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	Anti-Nuclear Advocates say Fukushima shows need for clean energy revolution by Right Livelihood Laureates & agencies Japan   March 2011   Nuclear Energy isn"t needed says Kumi Naidoo from Greenpeace International. (NYT)   Twelve days are not nearly enough to comprehend the magnitude of the catastrophes that hit Japan starting March 11. From the children who lost parents in the crush of the earthquake, to those whose loved ones are still missing after the tsunami, to the scores of workers risking their health by heroically attempting to stabilize the Fukushima nuclear complex — there is no end to the tragic stories.   Yet in addition to the grief and empathy I feel for the Japanese people, I am beginning to develop another emotion, and that is anger. As we anxiously await every bit of news about the developments at Fukushima, hoping that radiation leaks and discharges will be brought to an end, that the risk of further catastrophe will be averted, and that the Japanese people will have one less nightmare to cope with, governments across the world continue to promote further investment in nuclear power. Just last week, for example, the government of my home country of South Africa announced that it was adding 9,600 megawatts of nuclear energy to its new energy plan.   There are two dangerous assumptions currently parading themselves as fact in the midst of the ongoing nuclear crisis. The first is that nuclear energy is safe. The second is that nuclear energy is an essential element of a low carbon future, that it is needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. Both are false.   Nuclear technology will always be vulnerable to human error, natural disaster, design failure or terrorist attack. What we are seeing at Fukushima right now are failures of the systems. The reactors themselves withstood the earthquake and tsunami, but then the vital cooling systems failed. When the back-up power systems also failed, the reactors overheated, eventually causing the spread of radiation. This is only one example of what can go wrong.   Nuclear power is inherently unsafe and the list of possible illnesses stemming from exposure to the accompanying radiation is horrifying: genetic mutations, birth defects, cancer, leukemia and disorders of the reproductive, immune, cardiovascular and endocrine systems.   While we have all heard of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the nuclear industry would have us believe these are but isolated events in an otherwise unblemished history. Not so. Over 800 other significant events have been officially reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency — Mayak, Tokaimura, Bohunice, Forsmark to name just a few. The argument that nuclear energy is a necessary component of a carbon-free future is also false.   Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council have put together a study called “Energy [R]evolution,” which clearly shows that a clean energy pathway is cheaper, healthier and delivers faster results for the climate than any other option. This plan calls for the phase-out of existing reactors around the world and a moratorium on construction of new commercial nuclear reactors.   Furthermore, an energy scenario recently produced by the conservative International Energy Agency highlights the fact that nuclear power is not necessary for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. It shows that even if existing nuclear power capacity could be quadrupled by 2050, the proportion of energy that it provided would still be below 10 percent globally. This would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by less than 4 percent.   The same amount of money, invested in clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar could have a much greater impact on lowering global warming.   Nuclear energy is an expensive and deadly distraction from the real solutions. “Fuel-free” sources of energy do not generate international conflicts (as I write I cannot help but think of Libya), they do not “run dry” and they do not spill. There are initial financial investments to be made, but in time the price of renewables will decline as technological advances and market competition drive the costs down. Furthermore, implemented wisely, a green, nuclear and fossil-free future will create a host of safe, new jobs.   As international organizations like Greenpeace join Japan’s Citizens Nuclear Information Center in an appeal to the Japanese government for improved evacuation plans and other protective measures for people still within the 30-kilometer exclusion zone; as the issue of food and water contamination continues to grow in Asia; as iodine tablets continue to sell out around the globe and people in places as far away from Japan as Los Angeles are on high alert for “radioactive plumes” — it is imperative that as citizens of the world we continue to voice our opposition to further investment in nuclear energy. We need a truly clean energy revolution now.   * Kumi Naidoo is executive director of Greenpeace International.   Mar 2011 (CNN)   Helen Caldicott says it is impossible to have a safe nuclear power plant.   "I learned about genetics and radiation in first-year medicine and became acutely aware of nuclear weapons, nuclear war and the damage radiation does to genes and all life forms."   The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, severely damaged after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, has given a fresh urgency, she says, to a "medical problem of vast dimensions," highlighted by reports that emerge daily on the spread of radiation.   A pediatrician, Caldicott was a instructor on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where she specialized in the treatment of cystic fibrosis at the Children"s Hospital Medical Center. She helped revive the Physicians for Social Responsibility, a health organization dedicated to halting the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.   While she was president, from 1978 through 1984, the group grew to 23,000 physician members and in 1985 shared in a Nobel Peace Prize with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.   Caldicott, now heads the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear-Free Planet and regularly lectures around the world on its dangers. CNN spoke with Caldicott.   CNN: What is the health risk for people living near the Fukushima Daiichi plant?   