NUCLEAR & FUKUSHIMA;

On Monday's show, three nuclear energy experts (Scott Portzline, Arnie Gundersen, and Kevin Kamps) in separate hours, discussed the status of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, the cover-ups of scientific data, as well as general issues about nuclear power, and nuclear waste. Last week there was a spate of false reports about Fukushima's Unit 3 having new radiation plumes of steam coming from it, and that people living on the West Coast should prepare to evacuate, Portzline detailed. While this was a hoax, the climate of uncertainty around Fukushima has been created by the lack of truth from TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), as well as the US government, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, he commented. "In my opinion, Fukushima is a level 8 on the international nuclear event scale, (the levels normally only go up to 7)," as there are multiple sources of radiation, and the situation requires international assistance and monitoring, Portzline continued. Gundersen concurred on the direness of the Fukushima situation-- in contrast to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the "spigot" isn't turned off yet, and radiation continues to leak into the Pacific Ocean. Fish are picking up extraordinarily high levels of radioactive materials, and Gundersen said he would not eat fish that comes from the West Coast. In Japan, "the epidemiological data that will develop over the next 30 years [will show that] somewhere between 100,000 and 1 million new cancers will develop as a result of this," but the nuclear industry can hide behind the fact that a high percentage of people get cancer anyway, he pointed out. Gunderson stressed the importance of stopping the groundwater contamination, and suggested building a trench of zeolite to absorb the radiation surrounding the plant. Kamps cited that 72,000 gallons a day of radioactively contaminated water is flowing into the ocean, and that really adds up over nearly three years of time since the accident. Making matters works, Unit 4 at Fukushima could be on the brink of collapse, he added. Some countries such as Germany are phasing out nuclear power entirely after the lessons of Fukushima and Chernobyl, he said. As an alternative, wind power has a lot of potential to be tapped, and the first offshore floating wind turbines were just installed in the Gulf of Maine, which could provide as much electricity as five atomic reactors, Kamps asserted.