THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Honeybee Decline update May 2012

Author Talk...Honeybee Decline

Honeybee Decline

Posted by Sharon Ann Rowland on 9 May 2012
AUSTRALIA -- Greetings from chilly Brisbane,
Meet Janet and Graeme Stevens, a lovely couple I got chatting with recently at my local shopping centre.  Graeme is a Beekeeper and travels Australia loaning out his bees for various amounts of time to crop farmers.  His bees then do, what bees do, and pollinate anything that sways in the breeze!
I now need to ask if everyone else on the planet knew that bees needed to be transported to various farm regions? 
I didn’t know this; in fact, I naively thought this happened naturally with feral bees doing the job Australia wide.  I had no idea it was such a man-controlled industry, or how important bees (especially the Honeybee) are to our way of life. 
For those of you in the same boat, here is why the bee is so important:
  1. Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the Honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfalfa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on Honeybee pollination to increase yields.
  2. In the UK alone, Honeybee pollination is valued at £200m.
  3. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic.
Now I’m going to tell you why I’m freaking out after my friendly chat with Janet and Graeme.
THE BEE (both domestic and wild bee populations) IS IN DECLINE AROUND THE WORLD
Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice,
and cotton less clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers –
and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.
Disturbing evidence that Honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the FOURTH year in a row, more than a THIRD OF COLONIES have failed to survive the winter.  The number of managed Honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).  The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies.  Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of Honeybees worldwide have died.  It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon Honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.
What are scientists putting it down to?  The following:
  1. Diseases spread as a result of mites and other parasites:
  • the greatest problem is the Varroa Mite, a bloodsucking parasite that attacks young and adult Honeybees (attacked bees often have deformed wings and abdomens and a shortened life span) - the Varroa Mite is also really effective at transmitting disease, particularly viruses, left untreated, a Varroa Mite infestation can wipe out a bee colony within a few months.
  • the Tracheal Mite, which gets inside adult bees and clogs their breathing tubes, essentially suffocating the insects - the Tracheal Mites also impede the bees' ability to fly, making them useless as pollinators, entomologists report.
  1. Decades of pesticide use has also taken its toll on Honeybees, though farmers are beginning to refrain from pesticide applications while their crops are blooming.  US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem.
A global review of Honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported in April 2010 that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases.  Bernard Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned:

"Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."
Janet and Graeme showed me the March/April 2012 copy of the Queensland Beekeepers Association Inc. Newsletter that reported three studies performed in different parts of the world:
  1. Professor David Goulson, University of Stirling, Scotland concluded in his study that “there is an urgent need to develop alternatives to the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides on flowering crop wherever possible.”
  2. A similar study carried out by Dr Jeffrey Pettis, US Department of Agriculture concluded that bees exposed to microscopic doses of neonicotinoids (pesticides) were much more vulnerable to disease. 
  3. Mikael Henry of France’s National Institute for Agronomic Research, looked at Honeybees exposed to another neonicotinoid product, Thiamethoxam.  This study found that even though that dose was sub-lethal, the exposure seriously affected the bees homing abilities to the extent that they proved to be two to three times more likely to die while away from their nests than untreated bees.
Neonicotinoids have been banned in some countries due to evidence of harm to Honeybees:
  1. The Italian Agriculture Ministry suspended the use of pesticides containing Clothianidin, Thiametoxam and Imidacloprid for the coating of any plant seeds in MAY 2009. The resultant resurgence of Honeybee populations prompted the government to uphold the ban [1].
  2. Germany and Slovenia, also suspended the use of pesticides for seed coating purposes “as a precautionary measure”.  Fipronil was also included in the ban because of its toxic effects on bees and dispersion into the environment at the time of sowing [2, 3].
Why am I worried?  Because according to Graeme both neonicotinoid products are being used in Australia and our Government is still messing around with submissions (i.e. Submission from the Sustainable Agriculture & Communities Alliance, Inc. (JANUARY 2011 FEBRUARY 2012)). If anyone has further information in respect to action being taken by a government body or independent, please comment after this blog.
My friendly Beekeeper believes that the companies that produce the pesticides are just too powerful (here and Overseas) – let’s hope for our sake this is not the case.
Stay Alert!
Sharon Ann Rowland
Oddologist & Author of The Crystal Channelers Book Series
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Texas beekeepers bemoan declining honey bees

Published 12:05 a.m., Sunday, May 6, 2012

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) — Bees are buzzing.
So are some folks who keep them and monitor the decline in their numbers.
Rain helps, they say.
"No rain, no flowers, no honey," said Joe Klamos, 92, who has been a beekeeper for decades. "We haven't harvested honey the past two years. Drought does 'em in."