Helen Caldicott: The risk cannot be determined with any accuracy yet, because it is not clear how much radiation has or is escaping. NPR reported last week that 17 workers have suffered what the Japanese government called "deposition of radioactive material" to their faces. And some plant workers have already been hospitalized for exposure to radiation, which means they received a huge dose of radiation.   High levels of exposure can cause acute radiation sickness, a syndrome first recognized by the medical profession after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It can have terrible effects. In two weeks, victims hair begins to drop out. They develop hemorrhaging under the skin, severe nausea and diarrhea and may eventually die from bleeding or infection.   If a meltdown occurred at the plant, a large number of people could be exposed to high doses of radiation in this region, one of the most heavily populated in Japan. (After the March 11 earthquake, the Japanese government evacuated people living within a 20-kilometer radius to mitigate the possibility.)   Men exposed to such a dose would be rendered sterile, women would stop menstruating, and spontaneous abortions would likely occur. Babies could be born with microcephaly, with tiny heads and mental disabilities. Many people would develop acute shortness of breath from lung damage. In five years, there would be an epidemic of leukemia, and in 15 years, solid cancers would start appearing in many organs: lung, breast, thyroid, brain and bone.   Even if the release is not huge, the incidence of cancer and leukemia will increase in the population. Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults, and fetuses thousands of times more so because their cells are rapidly dividing and are thus vulnerable to genetic mutations. Genetic diseases, like cystic fibrosis, diabetes, dwarfism and metabolic disorders, will be passed on to future generations.   There is no way to decontaminate exposed people once they inhale or ingest radioactive elements, which are dispersed throughout the body to many different organs.   CNN: How is this disaster comparable to the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island?   Caldicott: The radiation monitors at Three Mile Island went off the scale within minutes of the accident, so releases were only guesstimates by physicists. But almost certainly, radioactive elements like strontium 90, cesium 137 and tritium escaped. Chernobyl had a full meltdown and rupture of the containment vessel, and fallout contaminated 40% of Europe and England.   There are six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant No. 1 in Japan, and their spent fuel pools, which contain highly radioactive fuel rods, are also at risk of melting down. These pools contain two to 10 times more radiation than in the reactor core, which itself contains as much long-lived radiation as 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.   CNN: Is it possible to have a safe nuclear power plant?   Caldicott: No. They are very complicated machines containing the energy released when an atom is split: Einstein"s formula e=mc², the mass of the atom times the speed of light squared. Anything can go wrong: natural disasters, failure of cooling systems, human and computer error, terrorism, sabotage. Radioactive waste must be isolated from the ecosphere for half a million years or longer, a physical and scientific impossibility, and as it leaks it will concentrate in food chains, inducing epidemics of genetic diseases, leukemia and cancer in all future generations, the greatest public health hazard the world will ever see.   Einstein said, "The splitting of the atom changed everything save man"s mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe." He also said, "Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water."   Mar 2011   We call for Global Nuclear Phase Out.   Joint Statement on the Japanese Nuclear Disaster by Right Livelihood Laureates.   The following is a Joint International Statement of Laureates of the “Alternative Nobel Prize” and Members of the World Future Council on Japanese Nuclear Disaster:   We extend our deepest sympathies to the people of Japan who have experienced a devastating earthquake and tsunami followed by severe damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.   We commend the brave individuals who are risking their lives to prevent the escape of massive amounts of radiation from the damaged nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi.   The disaster in Japan has demonstrated once again the limits of human capability to keep dangerous technologies free from accidents with catastrophic results. Natural disasters combined with human error have proven a potent force for undermining even the best laid plans. Reliance on human perfection reflects a hubris that has led to other major failures of dangerous technologies in the past, and will do so in the future.   What has occurred as a result of the confluence of natural disaster and human error in Japan could also be triggered purposefully by means of terrorism or acts of war.   In addition to accidental or purposeful destruction, nuclear power plants pose other threats to humanity and to the human future. The large amounts of radioactive wastes that are created by nuclear power generation will remain highly toxic for many times longer than human civilization has existed, and there is currently no long-term solution to dealing with the threats these radioactive wastes pose to the environment and human health.   Further, nuclear power plants, with their large societal subsidies, have diverted financial and human resources from the development of safe and reliable forms of renewable energy.   Nuclear power programs use and create fissile materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons, and thus provide a proven pathway to nuclear weapons proliferation.   Several countries have already used civilian nuclear programs to provide the fissile materials to make nuclear weapons.   Other countries, particularly those with plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities, could easily follow suit if they decided to do so.   The spread of nuclear power plants will not only make the world more dangerous, but will make more difficult, if not impossible, the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world.   