Fukushima disaster kills entire North Pacific, far worse than Chernobyl -radio host

Photo: RIA Novosti

Voice of Russia | Apr 26, 2014 |

It's long since nuclear energy has proved to be both ineffective, utterly destructive and failing -exactly since the tragic April 26, back in 1986, as the world saw the deadly Chernobyl blast. However, the industry is still being upheld, as Fukushima soon followed, with a numerous more disasters looming ahead, Jeff Rense, a radio talk-show host of the Jeff Rense Program, broadcast on US satellite radio, assumes. In an interview to radio VR he talks about the implications of modern-day nuke industry, Fukushima and its unthinkable consequences rendering the whole North Pacific almost dead.

What lesson has the humanity learnt from the catastrophe in Chernobyl?

Nuclear power has proven itself to be the worst extinction event potential that we have ever faced on the planet; there is no question about that. I am really afraid our species hasn’t learnt anything from Chernobyl. In a practical or pragmatic sense, think about it – Chernobyl really should have been the beginning of the end of using nuclear power to boil water, to create steam, to turn turbines to make electricity.

It is the stupidest technology ever to make power and energy for our use. Not one nuclear power plant has ever brought cheaper electricity, in this country at least, to the people and the consumers it is supposed to serve; quite the opposite is true, in fact. Every nuclear plant in the US has been a huge money loser and has cost the consumers countless billions of dollars and higher energy costs.

And furthermore, every nuclear plant in this country emits radiation around the clock. Cancer rates and the concentric ring circle overlay around every plant proved the point. People are dying and now we have Fukushima.

So, what have learnt from Chernobyl and all the brave and heroic people who worked to stop that tragedy, I would submit nothing.

That’s a pretty powerful statement. Although, I would agree that it is true. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster shook the world back in 1986, but several years ago there was a similar catastrophe that was repeated in Japan, which you’ve just mentioned – Fukushima. In your opinion, does it mean that we are still unprotected in the face of nuclear power?

We are completely unprotected. We are minutes away from another Fukushima or even worse. We have 104 nuclear reactors in this country. Most of them are operating well beyond their projected, initial life spans. The nuclear regulatory people continue to give them extension after extension. They are rotting, they are falling apart, they are leaking, they are a disaster waiting to happen.

Fukushima, I would submit, is far worse than Chernobyl. When you take into account that the entire North Pacific Ocean may have been killed off, we may have lost the entire ocean; we don’t know.

For example, the sardine fishing fleets from Alaska to Mexico is a big business. They go out and net up countless tons of sardines. This year, three years after Fukushima, they saw not one sardine. They caught none. They didn’t catch any fish.

And one other thing, a man who frequently, I guess every four or five years, sails his yacht from Japan to San Francisco always raves about how much life there is in the Pacific Ocean. This year he held a news conference when he completed the 4000-plus-mile trip in San Francisco and said – the ocean is broken. He saw on his trip – think about this! – two fish, one bird and one whale with a tumor on its head.

The dimensions of losing an ocean are almost imponderable. And that is apparently what is happening to our North Pacific Ocean – the largest ocean on the planet.

That was the entire time that he was sailing from San Francisco to Japan?

That’s correct!

It is a pretty amazing story. I haven’t heard that one before, but that is a powerful and shocking reminder of what had happened. And I also would like to point out that Fukushima still hasn’t been cleaned up yet. It is like the gift that keeps on giving. It is still pushing out lots of radiation every day. And you’ve mentioned the fact about the fish stocks that are being depleted. I haven’t heard the story about the sardines, but, of course, we have the salmon stocks that are being depleted as well.

80% of the salmon did not come back to spawn.