Four Myths from Fukushima: Arnie at The WAVE Conference
/Is nuclear power a sustainable or safe solution to ongoing energy demands around the world? Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen was invited to speak in August at The WAVE conference sponsored by Life Chiropractic College West. More than 1600 chiropractors attended the conference near San Francisco, California to hear speakers like Arnie Gundersen and Erin Brockovich talk about speaking truth to power.
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Is nuclear power a sustainable or safe solution to ongoing energy demands around the world? Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen was invited to speak in August at The WAVE conference sponsored by Life Chiropractic College West. More than 1600 chiropractors attended the conference near San Francisco, California to hear speakers like Arnie Gundersen and Erin Brockovich talk about speaking truth to power.
Arnie spoke about the four problems that will be created worldwide by building more nuclear plants. As you will see in the video, Arnie is using the iPad app Keynote for his TED-like presentation.
MC: So our next speaker gave me this DVD because I know he wasn’t going to talk about it. He’s been 40 years in nuclear science and he has a very, very powerful message. And if we’re going to talk about visionaries, talk about world and just a global perspective, you’re about to hear a very, very powerful segment. What he did was he put up all these free YouTubes – hundreds of them – and he took the best 12 clips and he put it together on a DVD for us just to be educated so we can educate our patients just on what’s going on on a radiation level and how it is affecting the health of humankind. And so he’s giving these away at his booth afterwards, signing copies of it and is just asking for a tax-free donation. He’s not selling them but he is asking for a donation and I think if we’re going to be able to sow and spread the message of vitality throughout this world, it’s no problem to donate to a great cause. So I want to bring this gentleman up – Mr. Gundersen – to share with us. Let’s give a round of applause and stand to our feet and bring the energy.
AG: Thank you very much for having me and welcome from the State of Vermont – the state with the first GMO labeling law. We’re excited about that. A quick shout out. I have to thank the audio/visual guys. They’ve been breathtakingly phenomenal through this whole thing.
Today I’d like to talk to you about my observations from the data that’s come out of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Basically, radiation knows no borders. But there’ll be four topics I’d like to cover real quickly. The first is that accidents happen frequently; nuclear accidents happen frequently. The second is that the accidents are getting worse with time, not better. The third is, as bad as Fukushima Daiichi really was and continues to be, it could have been much worse. And finally, radiation knows no borders. Well, the guy on the screen here – there’s 42 years of difference between the guy on the screen and the guy on the stage here, and a lot of gray hair. But the real difference is, when I got out of school I was a lot of intellect and no wisdom. And I think over those 42 years, I’ve gained a lot of wisdom and perhaps lost a little intellect, so I come to you not as an expert on nuclear power, but I think as a veteran in nuclear power. And I’ve seen near misses and I’ve seen five major accidents in my career. The first accident was TMI – and the younger people here think TMI is too much information. But there was an accident called TMI – Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. And that was 35 years ago. Then in the 80’s, there was a catastrophic accident at Chernobyl. And then we went 23 years without any nuclear accidents. And there was a hubris that set in. And people believed that we had it – we understood how to control the atom. And then came Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2, and Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3.
So the first lesson – and the shortest, I might add – is that accidents are going to happen frequently. In 35 years, we’ve had the five of them. 35 divided by 5 is 7. Once every 7 years on average, we’ll have a nuclear accident. The other lesson, though, is that the nuclear industry is talking to our policymakers and they’re saying the chance of an accident is one in a million. Well, if you take a million – per reactor year – and you divide by the 400 reactors that are in the world right now, you wind up with a million divided by 400 is 2,500 years – one accident every 2,500 years. So our policy makers are making decisions based on essentially that an accident can never happen. (4:43)
But history has shown us that on average, once every 7 years we’re going to have a nuclear accident. So Einstein had it right and everybody is quoting Einstein this weekend – that’s kind of interesting. He basically said that if – if as a society we’re going to make a decision on building nuclear power plants, that decision has to be made on the town greens, in the town meeting halls and work its way up. And what we’re having here and especially in Japan and in Asia is a top-down policy on the implementation of nuclear power. We need to expect once a decade there’s going to be a bad nuclear accident. This is Three Mile Island’s nuclear core. It’s a robot picture taken about two years after the nuclear accident. TMI was a partial nuclear meltdown. The nuclear core was destroyed. It melted down, but it was contained in the nuclear reactor. Lots of radioactive gases were released and people did die.