Klamos had 12 hives with about 80,000 bees each, six miles west of Calallen. The current drought has cost half his bees, he said.
Most U.S. bees are descendants of European honeybees, brought here in the 1600s by immigrants.
In a rainy spring, honey usually is harvested the second week of June. A hive of honeybees will fly more than 55,000 miles for one pound of honey, which contains the essence of about 2 million flowers.
Klamos is one of an estimated 211,600 beekeepers in the U.S., but one of fewer than two dozen locally. He overturned several five-gallon buckets in front of his Janssen Drive home recently for a beekeeper powwow to compare notes on their hives.
Bees are disappearing in alarming numbers, experts say, and that affects more than honey.
"If we don't care about bees, there's no crops," said Dick Brown, 85, Klamos' longtime beekeeper buddy. "Eighty-five percent of them are pollinated by bees."
Brown bought his first beehive in 1972 when his son was interested in beekeeping as a Boy Scout. For decades he hauled his hives to cotton fields and fruit orchards in the Rio Grande Valley.
Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in nut, berry, fruit and vegetable crops, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Every third bite you put in your mouth exists because of honeybee pollination. California's almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees, about half the number of all U.S. honeybees.
And it's not just our food crops that keep bees busy. Your dinner roast or chops require livestock feed — alfalfa, clover, hay, etc. Half of the country's alfalfa comes from California, which needs 220,000 bee colonies to pollinate the fields.
Bee keepers are a dwindling species too, but experts say that doesn't have to do with the decline in bees.
Bee populations, which have existed for millions of years, have suffered from colony collapse disorder, mite infestations, pesticides and mixing with Africanized bees, said Deborah Houlihan, 54, president of the Coastal Bend Beekeepers Association. It's one of 23 clubs affiliated with the Texas Beekeepers Association.
Houlihan's interest in beekeeping is environmental, she said.
Corpus Christi city leaders passed restrictive ordinances in the 1990s — after Africanized bees began appearing locally — that required swarms to be exterminated. Africanized bees earned the name "Killer Bees," because of their aggressive attacks. They were bred from southern Africa queen stock by a biologist in Brazil in the 1950s, and were accidentally released. They fanned across North America mating with U.S. honeybees.
By the 1990s beekeepers had replaced most of their Africanized queens with known stock bred for gentleness. But beekeepers still battle the negative reputation, Houlihan, a nurse, said.
"When you see bees hanging on the side of a house or from a tree in a swarm, they're so full of honey they can't sting," Houlihan said.
Some still attack if colonizing inside a wall, to protect their nest.
"I've seen them come out of the wall like machine gun bullets," said Tom Stewart, 76, former president of the local association, who started beekeeping as a gradeschooler. "With European honeybees you can squat and be real still and they'll leave you alone. With Africanized bees you're a sitting duck."
All beekeepers work to protect bees, and favor capture over extermination, Stewart, a retired engineer, said.
It doesn't always work.
"A lot of wild bees don't like being caught and put in a box," he said. "You put them in there and they're gone the next day. They're like feral cats, real independent."
Klamos and Brown have removed bees throughout the Coastal Bend for years, for a fee — between $150 and $250. Some exterminators charge much more.
And while their honey is the only food made by insects that people consume, and it has all the substances necessary to sustain life, including water — bees make other important things.
Beeswax is used in explosives, pharmaceutical salves, ointments, pill coatings and dentistry for impressions. The candle industry is the second largest user, because pure beeswax candles burn virtually smoke free. Beekeepers also use beeswax to initiate new hives.
These resources are only available by having enough plants producing nectar and pollen, said Roy Parker, entomologist for Texas AgriLife Extension and professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
"We're still not out of this drought despite recent rain," he said.
There's been a lot of speculation regarding the decline in honeybee population, Parker said, including new insecticides affecting them.
"Despite a few research papers," he said, "it's still not clear."
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Information from: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, http://www.caller.com
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GMO’S ARE KILLING OUR BEES  


