, when Russia was created, has written a book, with dozens of collaborators, showing a million people did. Big disparity here.
Resume at [15:15]
There is a difference between a true, discernable pattern and numerology.
There is more of a pattern of accidents in the fossil fuel industry and numerous “near misses” (which are not recorded by the DOT or NTSB by the way) then there are with nuclear power.
NTSB pipeline ruptures:
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/reports_pipeline.html
That is just the actual ruptures not “near misses” since “near misses” in the fossil fuel industry are not officially required by law to be reported as they are with nuclear power.
Claims made by Chiropractics dove tail nicely with Gundersen’s tales. The audience fits the speaker perfectly.
Maybe Arnie’s subluxation could be fixed by a simple chiropractic neck pop. Kerrr-snap!. “Yeeooow!”
I too like how the audience fit’s the speaker.
It is unfortunate that fear-mongering about low level radiation has struck at a chiropractic conference. I suspect though, that conferences for other health care disciplines (e.g., medical, dental) have their fair share of similar fear-mongering.
There is no argument that high levels of radiation are harmful, and if high enough, lethal. However, if a fear-peddler claims that low level radiation is harmful, hard credible evidence should be provided to support the claim.
This video made me want to vomit. It also reminded me of my Chiropractor friend who refuses to vaccinate his children because of the risks associated with them.
I must begin by saying that this is perhaps the most concentrated pack of exaggerations, worst-case overestimations, and outright lies that Gundersen has foisted on the world, to date. It would literally take a collegiate dissertation to address all of the specific points of misinformation and deceit. Below are the few I think are the most egregious of the lies…
Early-on, A.G. says that there have been five major nuclear accidents: TMI, Chernobyl and three at F. Daiichi. He then says that five accidents in 35 years means we should expect one every seven years. Actually, there have been three such accidents since TMI, which (by A.G.’s skewed arithmetic) would be one every 11.7 years. (Verdict – Lie)
At 6:30, Gundersen speaks of TMI, and says, “Lots of radioactive gasses were released and people did die.” He uses Steven Wing’s speculative paper on TMI cancers as evidence. However, A.G. misrepresents what Wing postulated. Wing talked about cancer incidence, not human cancer deaths. Wing mentions that some pets may have died or had symptoms of radiation exposure, but there is no mention of anyone dying. (Verdict – Lie)
Soon after, A.G. shows the infamous “elephant’s foot” at Chernobyl, he says it is “Chernobyl’s core…what’s left of it,” and asserts that it is “about 100 tons of nuclear material.” The “foot” actually weighs about 2 tons and is a mixture of Uranium along with the other core materials that melted into what is technically called “corium”. (Verdict – lie)
He immediately turns to F. Daiichi and says, “Where is the core at Fukushima Daiichi? No-one knows.” He then tells us his wildly speculative personal opinion, which he asserts as unmitigated fact, “We do know they are in direct contact with groundwater.” Not only does he contradict himself, but there is no evidence whatsoever that any of the three cores have breached any of their containments. Actually, no-one knows if any of the cores actually breached their reactor pressure vessels! (Verdict – lie)
At 9:40, A.G. shows the slow-motion evolution of the unit #3 hydrogen explosion, calling the first frame of the sequence evidence of a “detonation shock wave”. He then says it was but one of six explosions at F. Daiichi. He never explains himself. There were surely three hydrogen explosions at F. Daiichi. Also, he never says what a “detonation shock wave” means, but clearly implies a small nuclear detonation by letting the frames evolve and show what looks like a mushroom cloud evolve above the damaged structure. (Verdict – two lies for the price of one)