This is Steve Wing. Dr. Steve Wing is an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina. And he put together this map. You see a white line from the upper left to the lower right. That’s the Susquehanna River where Three Mile Island was. And along the river on either side are red. And further away is green. Well, what does that mean? On the day of the accident, there was no air moving. There was no wind. So the radioactive gases laid in the river valley. And Doctor Wing’s epidemiology clearly shows that people did die along the river valley compared to the people on the surrounding hills. Then came Three Mile Island – I’m sorry – then came Chernobyl. And this is a picture of the nuclear core – what’s left of it – at Chernobyl. It’s called the elephant’s foot. It’s about 100 tons of molten nuclear material. A robot got in there and took that picture about a year after the nuclear accident. It was so highly radioactive that no one’s gone near that ever since. Because obviously, I think we all know that Chernobyl did release radiation – the map of Europe. And it shows that the – basically the Ukraine was highly contaminated, but it didn’t stop at the border. The radiation didn’t say whoa! This accident happened in Ukraine, I’m not going to cross that line. It was first detected up in Sweden and then later it showed up in England. Even today, cattle in Wales cannot be eaten because they’re contaminated. Even today, wild boar that hunters catch in Germany can’t be eaten because they’re radiologically contaminated. Even today, the Laps in Lapland can’t eat reindeer because they’re contaminated.
Well, where is the core at Fukushima? No one knows. Fukushima is so radioactive and there’s so much destruction that we don’t have a picture of the core at Fukushima. So it’s left to the imagination where those three nuclear cores might be. But we do know that unlike Chernobyl and unlike Three Mile Island, they’re in direct contact with groundwater. I’ll show you a couple of pictures of radiation releases from Chernobyl (sic), though. The first one is a time lapse. This whole event happened in two seconds. It’ll take me maybe 15 seconds to get through it. But this is Fukushima Daiichi 2, 3 and 4 – those white boxes from left to right are 2, 3 and 4. And unit 1 had already blown up. It’s a little bit to the left on the scale. I want you to keep your eye on the white box in the middle. Okay – right there – that flash is something that the day before Fukushima actually happened, no one believed that that flash was possible. It’s called a detonation shock wave. And it destroyed the building in a period of two seconds. Kind of looks like a face. That whole event happened in two seconds. It was one of six explosions at Fukushima Daiichi and released an enormous amount of radiation, but it wasn’t just these explosions that released the radiation. It was the chronic and long-lasting radioactive releases that are contaminating Japan even to today.
I have two geeky pictures to show you. This is an infrared picture looking down on Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3. The big white spot in the middle is the boiling nuclear fuel pool. But what’s more important, just to the right of that is a little tiny white spot and it’s labeled 128C. That’s 128 centigrade or 250 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you remember your high school physics, water boils at 212. That’s not steam being released from the containment at Fukushima Daiichi. That’s hot radioactive gases. The next picture is a piece of dust. It was found in Negoya, which is 300 miles away from the accident. What makes this piece of dust unique is that it’s highly radioactive. If instead of a fleck of dust, I had a pound of it in my hand, the front rows would be dead in about a minute or two, and the back would probably be dead in about 20 minutes. That’s hot nuclear fuel that wound up 300 miles away in Negoya. We call that a hot particle. We saw them in Japan but also in Seattle. These are air filters from cars in Japan. The lab that we work with asked for people to send us their air filters. On the far right is an air filter from Fukushima City, about 20 miles away. And those black spots are spots where radiation has actually burned the photographic film. A car engine breathes about the same amount of air in the course of a day as a human lung. So imagine what’s in the lungs of the people in Fukushima City. The middle one is Tokyo – again, highly contaminated with hot particles. And the lab we work with at Fairewinds set up a filter in Seattle and we can pretty clearly show that from the end of March all the way through April of 2011, the average person in Seattle breathed in about 10 hot particles a day. And if you were an athlete and you were out running, it might be as high as 20 hot particles a day. It’s the saddest picture in the bunch. We asked for people to send us sneakers – kids’ sneakers. And the bars on the left are sneakers from Japan; the bars on the right are sneakers from the U.S. The minimum level of detection is 10. So the sneakers from the U.S. are clean. Kids were in those sneakers. And kids tie their shoes, then put their hands in their mouth. So the kids are contaminated. Now this is just the airborne radiation that’s continuing to come out of Fukushima.