The Death Of Bees “When the bees go, so goes Man” – Albert Einstein

MAY 10, 2012 BY  

Commercial beehives pollinate over a third of [North}America’s crops and that web of nourishment encompasses everything from fruits like peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries and more, to nuts like California almonds, 90 percent of which are helped along by the honeybees. Without this pollination, you could kiss those crops goodbye, to say nothing of the honey bees produce or the flowers they also fertilize’.1
This essay will discuss the arguments and seriousness pertaining to the massive deaths and the decline of Bee colonies in North America. As well, it will shed light on a worldwide hunger issue that will have an economical and ecological impact in the very near future.
There are many reasons given to the decline in Bees, but one argument that matters most is the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and "Terminator Seeds" that are presently being endorsed by governments and forcefully utilized as our primary agricultural needs of survival. I will argue what is publicized and covered by the media is in actuality masking the real forces at work, namely the impact of genetically modified seeds on the reproduction of bee colonies across North America
Genetically modified seeds are produced and distributed by powerful biotech conglomerates. The latter manipulate government agricultural policy with a view to supporting their agenda of dominance in the agricultural industry. American conglomerates such as Monsanto, Pioneer Hybrid and others, have created seeds that reproduce only under certain conditions, often linked to the use of their own brands of fertilizer and/or insecticide.
The genetic modification of the plant leads to the concurrent genetic modification of the flower pollen. When the flower pollen becomes genetically modified or sterile, the bees will potentially go malnourished and die of illness due to the lack of nutrients and the interruption of the digestive capacity of what they feed on through the summer and over the winter hibernation process.
I will argue that the media reports tend to distract public opinion from the true cause which underlies the destruction of bee colonies. As such, outlined are four major arguments which the biotech conglomerates (which produce and market GMO seeds) have used to mislead the public regarding the demise of the bees. These arguments include Varroa mites, parasites, cell phones, and terminator seeds
Argument 1: Varroa mites2
Firstly, “while there are some [people who] want to pin the blame on these mites”3, such views are unconvincing in that the argument does not make any sense because the main source of disease for these bees is intestinal disease. In fact, “many bee experts assumed Varroa mites were a major cause of the severe die-off in the winter of 2005. Yet when researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, traveled to Oakdale, California, where Anderson and a number of his fellow beekeepers spend winter and spring, they could find no correlation between the level of Varroa mite infestation and the health of bee colonies. ‘We couldn’t pin the blame for the die-off on any single cause,’ says Jeff Pettis, a research entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland,4 However, treatments against mites may be leaving hives open to the onslaught of powerful pathogens, much in the same way the overuse of antibiotics lead to super bugs”5 in society today. What does that say about our future? We have learned that in the 1960’s and 1970’s, among other human ailments, DDT was a major cause of cancer in humans and animals; however, the substitution of such pesticides was a closely guarded secret. Unfortunately, the long term effects on the human population has yet to be understood as the compromise of the immune system may be happening quicker than we are ready to accept, even regarding the advent of super bugs. One can see that even this medical implication has severe economical implications.
Argument 2: Parasites
Secondly; “Crops and even hedges, verges, and woodlands, and even where bees remain are sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. These chemicals are the practical extension of an exasperating belief that nature is our enemy. Pouring poison on our food is a very simplistic way of dealing with our problems however it ignores the root causes. New genetically modified crops, designed to be immune to certain pesticides and herbicides, have resulted in the increased usage of these chemicals. Pesticides, particularly Bayer’s imidacloprid, a nicotine-based product marketed under the names Admire, Provado, Merit, Marathon, and Gaucho have been concretely implicated6 in the destruction of bee populations before. (See also)7. The fact that other bees and insects are not raiding deserted hives to feed on the honey as they normally would lends some credence to the theory of a toxic overload”8. The toxic overload is certainly a concern, but wouldn’t it also need to be considered that this is systematic in the degeneration of the digestive process, such as in humans’ inability to digest preservatives and not absorb the enzymes to break down the foods eaten for survival?