After two minutes of A.G. promoting his “hot particle” myth, he says, “then there’s the ocean.” (@ (13.28) He begins by reiterating that all the cores at F. Daiichi melted through their base-mats and “are in direct contact with the groundwater…(and) it will continue to bleed for centuries to come” and continually contaminate the Pacific Ocean. IMHO, this may be most severe fabrication of the lot. The base-mats are firmly imbedded in the site’s underlying bedrock! Groundwater does not flow through bedrock! It’s just too darned dense. A.G. has previously alleged that the bedrock is actually an aquifer, but he doesn’t mention this in the video. Regardless… (Verdict – lie)
At 14:45, he begins a diatribe on the “lies” fomented by the NRC about no-one dying from TMI (citing Wing), the IAEA saying “28-100” died due to Chernobyl (citing the internationally-condemned work of Alexey Yablokov claiming a million deaths), and that “experts” at Fairewinds Associates (i.e. himself) say there will be a million cancer deaths due to Fukushima. Since when does a fringe opinion (Wing), a completely ridiculous conclusion (Yablokov) and a preposterous prognostication by Gundersen himself, have more value than The NRC, IAEA, UNSCEAR, WHO, and SARI? (Verdict – lie)
Finally, beginning at 17:50, Gundersen says that luck was the only reason there were not 14 meltdowns along the Tohoku coast line after the quake and tsunami of 3/11/11. The natural calamity struck at ~3:20 pm on March 11. This was during the day shift with maybe a thousand people at each of the four nuke stations; Onagawa (3 units), F. Daiichi (six units), Fukushima Daini (four units) and Tokai (one unit). A. G. says, “If the earthquake and tsunami had happened in the evening, there would have been only 100 [at each station]…a 12 hour difference would have resulted in the destruction of Japan.” Absolute, utter balderdash! Only the three operating units at F. Daiichi had accidents, but there was no possibility of meltdowns with the other three because they had been shut down for months. Onagawa’s protective measures, with a several meters greater tsunami than at F. Daiichi, prevented an accident like F. Daiichi…and there was literally no need of human intervention in the process. F. Daini was hit by a several meters smaller tsunami than F. Daiichi, and the actions taken by the operating staff (less than 100 people, I might add) kept a core-damaging accident from happening. Tokai experienced automatic reactor shutdown due to the earthquake, but the tsunami’s impact was thwarted similar to F. Daini by its operating staff of a few dozen individuals. While there may have been thousands on shift at all four stations, less than 10% were actual operators. The rest were support staff and office workers. Regardless, there is no way that having that tsunami hit at 3 am on March 12 would have made the slightest bit of difference. Further, the “destruction of Japan” conception is nothing more than a favorite fantasy of A.G. and former P.M. Naoto Kan (who A.G. cites as his evidence). (Verdict – all lies)
A.G. closes his mendacious presentation with the following quotation made by…himself (!), “Sooner or later in any foolproof system, the fools are going to exceed the proofs.” What? That makes no sense whatsoever! But, A.G. isn’t concerned with making sense. His concern is all about lining his pockets with the fees he gets from making public presentations like this. He is a cowardly rhetorical predator who has no qualms about scaring the bejeebers out of the naïve and fearful. Cowardly? Would he ever make a presentation for the Health Physics Society or American Nuclear Society? Would he agree to debate the issues with people like Rod Adams, Will Davis, or myself? Of course not! Cowardly!
P. S. I would love to have been there for the Q&A session that always follows presentations of this sort. It is conspicuously missing. I wonder why?
I’m not even sure the Dai-ichi accident should be included in any analysis of accidents over time, as the initiating event was a completely unexpected external event.
Also, as with all the accidents over the years, we are given a chance to learn from them. It is extremely unlikely there will be another Tsunami-initiated accident in the future, unless the lessons learned are ignored.
“I’m not even sure the Dai-ichi accident should be included in any analysis of accidents over time, as the initiating event was a completely unexpected external event.”
It bugs the hell out of me seeing remarks such as quoted above. The Fukushima earthquake and tsunami were not only predictable, but were inevitable. And the scale of the event had historical precedent.