Then there’s the ocean. Unlike Chernobyl and unlike TMI, Fukushima continues to bleed into the ocean because those nuclear cores have melted down and are in direct contact with the groundwater. It will bleed for centuries perhaps and certainly decades to come. So when you compare these nuclear accidents, we have to say TMI was a partial meltdown, all contained. Then came Chernobyl – full meltdown but didn’t hit the groundwater. And then came Fukushima with its contamination in the ocean. Now you’re health professionals. What does this mean to health professionals? What’s the impact of this radiation? This is my favorite comic of all time – it’s a Dilbert. The pointy-headed boss asks for an analysis. Dilbert says “I can do this feasibility analysis in two minutes.” And Dilbert then says, “It’s the worst idea in the world. Numbers don’t lie.” And the boss says, “But our CEO loves the idea.” And Dilbert says, “Luckily, assumptions do lie.” And the bottom line here is that if you talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about Three Mile Island, on their website they say no one died. And Doctor Wing’s analysis clearly shows that lots did. If you talk to the International Atomic Energy Agency about Chernobyl, they’ll say that 28 people to 100 died. But Dr. Alexi Yablakov (?14:20) who was the science advisor to Boris Yeltsin when Russia was created, has written a book with dozens of collaborators showing a million people did. Big disparity here.
The day that Fukushima was melting down, nuclear experts said working in a nuclear plant is safer than working in Toys R Us. That’s a direct quote. And yet there’s experts out there like me – independent experts – who are saying that as many as a million cancers may result from that accident. So it reminds me – and I think one of the – there’s some simpatico here with my audience, I hope – when I speak truth to power at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, they don’t want to hear it. And it reminds me very much about what chiropractors go through when they talk to the AMA. You’re dealing with an orthodoxy that really doesn’t want to hear the facts. And that’s what independent experts like me face pretty much on a daily basis when we talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So the bottom line is that accidents are getting worse; the severity of accidents is getting worse not less worse. Okay.
Nuclear power’s big advantage is also its critical flaw. This is a fission – and see that bright spot in the middle – everyone knows that when you split a uranium atom up it gives off a lot of heat. If that’s all that happened, it would be okay. But what they don’t tell you in that picture in there, what they don’t tell you in the high school texts, are the radioactive rubble that’s left behind – those two pieces – we call them fission products – remain physically hot and radioactively hot. Physically hot for five years; radioactively hot for thousands. Well, what that means is when a nuclear reactor shuts down, it’s really not shut down. It has to be cooled for five years. This is a satellite picture looking down on the intake structures that were on the water at Fukushima Daiichi. The tsunami destroyed the cooling pumps. All that rubble along the coast are the cooling pumps that were designed to cool that chain reaction after the shutdown. It didn’t happen. We call that a LOUHS – Loss of the Ultimate Heat Sink. Well, it didn’t just happen at Fukushima Daiichi. There were 14 nuclear plants that had their cooling pumps knocked out. This picture shows – in the north, there’s Onagawa that had three nukes. Then came Fukushima Daiichi with six nukes. Then came Fukushima Daini, with four nukes and then just to the south of that was Tokai with one nuke. And all of them lost their pumps. And here’s where luck came in. Technology failed. There’s no doubt technology failed. And here’s where luck came in. If that accident – the accident happened on the day shift on a Friday. There was a thousand people at Daiichi, there was a thousand people at Daini, Onogawa and Tokai. If the earthquake and tsunami had happened in the evening, there would have been 100 people there. And it was courageous people that stopped the meltdown from being even worse than what it was. So a 12-hour difference in the timing of that tsunami would have resulted in the contamination, the destruction of Japan – and the contamination of the whole northern hemisphere.