Argument 3: cell phones
Thirdly, “there was also a misconstrued study on cell phone radiation 9 and its effects on the bee’s ability to navigate which turned out to be an over-zealous unthinking reaction by an article in the Independent [news]. Some have also mentioned other navigational hindrances such as UV radiation, shifting magnetic fields and even quantum physics10 as a reason to the destruction of the bees”11.
There is certain implications to this theory, and it has been proven that electromagnetic radio wave lengths to affect the navigation of the bees. However the sun emits radiation spurts all the time, yet this has not offered a hindrance to the bees.
Argument 4: Terminator Seeds
Lastly, “leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that Canada wants all governments to accept the testing and commercialization of “Terminator” crop varieties. These seeds are genetically engineered to produce only infertile seeds, which farmers cannot replant, also to mention that the bees that are trying to collect pollen, found to have their digestive tract diseases, such as amoeba and nosema disease”12. These diseases are mainly located in the digestive tract system. After studies of the autopsy, the most alarming trait is that the lower intestine and stinger have discolored to black vs. the normal opaque color, Synominus with colon cancer in humans.
‘When thoracic discs were cut from sample Georgia A-2 the musculature of bees was notably soft and discolored when compared to healthy thoracic cuts.
This discoloration suggests that the bees were dead upon collection. When questioned the beekeeper confirmed that the bees were alive at the time of collection. Further, the tracheal system of these bees did not show signs of desiccation usually associate
with the collection of dead bees. Thoracic discs from this sample, after being placed in KOH for 24 hours, revealed peculiar white nodules”13
As seen above, it is certain that the digestive shutdown is due to hard material in the digestive tract that compromises the immune system. Circulatory problems would without doubt. Could it be that humans are going through the same process with the rise of Colon Cancer? As seen below in the comparison of the healthy Bee and the unhealthy bee, it is obvious that the bees that are ingesting GMO pollen are having severe digestive problems, so severe that the disease is terminal.
[........]
While Fyg (1964) describes similar stone like contents in poorly laying queens, the stones observed in the GA bees were not attached to the epithelium layer as Fyg (1964) describes. When these packets were ground and mounted, some unidentified floating objects (UFO’s) were observed. A cubic particle that resembles the cubic bodies of polyhedrios viruses (this viruses attacks wax moths) excepting that the cube observed was ~10x too big for a virus particle. There were fragments of pollen grains husks in all samples examined. All PA samples were found to have nosema spores in their rectal contents while none of the GA samples did. In two samples, epithelial cells were packed with spores.14
The North American reliance on bees for pollination is at minimum from 30 to 40%. Does it not seem obvious that the digestion of genetic material directly affects the digestive process of the bees? Could it also be that there are similarities in the human population’s digestive process? It must also be noted that this increased epidemic of the bee colony collapse has risen significantly since the use of GMO in our foods. It is also suspect in the rise of new cases of medical ailments in humans such as colon cancer, obesity, heart disease, etc… In the writers’ opinion, the inability of the bees to pass matter digestively is quite similar to the present-day problems in the human digestive system
Conclusion:
The proof is obvious that one of the major reasons of the bees’ decline is by the ingestion of GMO proteins. This is problematic, as there is such an increase of indigestible foods in humans and bees. The situation of colon cancer in humans is somewhat similar in occurrence. This is only a theory but leaves one to wonder what are we eating en mass. The external or complementary good of the bee is obviously a rise for a global concern. The long-term economical and environmental impact has yet to be completely understood.