When offering a thread dealing with anti-nuclear propaganda, you would think disingenuous offerings by an NE advocate would not be part of the discourse. Since my arrival and participation here, I have become convinced that some of the more recognized anti nuke mouthpieces are are spouting nonsense. But I have also become convinced that some of the pro nuke crowd are prone to the same practice. To offer the premise that a japanese shoreline suffering an earthquake induced tsunami of great scale was somehow unpredictable or unprecedented seems just as disingenuous as you allege the anti nukers are being.
poa- There is a difference between a postulated accident based on the best science that can predict such events, and a Beyond Design Basis event. The Fukushima Daiichi accidents were beyond the design basis that was used in constructing the plant at the location it was built upon.
This Beyond Design Basis description not only applies to the nuclear power plant, but also to many of the sea walls of the cities and towns all along the Tohoku coast of Honshu that were obliterated by the huge waves. If the size of the earthquake and tsunami were predictable, as you claim, then why did so many people perish in such a widespread area? Didn’t the leaders of all those cities care about their citizens? Of course they did.
Hindsight is 20/20. It is easy to look back and say the plant designers should have known a tsunami of the height seen could have been predicted. But until that happens, how do they really know? The plant designers used the best information that was available at the time, based on the best science that was generally accepted. It turns out that that science was lacking. But this problem also applies to all of the seawalls all along the northeast Japanese coastline.
Engineering is an iterative process. You build a bridge, and if the bridge falls down, then you try to figure out why, and build improvements into the next bridge based on what you learn. Right now they are picking up the pieces of an experimental commercial spacecraft in the Mohave desert. They will try to figure out what happened. Nuclear, civil, aeronautical, mechanical and every other type of engineer apply the best science and practices available to them. They try to do their best. But unfortunately, this is not a perfect world.
Pete……
Basically, what you are saying is “yeah, it was predictable, but hey, its not their fault they ignored the predictability of the event”
What about large communities built in fire prone areas, such as the Santa Monica Mountains? Or ludicrous numbers of houses on stilts in earthquake prone areas, such as line the hillsides in the hills above Studio City, CA? Can’t we attribute these idiotic ventures to purposeful malfeasance by unscrupulous developers pursuing the almighty dollar, and the politicians and regulators they have in their pockets?? So why can’t we see the same malfeasance and nefarious motivation behind the placement of a nuclear energy facility on the coast of one of the most seismic active areas on our planet?
I suppose this argument that “Well, we rolled the dice and we lost” may serve as a justification for abandoning common sense to some. But its not a mindset that is easy for me to fathom.
I’m amazed at the long winded flights of fantasy that are the pat response when one brings up the predictability of the quake and subsequent tsunami that caused the Fukushima accident.
“Well, gee, we just din’t figure on that big ‘ol wave when we drew up the plans.” Sounds like Gomer Pyle, a bit, doesn’t it?
“Basically, what you are saying is “yeah, it was predictable, but hey, its not their fault they ignored the predictability of the event””
—————————————————————
No, that is not what I am saying at all. Fukushima Daiichi was a Beyond Design Basis event. Perhaps someone else can explain it to you.
“No, that is not what I am saying at all. Fukushima Daiichi was a Beyond Design Basis event.”
Ahhhh, I see, its simply above my head.
I mean gosh, lets place a fancy scientific label to put logic on an illogical premise; That a major quake and tsunami will not occur in an area prone to major quakes and tsunsmis.
The “design basis” was the “design basis” that the designers desired. You say it was based on the best available science.
Horseshit.
“Science”, and history, rendered that magnitude of a quake as a predictable future event, so the “design basis” was a financial and political product, tailored to fit an agenda.
But thanks for the chuckle. The next time I under-dress for the weather, and freeze my skinny butt off, I will just attribute it to the snow being a “beyond design basis” event. I mean hey, just because we’re expecting snow doesn’t mean shorts and a t-shirt won’t keep me warm.
His claim of a million deaths due to Fukushima really boils my blood. He knows he’s not an expert on radioprotection or radiation epidemiology, but he just picks this fantastic round number out of his arse and presents it as fact.
I live in Japan, and comments like his contribute greatly to the deaths and blighted lives that excessive radio-phobia brings. He is, quite literally, a bad man.