So the second – the third point then – the first point was accidents are going to happen frequently. Second is they’re getting worse – and they could have been much worse, is my third point. (18:31) Fukushima was a technological breakdown. Nothing worked. And it was through luck and the courage of perhaps several thousand people that this accident didn’t result in the destruction of Japan. I’ve gotten to know Naoto Kan, who was the Prime Minister of Japan when the accident happened. And he said – I think he says it best in one sentence – he said, “Our existence as a sovereign nation was at stake.” Now he’s not the only one who had to face down a nuclear accident. Mikhail Gorbachev in his memoirs says that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not due to Perestroika. It was due to Chernobyl.
So we’ve got two examples – a democratically elected and a communist dictator – who both believe that nuclear power can fundamentally destroy a culture overnight. We know that it’s too big to fail. The Spanish armada was too big to fail. We all know that. The Titanic was too big to fail. We all know that. And Wall Street was too big to fail. We all know that. Well, we also think that nuclear is too big to fail. And I think in our hubris, that’s a lesson we really should take from Fukushima. This is not a technology that’s too big to fail. I have a way of saying it. I say that sooner or later in any foolproof system, the fools are going to exceed the proofs. So to sum up, we’ve got accidents that are going to happen once a decade, they’re going to be incredibly severe and the radiation doesn’t stop at the border. We know that from Three Mile Island sort of stayed in Pennsylvania. But then Chernobyl contaminated all of Europe. And Fukushima is contaminating the entire Pacific. So the question is to us, we have an opportunity now. This is not in my way of thinking a sustainable solution. This is not a holistic solution. And I really think that’s why perhaps I’m here today, to talk about maybe sustainability and a holistic solution. This is not that way. And we can implement from the bottom up a policy that convinces our policymakers to change course before it’s too late. Thank you very much.
Japanese
FAIREWINDS ENERGY EDUCATION – The WAVE 2014 – Arnie Gundersen
フェアウインズ・エナジー・エデュケーション
– ザ・ウェーブ2014 – アーニー・ガンダーセン
MC: So our next speaker gave me this DVD because I know he wasn’t going to talk about it. 司会者：次の講演者がこのDVDを私にくれました。なぜなら彼がそれについて話すつもりがなかったことを知っているからです。He’s been 40 years in nuclear science and he has a very, very powerful message. 彼は原子力科学に４０年間携わっており、非常に強力なメッセージを持っています。And if we’re going to talk about visionaries, talk about world and just a global perspective, you’re about to hear a very, very powerful segment. そしてもし私たちが予言者たちについて、世界について、そして地球的視野について語るつもりなら、あなたはとてもとても強烈な話を聞くことになるでしょう。What he did was he put up all these free YouTubes – hundreds of them – and he took the best 12 clips and he put it together on a DVD for us just to be educated so we can educate our patients just on what’s going on on a radiation level and how it is affecting the health of humankind. 彼は何百もの動画を無料でYouTubeに掲載し、その中で最もよい１２本の動画を選んで、私たちの学びのために１枚のDVDに収録したのです。そういうわけで私たちは放射線レベルの現状について、またそれが人類の健康にどのように影響しているのかについて私たちの患者を教育することができるのです。And so he’s giving these away at his booth afterwards, signing copies of it and is just asking for a tax-free donation.彼は後ほどこのDVDを自分のブースで配布します。