polsci-110316-nuclear-disaster.vtt

WEBVTT

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 Alright, this is WMRW LP1 and I think I have Maggie on the line. Maggie, can you hear me?

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 Yes, I can and I'm right here.

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 Okay, great. That doesn't sound too bad. We're talking to Maggie Gunderson today.

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 This is Politics and Science on the 16th of March, 2011.

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 And today we're discussing our nuclear catastrophe in our world today happening in Japan.

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 And after Maggie's off, we'll be talking to Raymond Peat. Dr. Raymond Peat is a physiologist from Eugene, Oregon,

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 talking about how to mitigate the effects of radiation.

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 Maggie Gunderson is a founder and president of Fairwinds Associates and a freelance paralegal specializing in environmental,

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 nuclear safety and energy litigation in federal and state administrative law hearings.

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 And you worked in the nuclear industry for a while, right Maggie, as did your husband Arnie?

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 Yes, we both did. That's where we met.

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 Well, thankful that you're with us here today. And I was hoping you could bring us up to date with what exactly is happening

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 over in Japan and what the ramifications are for that part of the world and for us.

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 Okay, well, the news that just came during the last hour is that all the fuel has

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 Say that again, we lost you there.

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 All the fuel has boiled dry in Unit 4 and that was in the spent fuel pool. It's not in the reactor itself.

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 Now that was a full core offload. So that's a tremendous amount of radioactive fuel that is getting very, very hot.

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 And there's a fear that it could catch on fire. If it catches fire, those particles become airborne.

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 A worse scenario than having a meltdown.

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 It is?

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 Yes, it is. Because that radiation will travel anywhere. If there's a meltdown, it does get into the water table,

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 but you're able to monitor. You might even be able to, they might even be able to corral some of the contamination

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 and do things to mitigate. This is airborne and this will go wherever the air blows.

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 It's like if you see someone smoking a cigarette and somebody just walks past and the plume changes.

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 This plume can move in whatever direction the wind is blowing.

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 It can go toward Tokyo, toward the U.S., toward Mainland China and across the rest of Japan.

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 It can go whichever way the wind is blowing.

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 And I know Chernobyl was terrible because it was an explosion and that forced the radiation.

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 And that was a core meltdown, wasn't it?

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 No, there was a graphite fire. The Chernobyl plant is a graphite plant and was not a liquid reactor like we're talking about.

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 And there was a fire in the graphite. Only at Chernobyl, only 90, well, only 3% of the radiation escaped.

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 The other 97% is still inside the containment inside the sarcophagus that they built around it.

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 This accident, since the containment has failed, this radiation is getting out to the environment.

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 Matter of fact, the U.S. Surgeon General was on a tour in California and spoke of the fact that anyone in the U.S.

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 should consider getting potassium iodide to protect their thyroid.

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 It would be a prudent thing to do.

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 And the NRC announced today and the State Department announced today that they've told all personnel in Japan,

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 U.S. personnel in Japan, to go at least 80 miles away from what's happening.

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 And that's more than double what the Japanese are saying.

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 So the NRC is usually, I never thought of them as being actually that worried about low-level radiation.

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 Well, it's not low-level radiation. It's not an explosion like a bomb, but it's not low-level radiation.

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 Okay.

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 There are no more personnel on site operating the plant. They've had to remove them because the radiation levels are too high.

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 So basically, they're just running their course.

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 They're running their course. They do have people who are risking their lives to keep putting water on the plant and taking care of the plant.

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 That way to try and keep pumping seawater up there. But there's no operational things that they can do.

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 And so that's the fuel rods. Are they the ones in -- is number four one of the reactors that was out of commission?

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 And so all the fuel rods were waiting to be --

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 Yes. All the fuel rods had been offloaded into the fuel pool.

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 So what's really scary about that is that there is no -- there are no rods put in, control rods to put in to slow down the reaction.

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 The fuel rods are in the fuel pool, and there's no way to -- as the water burns off, there's nothing to keep that fuel pool cool.

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 Geez.

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 If the fuel gets really hot and starts a chain reaction, it cannot be stopped because there's not anything to moderate that chain reaction.

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 That was the difference with Chernobyl. Chernobyl is a plant that works -- as the chain reaction is going on inside,

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 the operators have to work really hard to pull it back. It's like a gas pedal pushing downwards all the time.

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 In the Japanese plants, which are the same as the Vermont Yankee plant, they're boiling water reactors, the same vintage, same design.

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 They're Westing -- I mean, they're General Electric boiling water reactors,

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 and they also -- both General Electric and Westinghouse now are owned by the Japanese.

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 The boiling water reactor work -- you have to push the gas. You have to push the reaction to happen, and you have a lot of control on it.