He’s referring to “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment” written by members of Greenpeace. Helen Caldicott always refers to it in her talks and sometimes says it was a study by the New York Academy of Science. It wasn’t a study by NYAS; NYAS published a translation of the book. Caldicott and Gundersen never mention it failed to pass all its peer reviews. NYAS published one of the reviews: http://www.nyas.org/asset.axd?id=8b4c4bfc-3b35-434f-8a5c-ee5579d11dbb&t=634507382459270000
That’s not the case – Gundersen has been pushing ‘one million extra deaths’ for Japan too:
“The problem is there are 130 million people (sic) in Japan,” he said on a recent visit to Tokyo. “A third of them will die from cancer in the next 30 years. One million more is less than 2 percent — are you going to find it?”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/09/16/national/media-national/the-government-could-still-save-lives/
[3:32] So I come here not as an expert in nuclear power but I think as a veteran of nuclear power. And I’ve seen near-misses, and I’ve seen five major accidents in my career.
[3:46] The first accident was TMI, and the younger people here think that TMI is “too much information”, but there was an accident called TMI, Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania. And that was 35 years ago.
[4:01] Then in the eighties, there was a catastrophic accident at Chernobyl, and then we went 23 years without any nuclear accidents. There was a hubris that set in, and people believed that we had it licked – we understood how to control the atom.
[4:20] And then came Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2, and Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3.
[4:30] So the first lesson, and the shortest I might add, is that accidents are going to happen frequently. In thirty-five years we’ve had five of ’em, 35 divived by 5 is 7. Once every seven years on average we’ll have a nuclear accident.
[4:52] The other lesson, though, is that the nuclear industry is talking to our policymakers, and they’re saying the chance of an accident is one in a million. Well, if you take a million, and you divide by the 400 reactors that are in the world right now, you wind up with – a million divided by 400 is two thousand five hundred years, 1 accident every 2500 years.
[5:18] So our policymakers are making decisions based on, essentially, an accident can never happen. But history has shown us that, on average once every seven years we’re going to have a nuclear accident.
[5:32]
11:19 he is obviously referring to the sloppy work of Marco Kaltofen who claimed the Nagoya dust particle had an activity of “4 followed by 19 zeros” Bq per kg. A subsequent presentation by Kaltofen downgraded it to “greater than one PBq/kg”. I emailed him and told him I couldn’t get his math to work out and he replied and said he did a “much more complete calculation” and it will be lower but still in the PBq range but he won’t announce the results until a conference in November. Well gee, don’t you think you should have a done the “much more complete calculation” before making it public?
ANS has a list of medical studies done on TMI. These studies, done by reputable organizations, contradict what some crackpot says.
http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/sptopics/tmi/healthstudies.php
This is perhaps not completely on topic, but let’s not forget that Gundersen predicted the removal of fuel from Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent fuel pool was going to be very difficult and will likely result in large releases of radioactive gases. He said the fuel bundles are going to get stuck, or break apart, or something. These wild claims are easy to Google.
As of this week, almost all of the spent fuel has been removed from Unit 4. As far as I can tell, the removal has gone rather smoothly with no major problems.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/decommision/index-e.html
Perhaps Leslie would care to comment?
First, my refutation of Gundersen’s “assurance” of fuel bundle damage http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-fud/fairewinds-gundersen-guarantees-problems-with-unit-4-spent-fuel-removal.html
And, my posting (with on-going bundle transfer data) of the unit #4 spent fuel removal issue http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/unit-4-spent-fuel-pool.html
Hmmm… Arnie has only 11 more used fuel bundles to go before his “assurance” completely collapses.
[5:32] So Einstein had it right, and everyone is quoting Einstein this weekend, which is kind of interesting. He basically said that if, as a society, we’re going to make a decision on building nuclear power plants, that decision has to made in the town greens, in the town meeting halls and make its way up. And what we’re having here, and especially in Japan, and in Asia, is a top down policy on the implementation of nuclear power
[6:04] We need to expect, once a decade, that there is going to be a bad nuclear accident.