そこでDVDにサインして、非課税の寄付を募る予定です。He’s not selling them but he is asking for a donation and I think if we’re going to be able to sow and spread the message of vitality throughout this world, it’s no problem to donate to a great cause. DVDを販売するのではないですが、寄付を募ります。もし私たちがこの活力に満ちたメッセージを世界中に広めようとするなら、私は大きな目的のために寄付をすることは問題ないと思います。So I want to bring this gentleman up – Mr. Gundersen – to share with us. Let’s give a round of applause and stand to our feet and bring the energy. では、ガンダーセン氏をご紹介します。話していただきましょう。拍手とご起立でお迎えください。
AG: Thank you very much for having me and welcome from the State of Vermont – the state with the first GMO labeling law. アーニー・ガンダーセン：お迎えいただきありがとうございます。バーモント州での歓迎に感謝します。バーモント州は初めて遺伝子組み換え食品表示義務法を成立させました。We’re excited about that. 私たちはそのことに興奮しています。A quick shout out. 手短かに感謝を述べます。I have to thank the audio/visual guys.音響と映像のスタッフに感謝しなければなりません。 They’ve been breathtakingly phenomenal through this whole thing. 彼らは今回の一連の作業を通じて非常に素晴らしかったです。Today I’d like to talk to you about my observations from the data that’s come out of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. 今日は福島第一原発の事故の事実情報について私の見解を話したいと思います。Basically, radiation knows no borders. 元来、放射線には国境はありません。
But there’ll be four topics I’d like to cover real quickly. けれど、私が手短かに取り上げたいと思う話題が４つあります。The first is that accidents happen frequently; nuclear accidents happen frequently.一つ目は、事故は頻繁に起こるということです。 The second is that the accidents are getting worse with time, not better. 二つ目は、事故は時間と共に悪化し、良くはならないということです。The third is, as bad as Fukushima Daiichi really was and continues to be, it could have been much worse. 三つ目は、福島第一原発の事故は本当にひどいものでそれは続いていますが、もっとひどくなる可能性もあったということです。And finally, radiation knows no borders. そして最後に、放射線には国境はないということです。Well, the guy on the screen here – there’s 42 years of difference between the guy on the screen and the guy on the stage here, and a lot of gray hair. さて、このスクリーンには男性が映し出されています。スクリーンの上の男性とこのステージの上の男性には４２歳の年齢差があります。白髪が増えてますね。But the real difference is, when I got out of school I was a lot of intellect and no wisdom. しかし本当に違うのは、私が学校を卒業したとき、私は知性にあふれていましたが、知恵がありませんでした。And I think over those 42 years, I’ve gained a lot of wisdom and perhaps lost a little intellect, so I come to you not as an expert on nuclear power, but I think as a veteran in nuclear power. この４２年の間に、私はたくさんの知恵を得て、おそらく少し知性を失ったと思います。And I’ve seen near misses and I’ve seen five major accidents in my career. そして私のキャリアの中でニアミスと５つの大事故を目撃してきました。The first accident was TMI – and the younger people here think TMI is too much information. 最初の事故はTMIです。ここにいる若い人たちはTMIという言葉を「情報過多」（訳注：インターネット用語でtoo much informationの略語をTMIと言う。）のことだと思っているでしょう。But there was an accident called TMI – Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. しかしTMI （訳注：ペンシルバニア州スリーマイル島の原子力発電所での事故の略称）と呼ばれる原発事故があったのです。And that was 35 years ago. その事故は３５年前に起きました。Then in the 80’s, there was a catastrophic accident at Chernobyl. それから１９８０年代には、チェルノブイリの大事故がありました。And then we went 23 years without any nuclear accidents. その後２３年間は原子力の事故はありませんでした。And there was a hubris that set in. そして過剰な自信が生まれました。And people believed that we had it – we understood how to control the atom. 人々は自分たちが原子力をコントロールする方法を理解したと考えました。And then came Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1. Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2, and Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3. その後、福島第一原発の１号機、２号機、３号機の事故が起きました。