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 But they don't have control on this because this is the spent fuel all just sitting there together.

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 There's no control rods in there.

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 And as the decay heat causes many chain reactions, you could have a fire or a meltdown in the fuel pool itself.

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 So that's --

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 And that's as technical -- that's about as technical as I can get.

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 You listed on your website that I'm a nuclear expert, and I am an industry expert, but I'm not.

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 I'm a paralegal, and I'm a mediator, and that's the angle. I'm not as technical as Arnie.

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 Okay. Well, you're probably more technical than I am and most of the people listening, so I think that suffices.

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 What's the -- so that's just going into freefall, basically, and what's the state of the other reactors?

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 There's six of them there; is that right, at that Fukushima power station?

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 Yes. There are -- two of them already are in partial meltdown.

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 What happens when you have -- when the reactor's operating and when they stopped it?

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 And when the storm came up, when the earthquake started, they stopped the reaction.

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 Emergency system worked, and the reaction was stopped.

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 But when they couldn't keep the reactor cool, there are things that -- there's 5% of the heat is decay heat,

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 and that is what has kept burning.

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 The other 95% was stopped, but the decay heat is enough to keep boiling off all the water.

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 The diesel had gotten swamped by the tsunami, so they didn't have any backup power,

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 and they couldn't cool the reactor for a really long time, any of them.

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 So my understanding -- and this has been changing hour by hour, so I'm not --

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 I can't be totally clear on what's happening.

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 I saw three different reports before I came on with you.

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 Two reactors have had a partial meltdown.

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 You know, they have parts that are melting down, and how bad that will be will depend on how much seawater

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 these employees who are risking their lives being in such a high radiation area.

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 I mean, it's just incredible.

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 They are pumping in tons of seawater to try and make like a lake under the reactors.

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 These reactors are raised, though, and in a boiling water reactor,

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 the control rods come up from the bottom into the reactor itself.

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 So whereas a pressurized water reactor -- and I worked on pressurized water reactors.

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 I have never worked with boiling water reactors.

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 I worked on nuclear fuel reload core design.

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 So that's doing the calculations for the fuel -- each fuel reload on PWRs.

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 However, you know, whether it's a year or 18 months, whatever, the utility has decided to run for it.

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 And the BWRs, the control rods come up from the bottom.

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 So those daughter products can come through.

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 The bottom of the reactor is not as tight as on a pressurized water reactor.

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 It's very tight.

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 The control rods come down from the top.

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 So those daughter products that are generating all this excess heat are slumping into the bottom

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 and making a molten mass, and that is coming out of the bottom of the reactor.

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 That's why they're trying to cool it.

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 They're making a lake underneath that between the base of the metal reactor and, you know,

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 the vessel itself and the concrete base of the containment.

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 Someone asked me, is this special concrete, you know, special nuclear-grade concrete.

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 It's concrete.

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 It's just regular concrete.

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 I mean, like you would find on a bridge or something.

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 There's not a special nuclear grade to it.

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 And how long can that hold up to temperatures that I've heard are like 2200 degrees?

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 Well, as--no one knows.

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 I mean, we're in uncharted territory here.

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 The fuel pool can get up to 4000 degrees, and we're in uncharted territory.

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 And there are some studies--I looked at them today--

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 and NEI, the Nuclear Energy Institute, which is the lobbying arm of the industry,

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 is saying, you know, there can't be a fire in the fuel pool where there's already been one.

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 You know, the containment can't leak.

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 Well, two of them have blown their lids off.

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 Right, so this--

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 We need to go back and look at the general design criteria on every nuclear plant.

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 And a lot of them are just--they're too old.

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 Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek, Cogrom, these are very, very old, old, old plants

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 that don't have any current safety standards around them.

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 And they have been--all of the parameters under which they were built have been grandfathered in,

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 so they don't meet the current regulations.

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 Yeah, that's scary.

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 And Vermont Yankee got an uprate 10 years ago, I think, so it's actually--

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 An uprate is really a frightening thing because if there's an accident at Vermont Yankee,

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 then there is 40% more radiation than a normal accident because of the uprate.

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 Even though the uprate was 25%, the way that the daughter product act,

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 the way the material act, you get 40% more radiation in the uprate.

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 And the emergency evacuation plan was designed around the way the plant was built before the uprate.

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 It is not possible to get everyone out before there would be a lethal dose

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 if there was a severe accident at Yankee like there has been here

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 because there's just--the evacuation plan, emergency plan does not work.

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 We only have a few more minutes, Maggie Gunderson.

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 I was wondering--people would say, well, the Vermont Yankee is not at risk

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 because it's not an earthquake zone and there's no danger of tsunami,

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 but it is next to a river.