This is TMI’s nuclear core. It’s a robot picture taken about 2 years after the nuclear accident. TMI was a partial nuclear meltdown. The nuclear core was destroyed, it melted down, but it was contained in the nuclear reactor. Lots of radioactive gasses were released and people did die.
[6:32] This is Steve Wing. Dr. Steve Wing is an epidemiologist at UNC. He put together this map.See the white line from the upper left to the lower right? That’s the Susquehanna River, where TMI was, and along the river on either side are red, and further away is green. What does that mean? On the day of the accident there was no air moving, there was no wind. So the radioactive gases laid in the river valley and Dr. Wings epidemiology shows that people did die along the river valley, compared to people on the surrounding hills.
[7:15] Then came TMI. I’m sorry, then cam Chernobyl. And uh, this is the picture of the nuclear core, what’s left of it, at Chernobyl, it’s called the “elephant’s foot”. It’s about 100 tons of molten nuclear material. A robot got in there and took that picture, about a year after the nuclear accident.
[7:37] It was so highly radioactive that no one has gone near that ever since. But obviously I think that we all know that Chernobyl did release radiation. This is a map of Europe. And it shows that, the um, the Ukraine was highly contaminated, but it didn’t stop at the border.
[7:56] No, the radiation didn’t say, “Whoa! This accident happened in the Ukraine, i’m not going to cross that line.” There was first detected up in Sweden and then later detected in England. Even today cattle in Wales cannot be eaten because they’re contaminated.
[8:14] Even today wild boar that hunters catch in Germany cant be eaten because they are radiologically contaminated. Even today the Laps, in Lapland, cant eat reindeer, because they are contaminated.
[8:29] Well, where is the core at Fukushima? No one knows. Fukushima is so radioactive and there is so much destruction that we dont have a picture of the core at Fukushima. So it’s left to the imagination where those three nuclear cores might be. But we do know that unlike Chernobyl, and unlike TMI, they are in direct contact with groundwater. I’ll show you a couple of pictures of radioactive releases from Chernobyl (He meant Fukushima but never corrected himself) though.
The Russians shot at the “elephant’s foot” with a Kalashnikov to get a piece of it for analysis. Hardly so radioactive that nobody got close to it.
He forgot to say, cattle can’t be eaten “because we (the scientists working for anti-nuclear interests) say so and have successfully lobbied governments to ban its sale”.
(One of the real tragedies of Fukushima was the treatment (or lack thereof) of the cattle farmers had in the evacuated zone. Anti-nuclear “environmentalists” have complete indifference to human or animal suffering when it comes to achieving their aim.)
Yet again Gundersen gets facts wrong, this time twice in one statement. It was sheep that were restricted in Wales, and the last UK restrictions were lifted two years ago.
Ref: http://www.food.gov.uk/science/research/radiologicalresearch/radiosurv/chernobyl
Here’s some corrections to the above transcript (not a complete list): at 8:29, Gundersen led with “But”. Gundersen said “Three Mile Island”, not “TMI”, and he said “radiation releases”.
Please try to be absolutely accurate. I would include every stammer and “uh” just to be complete.
Here, along with the other sections of the transcript, are the corrections to my prior post. I’m going to resume where Rod left off.
See link below
This guy is unreal
I’ve got a word document started compiling the transcript up to this point. I can put it up on google drive in a “debunk Gundersen” folder for anyone to edit if you’d like.
Forgot the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nZ9UTXmV_w82DUDOiZ_DdzCR_yjybXer4Sidatuh-d0/edit
Updated full transcript linked above.
I’m going to finish up the transcript this afternoon and put the remainder in the google doc posted above.
A google news search for “industrial accident” shows there’s a couple of fatalities every week – somewhere in some plant. The difference with nuclear is that it’s documented meticulously by the media (and the anti-nukes) while they simply don’t care about the others. It takes a white-collar audience, that lives in cities and only does office jobs, to be impressed by the “accident every 7 years” argument from A.G.