Nuclear power is neither the answer to modern energy problems nor a panacea for climate change challenges. There is no solution of problems by creating more problems. Nuclear power doesn’t add up economically, environmentally or socially. Of all the energy options, nuclear is the most capital intensive to establish, decommissioning is prohibitively expensive and the financial burden continues long after the plant is closed.   The tragedy in Japan has raised global awareness of the extreme dangers that can result from nuclear power generation.   Grave as these dangers are, however, they are not as great as those arising from the possession, threat and use of nuclear weapons – weapons that have the capacity to destroy civilization and end most life on the planet.   The conclusion we draw from the nuclear power plant accident in Japan is that the human community, acting for itself and as trustees for future generations, must exercise a far higher level of care globally in dealing with technologies capable of causing mass annihilation, and should phase out, abolish and replace such technologies with alternatives that do not threaten present and future generations.   This applies to nuclear weapons as well as to nuclear power reactors. 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	Profound gender inequalities remain in Afghanistan by Nasima Rahmani Radio National   Mar 2011   In what country do 87% of women experience domestic violence, only 12% read and write, and most marry by the time they"re 16? Answer: Afghanistan. The way forward is not simple. Meet the extraordinary Nasima Rahmani, she runs grass roots legal projects staffed by incredibly brave women who are making a difference.   Today is the 100th International Women"s Day, but sadly violence against women remains a serious problem. Nasima Rahmani is a former lawyer. She"s currently the manager of the Women"s Rights program with ActionAid Afghanistan.   Nasima says that while the situation for Afghan women is better now than during the civil war or the Taliban period, profound gender inequality remains. Women endure violence, lack of access to education and health services, and very limited economic choices.   She says that while the laws on the books are progressive, they"re simply not implemented. Why? Because the justice system is corrupt, the warlords and militias wield the real power, and because conservative traditional values and customs run very deep.   Nasima runs a program which trains paralegals to assist women to understand and to assert their legal rights.   Nasima Rahmani: What we do through this paralegal program, we train women who come from different walks of life, they"re teachers, engineers, doctors, NGO workers, journalists even. We teach them what is all about human rights, and women"s rights. And then we also teach them about the legal system in Afghanistan. If there is a case, if there is a woman who"d like to seek support, where she should go and what are the steps that she should take, and this whole procedure of the criminal and civil issues in the court and the legal system. Then also we teach them how they should treat a woman who is a victim of violence. So these are some issues that we call psycho-social support issues. We also teach them how they can mediate between two parties, and with this mediation if it"s possible to sort the case without referring to the courts.   Damien Carrick: Can you describe for me some of the people, some of the women that you"ve helped?   Nasima Rahmani: I can talk to you about the case of a lady, girl, whose name was Karima, which is not her real name, of course. She was raped at the age of 13, then she got pregnant. Due to the sensitivity of the issue of course, if something like that happened to a girl, the family will be so ashamed that they would either kill their daughter, or in the case of Karima, they just wanted to get rid of her, denying that she is not their daughter and they no longer want her to be related to the family. Then she found about one of our paralegals who previously was an engineer.   This paralegal took her to one of the shelters and she was protected there and then managed for a lawyer to take the case to the court. And then the raper, the perpetuator of the rape, provided false documents in the court that he was married to the girl. And based on that he was freed and not punished. But we could later manage to prove that wrong, and then within this period that he has provided these wrong documents to the court, now it is difficult. We have found another person, somebody who is ready to accept the lady and to marry her. And now she is married to that rapist and she cannot, based on the law, she cannot marry another person. So we could manage to prove that wrong and now that Karima is married to somebody who understands the problem. This is not common in Afghanistan, this is not common that a man will marry someone, a girl who is raped. But a very unique situation, and I"m very happy about the solution that we found for this case.   Damien Carrick: In every country, violence against women is a problem. Where you have domestic violence, where you have violence in the home in families, can you give me any examples of what you can do in that situation?   Nasima Rahmani: Well based on the law it is not possible for somebody to interfere in the family issues, and go and provide any support to a lady who is victimised, who is abused, beaten. But if she comes and complains, then after that it"s possible to support her. In order to create this demand for justice, and just to avail them of their rights that we also raise awareness in some of our other programs.   For example, we have another program called Reflect, which is -- or our community learning centres. We have community learning centres. Through this program we cover like more than 2,000 women in three provinces, and these women are organised in the groups of 20, 15 to 20, 25 women in one circle. They come together like two days a week, three days a week based on their time and availability, and simply discuss their issues. It is a space for them to talk and to discuss their problems, their daily issues, anything affecting their lives, and the facility can help them to discuss the issues and they propose solutions for it.   Damien Carrick: Being a woman in Afghanistan is very, very dangerous, but being a women"s rights activist, that places you in even more danger. I understand that one of your Reflect facilitators was actually murdered.   