Holy Shit. This is a must listen-to! STOP NUCLEAR!!! Nuclear exposure affects offspring of offspring of offspring ad infinitum. These poor children...What have we done?!? The documents you’re referring to are through the Freedom of Information Act, and these were documents that were made available maybe six or eight months after the crisis started, through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And in these documents, these were transcribed telephone conversations between NRC officials and Washington, D.C., embassy and diplomatic staff in Tokyo, and also people in Pacific Command or United States Forces Japan, principally the Navy. And what those documents reveal is that there was a lot of backstage discussion by these experts, who were trying to assess just how bad the situation was. I think you quoted in the document a discussion in which they were saying—this is on, I think, March 13th—that they were picking up rates at about a hundred nautical miles out from the plant that were 30 times above background and would represent a thyroid dose, a committed dose equivalent to the thyroid—that in a 10-hour period would exceed the protective action guidelines set up by the Department of Energy. So, in my research, I’ve interviewed some 160 people, including diplomats and diplomatic staff and people within the various nuclear agencies. It’s been quite interesting to see that at that period of time, particularly in about the first 10 days or so after the crisis began, there was a great deal of disagreement and a great deal of debate backstage about just how bad this was and what those rates represented and whether or not they could verify this. Now, keep in mind that TEPCO, at this period of time, in the period of time that we’re talking about where the Reagan sailors would have been exposed, they were trying to—frantically trying to deal with the situation. They were in a station blackout. And even though they knew that the radiation levels were quite high, that wasn’t really making it into the public. When we talk about TEPCO, I think it’s important to make a distinction between the operational staff at the plant, who were really working desperately 24 hours a day to deal with this, and the TEPCO officials, including their spokesmen, who were really downplaying the situation. And anyone who followed the situation at that time, it was quite confusing. It was very frustrating that in every stage of this, they were downplaying just how bad it was. And so, in the first few days, the United States really had no information that they could act upon. And so, very quickly, they set up their own radiation assessment. You know, the United States has a great deal of military assets in Japan, some 82 military bases, and their own radiation measurements, starting about on the 13th or 14th of March and going for months after that, were revealing that the situation was really quite a bit more severe than what TEPCO was acknowledging. NERMEEN SHAIKH: According to the documents that you saw about these conversations, the Navy was aware that the sailors on the USS Reagan would be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation? KYLE CLEVELAND: Well, what they were—the readings that they were getting, these were coming from helicopters that were flying relief missions for the tsunami effort. They had landed on a Japanese command ship that was about 50 miles away from the plant, and the measurements that they were getting clearly alarmed them. These were readings much higher than they expected. In the documentation—again, the Freedom of Information Act documents—they did not anticipate that they would have really any readings of significance at a hundred nautical miles, and yet they were getting readings that were—that would exceed the protective action guideline dose in a 10-hour period. So, they were aware that they were getting hit by this radiation. Keep in mind, in the first week or so of the crisis, at least the first four or five days, the wind was blowing out to sea, and aside from these inland communities very close to the reactor, the first people that were hit by this plume were the U.S. military. And these nuclear aircraft carriers are arguably some of the most sophisticated radiation-measuring devices in the world. And what those documents reveal is that their alarms set off at very consistent levels, and they saw that they were getting rates that were surprising them. The issue of whether— AMY GOODMAN: So, Professor Cleveland, why isn’t the U.S. Navy responsible for this as well as TEPCO, as Japan, the nuclear power company? KYLE CLEVELAND: Well, I think that the real question is whether or not the U.S. government, and the U.S. Navy, in particular, took the appropriate protective action measures, given the information that they had available at the time. You know, it’s very easy now to look in retrospect and make these kind of severe judgments about this, now that we have more information and there’s a lot more transparency to this. But at the time, they had very little information to act on. And from what I’ve gathered, at least from my interviews, they immediately were trying to take protective measures. They moved the carrier off. They did stop the water supply after they saw that it had become contaminated. For many of the servicemen who were close in, they provided potassium iodine to protect them against thyroid doses. And they set up also a radiation registry, called the Tomodachi Registry, which is still publicly available as an online interactive website, that allows servicemen and anyone who was in Japan at that time in proximity to the plant to go on and see where they were at a given day and what their estimated dose exposures were. So, I think the United States government and the Navy was doing whatever they could. Keep in mind that many of the officers and the administrative staff that were dealing with this, they were on the ship themselves, or they were at the military bases in Japan, where their families were living, and they were also being exposed to this. So, I think that, you know, for many people who were not privy to these backstage discussions and these kind of elite-level decision makers and the kind of rationale and reasons for why they were making their decisions, it may seem that somehow it was unreasonable and unfair. But when you scrutinize it closely, I think that they were trying to take the appropriate protective actions. The question of whether or not that was useful and whether or not they were in fact the best measures they could take is kind of another question. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Naoto Kan, an interview we did on the third anniversary of the meltdowns, March 11th. Naoto Kan was the prime minister of Japan when the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown occurred. I spoke to him in Tokyo when we broadcast from Japan weeks ago. The former prime minister spoke about the inaccuracy of the information TEPCO provided to him at the time of the disaster. NAOTO KAN: [translated] From what I was hearing from the headquarters of TEPCO, and in particular from Mr. Takeguro, who was the former vice president, was—had almost no accurate information being conveyed about what was actually the situation on site. AMY GOODMAN: The former prime minister of Naoto—the former prime minister of Japan. He went on to say that he flew to the nuclear plant, because he couldn’t get accurate information from TEPCO officials, to speak to workers, where he could get accurate information. I wanted to go back to Lieutenant Steve Simmons. What was your health like before March 11th, 2011, three years ago? LT. STEVE SIMMONS: Before March, I was actually in what I would like to consider relatively good health. I was physically active. I had been doing P90X and Insanity workouts, and oftentimes kind of a hybrid between the two of them. And the summer of 2010, when I was down in Hawaii, one day I had met up with a friend and gone out and did a trail run, the following day hiked Diamond Head. And then, after—the day or so after that, I went and hiked Stairway to Heaven. So, I was in pretty good health. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Lieutenant Simmons, can you explain when you decided to join this lawsuit and what you’d like to see happen now? LT. STEVE SIMMONS: It wasn’t—well, for a long time, actually, after my ailments started, I had tried to find out if there was anybody else that was dealing with similar issues or other ailments related from that deployment. And I had reached out to some of the other folks that I was stationed with on board the Reagan, and they hadn’t heard anything. And it wasn’t until, I think, December of 12, when my wifes sister had actually sent her a news article talking about the original plaintiffs of the case. Shortly after that, I had reached out to Paul and his team and inquired with them about it and sent them my information. And it really—for me, it comes down to the fact that, like Charles said, a lot of these sailors and marines are in their early twenties, mid-twenties, and they haven’t had the luxury that I’ve had to do 16 years of the service and be awarded the opportunity for medical retirement. And these young sailors and marines need to be taken care of. And that was the main driving force for me to come forward and bring my information to Paul and Charles to help strengthen their case, to make sure that these individuals are taken care of in the manner that they deserve. AMY GOODMAN: How many people were on the USS Reagan? LT. STEVE SIMMONS: Approximately 5,500.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:48:10 +0000
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