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 Is there a flooding danger there?

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 Yes, there is a flooding danger there.

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 Hurricanes that could knock out power or do something to unstabilize the grid.

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 Vermont Yankee's backup power is diesel, just like the plants in Japan.

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 If they were involved in a flood or a hurricane and couldn't operate,

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 then there's no backup power there.

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 And if a huge storm, flooding, knocked out the service water that cools the plant

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 and that comes out of the Connecticut River, or a terrorist--I mean,

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 one of the things--Union of Concerned Scientists has really worked hard pushing the NRC

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 on the threat matrix since 9/11, since 2001.

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 There's not enough protection at these intake structures.

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 And if somebody took a Miami Vice-style boat and filled it with dynamite

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 and ran it in there and knocked out the service water at the same time

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 the diesels were knocked out somehow, you couldn't cool that plant.

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 And the NRC does not consider that a realistic part of its threat matrix,

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 so they don't even consider these as possibilities.

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 Well, that's not very reassuring, to say the least.

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 Maggie, I know you're not a meteorologist,

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 but do you know how the fallout from what's happening in Japan might behave?

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 Have you talked to anybody who has an opinion about that?

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 I don't know that. No one knows. And again, no one knows.

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 I mean, will a lot of that come from the Pacific and come to the U.S.?

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 There was extensive data from bomb testing that was done in the Pacific originally,

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 and a lot of that strontium and cesium were carried to the U.S. during those tests

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 and absorbed into kids' muscles and bones and things.

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 So I don't know. No one knows. We're in uncharted territory.

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 This accident is worse than Three Mile Island, worse than Chernobyl,

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 and is the worst accident that this world has ever seen,

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 of any kind of industrial accident or any kind of--

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 You know, in terms of an illness, the only other thing that was as bad as this

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 was the bubonic plague, but that ended.

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 Here, there's a half-life of hundreds of years on some of these radioactive isotopes

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 and with plutonium, and these plants are running with a mix with some plutonium in them.

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 There's going to be 250,000-year waste left.

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 Well, it sounds like you were once, I assume, in favor of nuclear power.

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 It sounds like you may have changed your position.

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 That's correct. I was in favor of nuclear power.

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 I believe-- You know, I'm a woman, and I was part of Jobs for Energy Independence,

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 which was a U.S. organization, and I was working in the nuclear industry

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 in part to make sure when there's plenty of energy available,

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 women and minorities have jobs.

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 When energy gets really costly or there's economic issues, women and minorities lose those.

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 So that's why I began in the nuclear industry.

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 And the scientists had assured me it was the safest thing, and I don't believe it anymore.

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 Well, I can see why. Maggie, I'm going to have to--

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 I hope-- Oh, go ahead, please.

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 I hope I've answered all your questions, and I want to tell everyone, please,

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 to be praying or thinking for the people of Japan.

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 This is a terrible, terrible tragedy.

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 All right. Thank you very much, Maggie Gunderson.

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 I hope to check in with you again soon.

00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:47.000
 Okay. You're very welcome, John. Take care.

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 Yeah, you too. Bye.

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 All right. That was Maggie Gunderson, who is founder and president of Fairwind Associates.

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 She's a freelance paralegal specializing in environmental nuclear safety

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 and energy litigation in federal and state administrative law hearings.

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 So I'm going to put on some music and-- Let's see.

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 Something by Tom Waits.

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 And I'll be back with Dr. Raymond Peat, a physiologist,

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 and we'll be talking about radiation, its effect on life, and how to mitigate the negative effects,

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 which I think is all they have.

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 Here's Tom Waits.

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 Just like a bullet in the charcoal eyes of Monroe

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 She wouldn't took it then to California for a trip

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 Moon was gold and her hair like wind

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 Said don't look back just come on Jim

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 Oh, you got to hold, hold, got to hold

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 Standing right here you got to hold me

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 Store watch

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 And a ring made from a spoon

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 Everyone's looking for someone to blame

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 And you share my bill, you share mine

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 All right. I'm back live here on the 16th of March with Dr. Raymond Peat,

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 who's a physiologist and a biologist and a science historian from Eugene, Oregon.

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 Ray, can you hear me?

00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:13.000
 Yes, very well.

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 Oh, good. You sound great.

00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:16.000
 Well, thanks for coming on today.

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 I thought considering the catastrophe and tragedy that's happening in Japan right now,

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 we talk about radiation, which is probably going to be circulating around the globe,

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 and some of it will be heading toward the United States and Canada, I'm sure.

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 And I thought maybe we could talk about radiation's effects on the body

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 and in ways that it can be mitigated.

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 So maybe you could start out just by talking about radiation.