The Ecological Impact of horizontal gene transfer and increase of rampant disease is not fully examined and if so, is kept silent by these Conglomerates. The Economic impact of the bee colony collapse would mean inflation, scarcity of agricultural commodities, and ultimately the collapse of North American agriculture.
The Environmental Impact of scarcity and increased demand for resources, will beyond doubt have severe repercussions for our long-term food security. The bio-diversity of the bees causes positive economic and ecological externalities. The negative externalities have yet to be fully grasped or understood.
Organic crops: still relatively untouched
The truth is that organic farming is relatively untouched as the bee crisis is concerned. Organic farming maintains the diversity of the eco-system and preserves the quality of the foods produced. The economic impact that the scarcity of bees will potentially have on our society as a whole is very worrisome. In the end, only our children will fully realize; that it was greed that destroyed our beautiful blue planet.
References:
Thill, John. Colony Collapse: Do Massive Bee Die-Off Mean an End to Our Food System as We Know it? AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/module (Accessed 7/9/2007 10:06 PM)
Colony Collapse Disorder: Wikkapedia Encyclopedia Online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/’Colony Collapse Disorder’
(Accessed July 12, 2007)
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)
www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf
(Accessed June 30, 2007)
CROP PROTECTION. Monthly 28 February 2001 – Issue No 135
Market Scope Europe Ltd.
http://www.crop-protection-monthly.co.uk (Accessed July 10, 2007)
HONEY BEE Research Program. RIRDIC Honeybee Research Program Home Page. http://rirdic. gov.au/program/hb.html#top, (Accessed July 7, 2007)
Ho, Dr. Mae-Wan. ‘Recent Evidence Confirms Risks of Horizontal Gene Transfer’. ISIS Contribution to ACNFP/Food Standards Agency Open Meeting 13 November 2002, Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 0XR (Accessed July 16, 2007)
ISIS Contribution. ‘Recent Evidence Confirms Risks of Horizontal Gene Transfer”. ISIS Contribution to ACNFP/Food Standards Agency Open Meeting 13 November 2002 (Accessed July 17, 2007)
Mackintosh, Craig. (April 13, 2007): ‘Colony Collapse Disorder– a moment of reflection’;
http://www.celsias.com/2007/04/13/colony-collapse-disorder-a-moment-for-reflection/ (Accessed July, 2007)
Vidal, John. ‘Canada backs terminator seeds’, The Guardian. Wednesday, February 9, 2005.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/ (Accessed July 17, 2007)
Wilson, Dan. Lost colonies: ‘Where have the bees gone’? Appelton Post-Crescent, 5/18/2007 (Accessed July 19, 2007)
What’s Causing the Mass Disappearance of Honeybees? ‘What is causing the Dramatic decline in Honeybee Populations in the U.S and Elsewhere in Recent years’? HealthNewsDigest.com – New York, NY, June 2, 2007
http:/www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php (Accessed July 10, 2007)
Notes
1 Hill, Scott. AlterNet, Posted on June 11, 2007, Printed on July 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/53491/
2 http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06sum/bees2.asp
3 Mackintosh, Craig. (April 13, 2007): ‘Colony Collapse Disorder– a moment of reflection’; Celsias;
http://www.celsias.com/2007/04/13/colony-collapse-disorder-a-moment-for-reflection/ ‘
4 ‘The Vanishing’
http://www.nrdc.org/OnEarth/06sum/bees1.asp
5 Mackintosh, Craig. (April 13, 2007): ‘Colony Collapse Disorder– a moment of reflection’; Celsias;
http://www.celsias.com/2007/04/13/colony-collapse-disorder-a-moment-for-reflection/ ‘
6 http://www.valleyvoicenewspaper.com/vv/stories/beedeaths.htm
7 http://independent.co.uk/environment/news/article2449968
8 Mackintosh, Craig. (April 13, 2007): ‘Colony Collapse Disorder– a moment of reflection’; Celsias;
http://www.celsias.com/2007/04/13/colony-collapse-disorder-a-moment-for-reflection/
9 http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/26/millions_of_bees_dead_bayers_gaucho_blamed.htm
10 http://www.synchronizm.com/blog/index.php/2007/03/29/the-bees-who-flew-too-high/
11 Mackintosh, Craig. (April 13, 2007): ‘Colony Collapse Disorder– a moment of reflection’; Celsias;
http://www.celsias.com/2007/04/13/colony-collapse-disorder-a-moment-for-reflection/
12 Vidal, John. ‘Canada backs terminator seeds’ Wednesday February 9, 2005. The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/
13 Fall Dwindle Disease: A preliminary report
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf
December 15, 2006
14 Fall Dwindle Disease: A preliminary report
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf
December 15, 2006
Global Research Articles by Brit Amos