Nasima Rahmani: It is really difficult to find a woman who is literate and who is good enough in terms of these leadership skills to be able to facilitate the circle. And this was one of the best ones, the lady who was killed. She was also a teacher in the school, and she used previously to work with a couple of other NGOs and doing literacy classes. So she was one of the very good ones. And suddenly one night at 12 o"clock, or around 1 and 12 o"clock, entered the house and they shot her, in front of the four children. And the husband said that she asked them to let her feed the baby, she had a one-year-old baby feeding from her breast, and she asked that "Let me at least feed the baby" and then one of the disgusting gunmen laughed and said, "Who will feed them tomorrow night?" and they shot her, and she was killed. So this is the situation. As I told you, the reason is not clear yet why exactly, because it was also reported that she had an argument with the governor of that area. The case is under investigation, and we don"t know the real reason, but it may happen to many other woman, because journalists and women who are working for the women"s rights issues and they are like known in that area, they get killed.   Damien Carrick: Indeed, I understand that a kind of a mentor and a very close personal friend of yours died in late January this year, Hamida Barmaki. She was a very, very prominent Afghan woman human rights activist, and academic. And I understand she died, along with her family, during an attack on a supermarket in Kabul. Can you tell me about her and what happened to her?   Nasima Rahmani: You know, they did...have Hamida Barmaki such a huge love for Afghans that I think the Aghan society will never see someone like her again. [Weeps] I"m sorry... she was the best, close friend of mine. She was a lecturer of law faculty, and I can tell you the only one with that capacity and that knowledge in the legal field. She was also a very committed human rights activist and women"s rights activist, and she was also the commissioner, one of the eight commissioners for the Human Rights Commission, Independent Human Rights Commission in Afghanistan, and she got killed for nothing. It was the birthday of the second daughter. She had four children and three of them were girls. So it was the birthday of the second daughter and the whole family went to buy her something, and then none of them came back home.   Damien Carrick: They were killed in a bomb attack.   Nasima Rahmani: Yes, an explosion like all other incidents that happen in Kabul somebody exploded themselves, literally; exploded the Finest supermarket, and then she got killed with the whole family.   Damien Carrick: It sounds as though Hamida Barmaki was not targeted specifically, but caught up in the general violence of Afghanistan.   Nasima Rahmani: It"s not clear though, because that supermarket is mostly used by foreigners, and they said that the real target was the head of an American security company. They say that, but it"s not really clear who was specifically attacked.   Damien Carrick: I"d like to ask you a more general question. Australia, along with many other countries, have troops stationed in Afghanistan, to support the Hamid Kazai government; do you support that military presence in Afghanistan?   Nasima Rahmani: This is a very difficult question to answer, but I would like to analyse the situation from two perspectives. From a national perspective of course we are very much against the increasing civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and we condemn that, because these civilian casualties because of the mis-bombing is increasing day by day. So we cannot be supportive of this ongoing war in Afghanistan.   Also it"s a problem recently, there are local militia groups, you know, established to control their areas, this is also a problem, very difficult to give an opinion about the current situation, and the military presence in Afghanistan. But I would like to also say something from my personal perspective, from a woman"s perspective, from a woman"s rights activist perspective.   For myself, personally for myself, I went through the most difficult time in my life during the Civil War. It was such a chaotic situation, you know, during the years between 92 and 95, like more than 60,000 people got killed in Kabul, simply only in Kabul, and then 2 million migrated from Kabul, they left it. This was all because nine Mujahideen groups just arrived to Kabul, and they all were fighting to control a bit more area in Kabul and they were fighting with each other to take over from the other, and to have the power.   Later on, looking at the years of Taliban, what women went through, I can tell you that women who were previously principals, or head of an office, an agency, they had to beg on the streets. You know, because of the rations in waging this ongoing war in Afghanistan, millions of women are widowed, and they"re responsible for their children, for their families. And if something happened like that, if Taliban returns back, their agenda is clear to all: they"re not women"s rights people, they will not accept that women should work, or they should be educated, they should come out from home. Even now like the recent cases that are happening. Somebody in Badghis Province, a 14-year-old refused to marry an old man and she was beaten in public. A few weeks ago, a couple were stoned. You know, and do you remember that case of the girl whose nose and ears were cut off because she ran away from home? Now it is very clear what Taliban will do with women.   This is also my concern, and the women are concerned. We didn"t want that situation happening again, and for myself personally, I know this is a very -- for my personal safety, this is a very dangerous statement that I"m making, personally for myself, the presence of these military rescue...I"m rescued from the previous situation. I can work. I finished my education, I"m travelling, I"m a respected human being now. I have my dignity, as Nasima, as a human. So the presence of the military in Afghanistan means that we are rescued from that situation, but at the same time, we are very concerned about all of the people that are getting killed. So I have no answer to say.. but I told you about my concerns. Visit the related web page
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