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 The first issue of my newsletter in 1981 was about the issue of radiation damage.

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 Radiation damage?

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 Yeah. And I read lots of mostly Soviet research.

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 They were the ones mostly interested in how to repair damage.

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 And the main factors are the amount of magnesium in the cell and the metabolic rate.

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 And it happens that thyroid hormone is what's needed for the cells to retain magnesium at a high level.

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 And this old research that I reviewed 30 years ago, the central idea was the high metabolic rate

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 dating repair processes so that once the damage was done, it was almost immediately repaired.

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 The thyroid function was very high, allowing the cells to retain magnesium.

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 And just in the last couple of years, a group studying the radio-resistant bacteria,

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 they've been found in several situations.

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 They were discovered at Oregon State University when they were sterilizing food with super intense radiation in a can.

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 And the irradiated food, after a few weeks, rotted.

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 And they found there were bacteria that survived millions of rad.

00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:17.000
 And this type of bacteria just recently was found not to have any special resistance of its DNA,

00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:27.000
 because the protein system that repairs the DNA is what is uniquely resistant to radiation damage.

00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:32.000
 So the DNA can be torn into tiny fragments,

00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:37.000
 but if you have the enzyme left for repairing the bacteria,

00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:42.000
 it re-strips all their DNA from tiny little scraps if their proteins are good.

00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:51.000
 And this group recently discovered that manganese is a central factor for these bacteria.

00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:58.000
 What the manganese is doing is catalyzing very fast tabulism of glucose.

00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:04.000
 Hey, Ray, I'm going to interrupt because we're having the same phone problem again where it's clipping your voice.

00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:06.000
 Yes, it's a terrible echo.

00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:09.000
 Oh, you're getting an echo. I didn't know that. How's that?

00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:11.000
 When you talk, how is that?

00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:13.000
 That made it decrease.

00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:17.000
 There's a slight echo, but it sounded like there were three of us for a while.

00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:19.000
 I just don't understand why it's doing that.

00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:21.000
 Well, try it again and we'll see if it goes.

00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:24.000
 I may call you back and see if we can get rid of that.

00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:32.000
 Okay. Anyway, the very fast glucose metabolism is almost all turned into carbon dioxide.

00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:40.000
 And carbon dioxide happens to protect, to stick to amino groups of protein.

00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:49.000
 And that's been my approach to defense against aging and stress, keep the carbon dioxide up high in mammals.

00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:58.000
 But apparently these bacteria carry it to an extreme so that they can survive millions of rads of ionizing radiation.

00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:01.000
 I see. So you're saying that their metabolism is high enough.

00:19:01.000 --> 00:19:04.000
 Does this have to do with the thyroid function as well?

00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:08.000
 Well, it resembles, it's parallel to the thyroid function.

00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:18.000
 They do it just by this manganese containing enzyme system that very powerfully turns glucose into carbon dioxide.

00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:28.000
 But in mammals, it's the thyroid hormone that's primarily responsible for turning glucose and fat into carbon dioxide.

00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:33.000
 So one of the problems with radiation is that it does damage the thyroid.

00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:46.000
 And I know that I guess my last guest just said that the American surgeon general who's traveling abroad just recommended that people get a supply of potassium iodine to take, which I hadn't heard this.

00:19:46.000 --> 00:20:04.000
 The CDC a few days ago recommended a single dose of 160 milligrams of potassium iodide for an adult to be repeated if the iodine cloud stays around for more than one day.

00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:16.000
 Kelp or dulse or other iodine rich seaweed, a few grams per day will do that if you don't have the pure potassium iodide.

00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:26.000
 And even the antiseptic tincture of iodine, if you paint them on your skin, people have used that to disinfect water.

00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:34.000
 So if you're not allergic to that, that's an alternative way of getting your iodine up.

00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:51.000
 But I think the basic thing is to keep your thyroid hormone active if necessary by using a supplement of thyroid hormone to keep your thyroid stimulating hormone, the TSH, down as close to zero as you can get it.

00:20:51.000 --> 00:21:06.000
 Because that's good for many reasons, including that your thyroid isn't going to be metabolizing and so it won't take up the toxic concentration of radioactive iodine if your TSH is kept at zero.

00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:12.000
 And meanwhile, the high thyroid activity is going to accelerate the repair processes.

00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:24.000
 If you rely on potassium iodide, that's going to dilute the radioactive contaminant so that it doesn't destroy your thyroid gland.

00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:39.000
 But the potassium iodide tends to suppress your thyroid function, lowering the whole body's metabolic rate, and that makes it increasingly susceptible to radiation damage.

00:21:39.000 --> 00:21:52.000
 If you think of the inverse relationship between thyroid and estrogen, a low thyroid person usually has very high estrogen.