The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb


The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb

Brad Jacobson – AlterNet May 4, 2012

More than a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) present similar assurances of the site’s current state: challenges remain but everything is under control. The worst is over.
But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel — 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. These experts also charge that the NRC is letting this threat fester because acknowledging it would call into question safety at dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants around the U.S., which contain exceedingly higher volumes of spent fuel in similar elevated pools outside of reinforced containment.

Reactor 4: The Most Imminent Threat

The spent fuel in the hobbled unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi not only sits in an elevated pool outside the reactor core’s reinforced containment, in a high-consequence earthquake zone adjacent to the ocean — just as nearly all the spent fuel at the nuclear site is stored — but it’s also open to the elements because a hydrogen explosion blew off the roof during the early days of the accident and sent the building into a list.
Alarmed by the precarious nature of spent fuel storage during his recent tour of the Fukushima Daiichi site, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, subsequently fired off letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko and Japanese ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki. He implored all parties to work together and with the international community to address this situation as swiftly as possible. 
A press release issued after his visit said that Wyden, a senior member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources who is highly experienced with nuclear waste storage issues, believes the situation is “worse than reported,” with “spent fuel rods currently being stored in unsound structures immediately adjacent to the ocean.” The press release also noted the structures’ high susceptibility to earthquakes and that “the only protection from a future tsunami, Wyden observed, is a small, makeshift sea wall erected out of bags of rock.”
As opposed to units 1-3 at Fukushima Daiichi, where the meltdowns occurred, unit 4′s reactor core, like units 5 and 6, was not in operation when the earthquake struck last year. But unlike units 5 and 6, it had recently uploaded highly radioactive spent fuel into its storage pool before the disaster struck.
Robert Alvarez, a nuclear waste expert and former senior adviser to the Secretary of Energy during the Clinton administration, has crunched the numbers pertaining to the spent fuel pool threat based on information he obtained from sources such as Tepco, the U.S. Department of Energy, Japanese academic presentations and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), the U.S. organization created by the nuclear power industry in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.
What he found, which has been corroborated by other experts interviewed by AlterNet, is an astounding amount of vulnerably stored spent fuel, also known as irradiated fuel, at the Fukushima Daiichi site. His immediate focus is on the fuel stored in the damaged unit 4′s pool, which contains the single largest inventory of highly radioactive spent fuel of any of the pools in the damaged reactors.
Alvarez warns that if there is another large earthquake or event that causes this pool to drain of water, which keeps the fuel rods from overheating and igniting, it could cause a catastrophic fire releasing 10 times more cesium-137 than was released at Chernobyl.
That scenario alone would cause an unprecedented spread of radioactivity, far greater than what occurred last year, depositing enormous amounts of radioactive materials over thousands of miles and causing the evacuation of Tokyo.
Nuclear experts noted that other lethal radioactive isotopes would also be released in such a fire, but that the focus is on cesium-137 because it easily volatilizes and spreads pervasively, as it did during the Chernobyl accident and again after the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi last year.
With a half-life of 30 years, it gives off penetrating radiation as it decays and can remain dangerous for hundreds of years. Once in the environment, it mimics potassium as it accumulates in the food chain; when it enters the human body, about 75 percent lodges in muscle tissue, including the heart.

The Threat Not Just to Japan But to the U.S. and the World

An even more catastrophic worst-case scenario follows that a fire in the pool at unit 4 could then spread, igniting the irradiated fuel throughout the nuclear site and releasing an amount of cesium-137 equaling a doomsday-like load, roughly 85 times more than the release at Chernobyl.
It’s a scenario that would literally threaten Japan’s annihilation and civilization at large, with widespread worldwide environmental radioactive contamination.
“Japan would suffer the worst, but it would be a global catastrophe,” said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste expert at the watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. “It already is, it already has been, but it would dwarf what’s already happened.”
Kamps noted that these pool fires were the beginning of the worst-case analysis envisioned by the Japanese government in the early days of the disaster, as reportedby the New York Times in February. 
