As I promote CounterPunch’s release of the offprint on my article concerning contamination of the US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan by Fukushima fallout (link to purchase here; please buy many, many copies), there is a plethora of radiation-related news that highlight and illuminate the questions discussed in the piece. First, Godzilla!� The creature design for... Read More

For the nuclear bureaucrat, lying seems to be as essential and continuous a human process as breathing. I am not averse to the argument that a greater reliance on nuclear energy, despite its massive risks, might provide an alternative future preferable to being cooked to death by greenhouse gases. But I must say that I... Read More

I have an article in the current CounterPunch print edition (Subscribe!NOW! ) concerning the contamination of the US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan by Fukushima fallout during the post-tsunami relief operations in 2011. The Ronald Reagan is in the news because several dozen crewmembers of the Reagan are trying to sue TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power... Read More

[Update: In 2013, Japan Focus published two superb pieces by investigative reporter Roger Witherspoon on the US military's response to radioactive contamination during Operation Tomodachi: & His interviews with servicemen and women who served on the Reagan--and in many other locations and capacities during the relief operation, describe the harrowing circumstances of trying, sometimes unsuccessfully,... Read More

[Update, November 24, 2014: Despite dire predictions, TEPCO has successfully removed 1331 spent fuel rods from the cooling pond at Number 4 reactor. Removal of the 204 fresh fuel rods is underway. On the other hand, Mainichi reports that the "freeze play" plan to freeze contaminated water to keep it from draining into a trench... Read More

Shares plunged across Europe, Asia and the United States on Tuesday as the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant deepened and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised its radiological event scale to its highest level. Conditions at the stricken facility have steadily deteriorated despite the valiant efforts of emergency workers. The station continues... Read More

Japan’s nuclear calamity has shown once again the remarkable courage, patience, and stoicism of that nation’s people. As a visitor to Japan for the past 36 years and former columnist for one of its leading newspapers, Mainichi Daily News, the giant earthquake and ensuing tsunami that savaged northern Japan filled me with anguish and sorrow.... Read More

Three of the six nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have partially melted down and plutonium is seeping into the soil outside. Plutonium is less volatile than other radioactive elements like iodine or cesium, but it's also more deadly. According to Business Week, "When plutonium decays, it emits what is known as an alpha... Read More

Conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are deteriorating and the doomsday scenario is beginning to unfold. On Sunday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) officials reported that the levels of radiation leaking into seawater at the Unit 2 reactor were 100,000 times above normal, and the airborne radiation measured 4-times higher than government limits. As... Read More

Americans read the increasingly panic-stricken reports of deepening catastrophe at Fukushima Daichi, speed to the pharmacy to look for iodine and ask, “It’s happened there; can it happen here?� They already know it can, and almost certainly will. The late great environmentalist David Brower, used to tell audiences solemnly, “Nuclear plants are incredibly complex technological... Read More

News of a third explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant sent stocks plunging on the Nikkei exchange which dropped 1,015 points on the session. After 2 days of battering, the stock index is off more than 1,600 points in its worst performance since Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan... Read More

The explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant in the early hours of Saturday looks, on the footage, huge and calamitous. An “expert�, interviewed on the BBC, tactfully described it as “energetic�. Here are excerpts from the Associated Press story from Japan, on the wires at about 2. am Saturday, PST. Rarely has my father Claud’s... Read More