00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:57.000
 A very high thyroid person has low estrogen.

00:21:57.000 --> 00:22:23.000
 Estrogen synergizes with radiation damage, so a low thyroid person is doing many things to make all of their tissues more susceptible to injury by all of the radiation sources, which include carbon isotopes, stesium, strontium isotopes are important ones in nuclear fallout.

00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:38.000
 And the iodine suppressing your thyroid gland, as the CDC recommends, isn't going to do anything at all to protect you against strontium, cesium, carbon, and other radiation sources.

00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:45.000
 And in fact, will tend to make you more susceptible to injury by them by suppressing your thyroid function.

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:50.000
 Because if your thyroid is functioning, you'll be able to remove those quicker?

00:22:50.000 --> 00:23:03.000
 Yeah, the cells are producing carbon dioxide, which forms a defensive barrier on the proteins, keeping them from suffering destructive oxidation.

00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:24.000
 And the magnesium retained by the thyroid is used in the repair enzymes for DNA repair. And at the same time, you're lowering the estrogen throughout your body, which you want to avoid that synergistic effect of radiation and estrogen.

00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:34.000
 Now, you said that potassium iodide is not good for you in the long run. In the short run, that would be something to do if you didn't have any other choice, I suppose.

00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:43.000
 Yeah, if you don't have thyroid pills or kelp or dulse or seaweed, then potassium iodide is fine if you're not allergic to it.

00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:50.000
 Some people have a very intense inflammatory reaction when they take iodide or iodine.

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:59.000
 And in terms of raising your thyroid function, most people probably won't be able to get their hands on any thyroid supplements. How can they do that?

00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:05.000
 Well, the quickest way is to make sure that you're getting enough food and fuel.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:10.000
 Sugar, moment by moment, is used by your liver to activate the thyroid hormone.

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:32.000
 So if you go hungry for several hours, your thyroid is going to decrease its function. And on even a shorter scale than just keeping your body well nourished, coconut oil with its short-chain saturated fatty acids competes with the inhibiting unsaturated fats that are always tending to circulate in the body.

00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:46.000
 And those are acting as a brake on the thyroid, so the coconut oil short-chain fats are able to compete against the inhibitors of the thyroid, momentarily liberating a higher thyroid function.

00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:56.000
 So that only lasts a couple hours for a tablespoon of coconut oil. So if you add nothing else, you could eat a tablespoon of coconut oil every couple of hours.

00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:59.000
 And that's better than butter and other saturated fat?

00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:04.000
 Only in the sense that it activates your thyroid function more powerfully.

00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:10.000
 I see. And what about vitamin E and vitamin C and things like that? Are they at all important?

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:16.000
 Not very. In some situations, they're protective against radiation.

00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:27.000
 But when I was reviewing the literature 30 years ago, they were somewhat ambiguous and nothing very interesting has turned up since then.

00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:34.000
 Progesterone as an anti-estrogen is probably one of the other short-range protective things.

00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:40.000
 I see. If people could take progesterone, that would lower the synergistic effect of radiation and estrogen.

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:50.000
 You said before that radiation is very similar in its effects to estrogen, and people actually take estrogen as a supplement in hormone replacement.

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:56.000
 Could you comment on the similarity in the effects of radiation and estrogen?

00:25:56.000 --> 00:26:10.000
 A lot of this research was done in the late 1930s, and the estrogen functions were identified as similar to suffocation and stress and radiation.

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:25.000
 And about 15 years later, when the concept of estrogen receptor was introduced, there was a great push to distract people from the biochemical effects of estrogen

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:38.000
 and blame all of estrogen's effects on the actions of a receptor protein, which was supposed to activate the genes which create the female traits.

00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:51.000
 But it turned out that the research was supported by the Atomic Energy Commission, and it claimed that estrogen is not metabolized in the cells where it's acting.

00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:55.000
 Twenty years later, that was proven to be absolutely false.

00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:08.000
 The fact that it was supported by the Atomic Energy Commission and done by a man who had been working in chemical warfare, I think, makes up the whole foundation of the receptor theory suspect.

00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:19.000
 Because the 1930s research was very clear that any stress activates, including the protein that is now called the estrogen receptor,

00:27:19.000 --> 00:27:27.000
 any injury to the organism increases the appearance of the estrogen receptor as well as the estrogen functions,

00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:39.000
 which include inflammation, water uptake, suppression of the respiratory function, and eventually atrophy and fibrosis and calcification.

00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:40.000
 And cancer.

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:41.000
 Yeah.

00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:44.000
 And radiation has those similar effects, I understand.

00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:57.000
 Yeah. Biochemically, my dissertation was part of it was trying to find anything different between radiation stress and estrogen's effect.