“Not only three reactor meltdowns but seven pool fires at Fukushima Daiichi,” Kamps said. “If the site had to be abandoned by all workers, then everything would come loose. The end result of that was the evacuation of Tokyo.”
In an interview with AlterNet, Alvarez, who is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, said that the Japanese government, Tepco and the U.S. NRC are reluctant to say anything publicly about the spent fuel threat because “there is a tendency to want to provide reassurance that everything is fine.”
He was quick to note, “The cores are still a problem, make no mistake, and there will be some very bad things happening if they don’t maintain their temperatures at some sort of stable level and make sure this stuff doesn’t eat down through the concrete mats.”
But he said that privately “they’re probably more scared shitless about the pools than they are about the cores. They know they’re really risky and dangerous.”
AlterNet asked the NRC if it is concerned about the vulnerability of the spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi and what, if anything, it had expressed to the Japanese government and Tepco on the matter.
“All the available information continues to show the situation at Fukushima Dai-ichi is stable, both for the reactors and the spent fuel pools,” NRC spokesman Scott Burnell replied via email. “The available information indicates that Spent Fuel Pool #4 has been reinforced.”
But nuclear experts, including Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president who coordinated projects at 70 U.S. nuclear power plants, and warned days after the disaster at Fukushima last year of a “Chernobyl on steroids” if the spent fuel pools were to ignite, strongly disagreed with this assessment.
“It is true that in May and June the floor of the U4 SFP [spent fuel pool] was ‘reinforced,’ but not as strong as it was originally,” Gundersen noted in an email to AlterNet. “The entire building however has not been reinforced and is damaged by the explosion in both 4 and 3. So structurally U4 is not as strong as its original design required.”
Gundersen, who is chief engineer at the consulting firm Fairewinds Associates, added that the spent fuel pool at unit 4 “remains the single biggest concern since about the second week of the accident. It can still create ‘Chernobyl on steroids.’”
Alvarez said that even if the unit 4 structure has been tentatively stabilized, it doesn’t change the fact “it sits in a structurally damaged building, is about 100 feet above the ground and is exposed to the atmosphere, in a high-consequence earthquake zone.”
He also said that the urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around northeast Japan, in which 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 to 5.7 haveoccurred off the northeast coast of Honshu between April 14 and April 17. 
“This has been the norm since 3/11/11 and larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant,” Alvarez added.
A recent study published in the journal Solid Earth, which used data from over 6,000 earthquakes, confirms the expectation of larger quakes in closer proximity to the Fukushima Daiichi site. In part, this conclusion is predicated on the discovery that the earthquake that initiated last year’s disaster caused a seismic fault close to the nuclear plant to reactivate.
“There are a few active faults in the nuclear power plant area, and our results show the existence of similar structural anomalies under both the Iwaki and the Fukushima Daiichi areas,” lead researcher Dapeng Zhao, a geophysics professor at Japan’s Tohoku University, said in a press release. “Given that a large earthquake occurred in Iwaki not long ago, we think it is possible for a similarly strong earthquake to happen in Fukushima.”
AlterNet asked Sen. Wyden if he considers the spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi a national security threat.
In a statement released by his office, Wyden replied, “The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States.”
Alvarez agrees, saying, “My major concern is that this effort to get that spent fuel out of there is not something you should be doing casually and taking your time on.”
Yet Tepco’s current plans are to hold the majority of this spent fuel onsite for years in the same elevated, uncontained storage pools, only transferring some of the fuel into more secure, hardened dry casks when the common pool reaches capacity.
For the moment, though, and for the foreseeable future — unless the international community substantively comes to Japan’s aid — Tepco couldn’t transfer the irradiated fuel from the damaged reactor units into dry cask storage even if it wanted to because the equipment to do so, such as the crane support infrastructure, was destroyed during the initial disaster.
“That’s kind of shocking,” said Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. “But that’s why we’re still sitting on this gamble that there won’t be another earthquake that could topple a very precarious unit 4.”
Gunter is concerned that even a minor earthquake or a subsidence in the earth under unit 4 could cause its collapse.
“I think we’re all on pins and needles every day with regard to unit 4,” he said. “I mean there’s any number of things that could happen. Nobody really knows.”
Gunter added, “Right now its seismic rating should be zero.”
Alvarez echoed Wyden’s letters to the Japanese ambassador and U.S. officials.
“It really requires a major effort,” he said. “The United States and other countries should begin to get involved and try to help the Japanese government to expedite the removal of that spent fuel and to put it into dry, hardened storage as soon as possible.”