00:27:57.000 --> 00:28:03.000
 And I couldn't find any basic physiological or biochemical difference between them.

00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:09.000
 They both interfere with oxidative metabolism and activate the stress metabolism.

00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:19.000
 So I think that means that we have evolved estrogen simply as a way to activate certain biological processes,

00:28:19.000 --> 00:28:25.000
 cell division in preparation for implantation of the embryo and uterus,

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.000
 cell division to develop the breast to give milk,

00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:34.000
 and cell division in the pituitary to activate prolactin secretion.

00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:41.000
 And it takes only about 12 hours of exposure to estrogen to get those processes going.

00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:50.000
 And so I think the biological meaning of estrogen is just like a quick jumpstart function for certain processes.

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:57.000
 And the chronic use of it is completely contrary to the real biological research

00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:08.000
 and really has no foundation other than the marketing departments of the drug companies and whatever the military has in mind.

00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:10.000
 How does the military fit into this?

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:16.000
 Well, they are the ones that promoted the concept of the estrogen receptor.

00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:22.000
 Elwood Benson went from working on chemical warfare to working on the estrogen receptor.

00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:29.000
 And his group and the people in it have formed a tradition supported by the Pentagon.

00:29:29.000 --> 00:29:37.000
 Some of them have been working more recently at Lawrence Livermore Radiation Lab on the estrogen receptor.

00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:45.000
 So for 60 years now, it has been of great importance, first to the military and the Atomic Energy Commission,

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:48.000
 and now to various government agencies.

00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:56.000
 That seems a little bizarre to me, but I guess they're always looking for things to use as weapons, basically.

00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:03.000
 Yeah, at different times they have been interested in its birth control effect, population control.

00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:08.000
 That's one of the things they were studying, I think, when they, I think you've written about this,

00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:15.000
 they did releases of large amounts of radiation and then studied the effect it had on population and sterility and such.

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:22.000
 Yeah, and estrogen is really a more controllable way to sterilize the population.

00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:28.000
 Maybe you could talk a little bit about what the danger we face from what's coming out of Japan now

00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:32.000
 and this tragic meltdown of the nuclear reactors.

00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:37.000
 And is this particulate radiation that we're going to be exposed to

00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:41.000
 and that's going to go up into the atmosphere and travel around the globe?

00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:47.000
 Yeah, as long as it stays very high in the atmosphere and doesn't rain out, it isn't going to do too much harm.

00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:55.000
 But if it doesn't rain out in the Pacific and if it happens to get through a dry spell for a few days across the Pacific

00:30:55.000 --> 00:31:00.000
 and then rains out wherever it comes down, it will do a lot of damage.

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:07.000
 A few of the bombs that exploded in Nevada happened to stay in the air

00:31:07.000 --> 00:31:14.000
 until one of the fallout clouds rained down in Pennsylvania, I guess,

00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:18.000
 was the one that Ernest Sternglass happened to be on the site

00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:24.000
 and saw that his radiation measurements were showing extreme contamination

00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:27.000
 while the government was saying nothing had happened.

00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:32.000
 And that started Sternglass on his research on what was really happening

00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:39.000
 and he showed how the US Public Health Service was collaborating with the Atomic Energy Commission

00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:46.000
 and even state government agencies to put out false information and destroy the actual data.

00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:50.000
 Whatever we're going to hear from the governments of Japan and the United States,

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.000
 I don't think there's any precedent for thinking there'll be any truth in it.

00:31:54.000 --> 00:31:58.000
 Yeah, I was just reading the introduction to a book about Chernobyl

00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:03.000
 that was published in this country just recently and edited by Janet Sherman.

00:32:03.000 --> 00:32:08.000
 And that book starts off with saying that you'd think that the governments would want to study

00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:14.000
 the actual data of these accidents to improve the safety of nuclear power plants

00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:17.000
 and to understand what happens when things go wrong.

00:32:17.000 --> 00:32:20.000
 But this Russian scientist was saying that all this information was suppressed

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:23.000
 after the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:27.000
 And it sounds like you're saying that you think the same thing will happen now, most likely.

00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:33.000
 You can't have a nuclear industry or a popular nuclear deterrent idea

00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:41.000
 if people understand the dangers are very likely to happen from things that are fairly uncontrollable.

00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:49.000
 Mining the material and disposing of the material are sources of radiation exposure.

00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:56.000
 And they are now talking about avoiding the carbon increase in the atmosphere to prevent global warming.

00:32:56.000 --> 00:33:03.000
 But they neglect the amount of carbon used in mining and manufacturing.

00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:12.000
 There's a great petroleum expense in producing the fuel and the factories for making the atomic energy.

00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:21.000
 So it's very polluting in the carbon sense, as well as the much worse pollution from the mining debris

00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:28.000
 and the waste disposal problems besides the leaks from the installations themselves.

00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:34.000
 Yeah, I think one of the reassurances we're always told is that nuclear power doesn't even--

00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:38.000
 the emissions from nuclear power doesn't go above the background radiation.

00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:42.000
 One of the things that bothers me is that the background radiation is always going up

00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:48.000
 and they're allowed to adjust the standard by which they set their emissions to that background radiation.

00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:50.000
 And it's going up because of their own emissions.

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:56.000
 So there's a little bit of an escalating loop that's going on, whereby everybody around nuclear plants

00:33:56.000 --> 00:34:00.000
 and all of us are getting more radiation as time goes on.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:05.000
 The type of radiation is crucial in its biological effects.

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:11.000
 The industry has the tricks of comparing living in Denver or flying in an airplane

00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:15.000
 with breathing fallout in the nuclear industry.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:24.000
 And it's completely ignoring the well-established fact that the gamma rays that they're counting in Denver

00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:29.000
 or in airplanes have a low energy transfer to the tissues.

00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:31.000
 They go through so fast they don't react.

00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:36.000
 And at lower altitudes, they talk about less radiation exposure,

00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:41.000
 but actually at sea level you're getting tertiary and secondary cosmic rays,

00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:46.000
 which have more energy delivery in a toxic way to your tissues.

00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:52.000
 So actually Denver has less biologically effective radiation than sea level.

00:34:52.000 --> 00:35:00.000
 And another trick they use to make it seem like radiation isn't necessarily harmful

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:08.000
 is to show an alpha emitter and a detector and then put a sheet of typing paper in the path

00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:13.000
 and showing that it stops the alpha particles from passing through.

00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:19.000
 But if you inhale an alpha emitter, when that particle goes,

00:35:19.000 --> 00:35:23.000
 it's going to hit a cell, not a sheet of typing paper.

00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:32.000
 And the fact that it will stop in a sheet of paper means that it has a 100% delivery of its energy to the tissue.

00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:39.000
 And it's the delivery of energy that causes the tissue damage, not exclusively.

00:35:39.000 --> 00:35:47.000
 When gamma rays pass through you, they give up a little of their energy in a scattering manner.

00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:52.000
 So they have a very low linear transfer of energy,

00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:58.000
 but they still do damage by a partial giving up of their energy.

00:35:58.000 --> 00:36:02.000
 So the low velocity is what really harms you.

00:36:02.000 --> 00:36:06.000
 And so if you inhale a particulate that's radioactive,

00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:09.000
 even though it might not be that much radiation,

00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:13.000
 it's the fact that you're just getting all of it in one place that makes it so serious.

00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:19.000
 Yeah. The beta radiation from iodine and strontium and cesium,

00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:25.000
 basically all of it's going to be absorbed when a particle decomposes in your tissues.

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:28.000
 It's not as locally intense as alpha particles,

00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:35.000
 but much more effective at tissue delivery than X-rays or gamma rays just passing through your body.

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:38.000
 I see. And just for those of us who don't know,

00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:43.000
 could you just quickly summarize what alpha, beta and gamma mean in terms of radiation?

00:36:43.000 --> 00:36:48.000
 Alpha particles are actually an atomic nucleus.

00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:54.000
 And so it's a big fat particle that stops easily when it runs into a cell material.

00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:58.000
 A beta particle is an electron,

00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:03.000
 which is much more able to pass through cells without being absorbed.

00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:08.000
 It still is a particle of matter or of electricity.

00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:13.000
 X-rays and gamma rays are photons, so they're analogous to light.

00:37:13.000 --> 00:37:20.000
 And the certain frequencies will resonate more with the living substance.

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:28.000
 So the X-rays have a fairly intense interaction with living material compared to gamma rays.

00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:31.000
 Still, they can be equated.

00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:36.000
 The amount of energy delivered to the tissue, linear energy transfer, LAT,

00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:40.000
 is how you compare the different types of radiation.

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.000
 And so I suppose it's impossible to make this comparison,

00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:46.000
 but I'm going to ask you anyway because maybe there is a way.

00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:50.000
 If we have fallout from some accident like we're having from Japan,

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:56.000
 how does that compare to going in for medical X-rays or dental X-rays?

00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:58.000
 Is there a comparison to be made?

00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:00.000
 Oh, yeah.

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:03.000
 The thyroid is damaged by all of them.

00:38:03.000 --> 00:38:12.000
 But if the cloud is very fresh, close to the factory, iodine has a half-life of eight days,

00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:14.000
 so it takes three months to disappear.