Same Spent Fuel Pool Designs at Dozens of U.S. Nuclear Sites

So why isn’t the NRC and the Obama administration doing more to shed light on the extreme vulnerability of these irradiated fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi, which threaten not only Japan but the U.S. and the world?
Nuclear waste experts say it would expose the fact that the same design flaw lies in wait — and has been for decades — at dozens of U.S. nuclear facilities. And that’s not something the NRC, which is routinely accused of promoting the nuclear industry rather than adequately regulating it, nor the pro-nuclear Obama administration, want to broadcast to the American public.
“The U.S. government right now is engaged in its own kabuki theatre to protect the U.S. industry from the real costs of the lessons at Fukushima,” Gunter said. “The NRC and its champions in the White House and on Capitol Hill are looking to obfuscate the real threats and the necessary policy changes to address the risk.”
There are 31 G.E. Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors (BRWs) in the U.S., the type used at Fukushima. All of these reactors, which comprise just under a third of all nuclear reactors in the U.S., store their spent fuel in elevated pools located outside the primary, or reinforced, containment that protects the reactor core. Thus, the outside structure, the building ostensibly protecting the storage pools, is much weaker, in most cases about as sturdy, experts describe in interviews with AlterNet, as a structure one would find housing a car dealership or a Wal-Mart.
Not what Americans might expect to find safeguarding nuclear material that is more highly radioactive than what resides in the reactor core.
The outer containments surrounding these spent fuel pools in these U.S. reactors patently fail to meet the NRC’s own “defense in-depth” nuclear safety requirements. 
But these reactors don’t merely suffer from the same storage design flaw as those at Fukushima Daiichi.
In the U.S., the nuclear industry has been allowed to store incredible volumes of spent fuel for decades in high-density pools that were not only originally designed to retain about one-fourth or one-fifth of what they now hold but were intended to be temporary storage facilities. No more than five years. That was before the idea of reprocessing irradiated fuel in this country failed to gain a foothold over 30 years ago. Once that happened, starting in the early 1980s, the NRC allowed high-density storage in fuel pools on the false assumption that a high-level waste repository would be opened by 1998. But subsequent efforts to gain support for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have also been scrapped.
More recently, the NRC arbitrarily concluded these pools could store this spent fuel safely for 120 years.
“Our pools are more crammed to the gills than the unit 4 pool at Fukushima Daiichi, much more so,” noted Kamps of Beyond Nuclear. “It’s kind of like a very thick forest that’s waiting for a wildfire. It would take extraordinary measures to prevent nuclear chain reactions in our pools because the waste is so closely packed in there.”
Experts say the only near-term answer to better protect our nation’s existing spent nuclear fuel is dry cask storage. But there’s one catch: the nuclear industry doesn’t want to incur the expense, which is about $1 million per cask.
“So now they’re stuck,” said Alvarez, “The NRC has made this policy decision, which the industry is very violently opposed to changing because it saves them a ton of money. And if they have to go to dry hardened storage onsite, they’re going to have to fork over several hundred million dollars per reactor to do this.”
He also pointed out that the contents of the nine dry casks at the Fukushima Daiichi site were undamaged by the disaster.
“Nobody paid much attention to that fact,” Alvarez said. “I’ve never seen anybody at Tepco or anyone [at the NRC or in the nuclear industry] saying, ‘Well, thank god for the dry casks. They were untouched.’ They don’t say a word about it.”
The NRC declined to comment directly to accusations it’s reluctant to draw attention to the spent fuel vulnerability at Fukushima Daiichi because it would bring more awareness to the dangers of irradiated storage here in the U.S. But the agency did respond to a question about what it has done to address the vulnerability of spent nuclear fuel storage at U.S. nuclear sites with the Mark I and II designs.
“All U.S. spent nuclear fuel is stored safely and securely, regardless of reactor type,” NRC spokesman Burnell replied in an email. “Every spent fuel pool is an inherently robust combination of reinforced concrete and steel, capable of safely withstanding the same type and variety of severe events that reactors are designed for.”
He continued, “After 9/11, the NRC required U.S. nuclear power plants to obtain additional equipment for maintaining reactor and spent fuel pool safety in the event of any situation that could disable large areas of the plant. This ‘B5b’ equipment and related procedures include ensuring spent fuel pools have adequate water levels. The B5b measures are in place at every U.S. plant and have been inspected multiple times, including shortly after the accident at Fukushima.
“The NRC continues to conclude the combination of installed safety equipment and B5b measures can protect the public if extreme events impact a U.S. nuclear power plant.”
But nuclear experts told AlterNet that the majority of Burnell’s response could’ve been made prior to the disaster at Fukushima. In fact, Ed Lyman, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, investigated these so-called “B5b” safety measures the NRC ordered post-9/11 and published his findings in a May 2011 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article. 
Directly reflecting Burnell’s response to AlterNet, Lyman wrote that after the Fukushima disaster, “the NRC and the industry invoked the mysterious requirements known as ‘B5b’ as a cure-all for the kinds of problems that led to the Fukushima crisis.
“Even though the B5b strategies were specifically developed to cope with fires and explosions, the NRC now argues that they could be used for any event that causes severe damage to equipment and infrastructure, including Fukushima-scale earthquakes and floods.”
But contrary to these NRC assurances, then and now, Lyman’s report found B5b requirements inadequate, containing flaws in safety assumptions that suggest the NRC has not applied the major lessons learned from the Fukushima disaster. Additionally, he revealed emails showing that the NRC’s own staff members questioned the plausibility of these procedures to effectively respond to extreme weather events like floods, earthquakes and concomitant blackouts.
Burnell sent a follow-up email, noting, “I also should have mentioned the NRC issued an order in March to all U.S. plants to install enhanced spent fuel pool instrumentation, so that plant operators will have a clearer understanding of SFP status during a severe event.”
This is a curiously roundabout way of saying that spent fuel pools at U.S. reactors currently have no built-in instrumentation to gauge radiation, temperature or pressure levels.
Kamps also pointed out that the NRC commissioners voted 4 to 1, with Chairman Gregory Jaczko in dissent, to not require such requested safety upgrades to U.S. reactors until the end of 2016.
He added, “Burnell’s flippant, false assurances prove that pool risks, despite being potentially catastrophic, are largely ignored by not only industry, but even NRC itself, even in the aftermath of Fukushima.”
Brad Jacobson is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist and contributing reporter for AlterNet. His reporting has also appeared in The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, Billboard and other publications. Follow him on Twitter @bradpjacobson.