00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:21.000
 So if it's your thyroid you're worried about and if the cloud has taken a long time to get to you,

00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:27.000
 then it could be that the X-ray to your head and neck would be the worst.

00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:31.000
 But usually the fact that you breathe in or eat the particles,

00:38:31.000 --> 00:38:37.000
 it's going to mean that the fallout is worse, considerably worse, than just having a dental X-ray.

00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:41.000
 Now, I know there's a scientist named Dr. Christopher Busby,

00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:49.000
 and he's criticized the safety standards by which the international agencies grade how much radiation a person can take.

00:38:49.000 --> 00:38:52.000
 And I think he's basically talking about what you're talking about here,

00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:58.000
 which is that the standards that they use now take everything, all doses of radiation,

00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:04.000
 as if it's a whole body dose and it doesn't take into account, as if it's spread evenly through all your tissues.

00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:09.000
 And he's saying that they don't take into account the fact that it's often quite localized

00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:15.000
 and therefore causes much greater damage because the energy is all focused on one part of the tissue.

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:22.000
 Yeah, the dental X-rays tend to cause cancer of the eyeball, the brain, and the thyroid.

00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:29.000
 The estrogenic effect will cause a series of dental X-rays to make a pregnant woman deliver

00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:35.000
 and a premature underdeveloped, underweight baby by the systemic estrogen effect.

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:40.000
 It does cancerize the things that are closest to the exposure.

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:48.000
 And the government's tendency has been to use whatever measure sounds the least threatening,

00:39:48.000 --> 00:39:54.000
 such as failing to make the distinction between the local dose and the total body dose.

00:39:54.000 --> 00:40:01.000
 And they've done the same thing with interpreting the danger of the fallout from the atomic bombs in Japan,

00:40:01.000 --> 00:40:08.000
 where the bomb smoke went in a sort of a triangular pathway downwind from the explosion.

00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:18.000
 They drew a circle around the center of the explosion and averaged out the people at a certain distance in any direction

00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:28.000
 and tended to make the people who were actually exposed to the fallout disappear by averaging them 360 degrees around the circle.

00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:31.000
 I see, thereby lowering the incidence of problems.

00:40:31.000 --> 00:40:32.000
 Yeah.

00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:34.000
 Well, Ray, I'm sad to say that we're out of time.

00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:42.000
 Maybe you could just, if you could, maybe it's not possible, to summarize quickly the things that people could do to mitigate radiation problems.

00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:53.000
 Yeah, eating seaweed, kelp, and if you have a bottle of iodine, you can paint them on your fingers and toes and soak up some of it for your skin.

00:40:53.000 --> 00:41:03.000
 And all of this shouldn't be done until the cloud is actually here because excess iodine is toxic to your thyroid in itself.

00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:12.000
 But if there's an intense cloud passing over, then these external sources of iodine will protect your thyroid, but they won't protect the other tissues.

00:41:12.000 --> 00:41:17.000
 So keeping your thyroid function up is the ideal way to do it.

00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:20.000
 I see. And that's done with coconut oil and --

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.000
 Yeah, sugar, coconut oil, and when possible, a thyroid supplement.

00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:27.000
 Okay. Dr. Raymond Peat, thanks so much for being on tonight.

00:41:27.000 --> 00:41:28.000
 Okay, thank you.

00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:31.000
 We appreciate it, and we'll talk to you soon, I hope.

00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:32.000
 Okay, bye.

00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:36.000
 Bye for now. And thanks for listening tonight. This has been Politics and Science. I'm John Barkhausen.

00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:42.000
 And that was Dr. Raymond Peat, and you can find out more about his work at his website, raypeat.com.

00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:45.000
 That's R-A-Y-P-E-A-T dot com.

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:47.000
 A lot of very interesting articles.

00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:54.000
 And let me just remind you that the fundraiser, although it should be over, is still going forward on slow mode.

00:41:54.000 --> 00:41:59.000
 We're at about $8,320, and we've got to get to $9,000.

00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:03.000
 So really appreciate all of you who have donated, and all of you who are about to donate.

00:42:03.000 --> 00:42:07.000
 We just have a little bit more to go, and we'll have our operating expenses for the entire year.

00:42:07.000 --> 00:42:09.000
 All donations are tax deductible.

00:42:09.000 --> 00:42:10.000
 And how do you do it?

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:15.000
 Well, you can go to WMRW.org and click on the pig to make a credit card or PayPal donation.

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:22.000
 Or you can send your check to WMRW, PO Box 95, Warren, Vermont, 05674.

00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:25.000
 That's PO Box 95, Warren, 05674.

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:30.000
 And this program and the following program present the viewpoints of its producers and participants

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.000
 and don't reflect an official opinion of any other person or organization.