So the first lesson – and the shortest, I might add – is that accidents are going to happen frequently. そういうわけで一番最初に掲げる教訓というのは、最も簡潔でもあるのですが、事故は頻繁に起きるだろうということです。In 35 years, we’ve had the five of them.３５年の間に５回の原発事故が起こりました。35 divided by 5 is 7. ３５を５で割ると７です。Once every 7 years on average, we’ll have a nuclear accident. 平均して７年に１度原発事故が起こるでしょう。The other lesson, though, is that the nuclear industry is talking to our policymakers and they’re saying the chance of an accident is one in a million. 別のレッスンですけれど、原子力産業は私たちの政策立案者たちに事故の可能性は１００万分の１だと言っています。Well, if you take a million – per reactor year – and you divide by the 400 reactors that are in the world right now, you wind up with a million divided by 400 is 2,500 years – one accident every 2,500 years. では１つの原子炉の事故の確率を１００万分の１だとして、１００万を現在世界にある４００の原子炉で割ると２５００年ごとに一度事故が起こることになります。So our policy makers are making decisions based on essentially that an accident can never happen. ですから、政策立案者たちは原則的に事故は起きないという前提で決定を行っているのです。(4:43)
But history has shown us that on average, once every 7 years we’re going to have a nuclear accident. しかし歴史は平均して７年に一度は原発事故が起きるということを示しています。So Einstein had it right and everybody is quoting Einstein this weekend – that’s kind of interesting. だからアインシュタインは正しかったのです。みんな今週末は彼の言葉を引用しています。興味深いですね。He basically said that if – if as a society we’re going to make a decision on building nuclear power plants, that decision has to be made on the town greens, in the town meeting halls and work its way up. 彼は要するにこう言いました。「もし社会として私たちが原子力発電所の建設の決定をするなら、その決定は公園や公会堂で行われ、地道に築き上げなければならない。」And what we’re having here and especially in Japan and in Asia is a top-down policy on the implementation of nuclear power. 現状はというと、特に日本とアジアでは原子力の推進についてはトップダウンで政策が決まっています。We need to expect once a decade there’s going to be a bad nuclear accident. 私たちはひどい原発事故が１０年に一度は起こると想定する必要があります。This is Three Mile Island’s nuclear core. これはスリーマイル島原発の原子炉炉心です。It’s a robot picture taken about two years after the nuclear accident. 事故からおよそ２年後にロポットによって撮影された写真です。TMI was a partial nuclear meltdown. TMIでは部分的な炉心溶融が起きました。The nuclear core was destroyed. 原子炉の炉心は破壊されました。It melted down, but it was contained in the nuclear reactor. それはメルトダウンしましたが、原子炉の中に留まりました。Lots of radioactive gases were released and people did die. 多量の放射性ガスが放出され、人々が亡くなりました。This is Steve Wing. これはスティーブ・ウイング博士です。
Dr. Steve Wing is an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina. ウイング博士はノースカロライナ大学の疫学者です。And he put together this map. 彼がこの地図をまとめました。You see a white line from the upper left to the lower right. 左の上から右の下の方に白い線が見えます。That’s the Susquehanna River where Three Mile Island was. これはスリーマイル島のあるサスケハナ川です。And along the river on either side are red. そして川沿いの両側が赤くなっています。And further away is green. 川から遠いところは緑です。Well, what does that mean? これは何を意味しているのでしょう。On the day of the accident, there was no air moving. 事故当日、大気は動いていませんでした。There was no wind. 風はありませんでした。So the radioactive gases laid in the river valley. そのため放射性ガスは川の流域に留まりました。And Doctor Wing’s epidemiology clearly shows that people did die along the river valley compared to the people on the surrounding hills. そしてウイング博士の調査は、川を取り囲む丘の上の人々に比べて、サスケハナ川流域の人々の方が亡くなったことをはっきりと示しています。Then came Three Mile Island – I’m sorry – then came Chernobyl. そしてスリーマイル島、失礼、チェルノブイリの事故が起きました。And this is a picture of the nuclear core – what’s left of it – at Chernobyl. これがチェルノブイリの原子炉炉心で、そこに残されたものです。It’s called the elephant’s foot. それは象の足と呼ばれています。It’s about 100 tons of molten nuclear material. それはおよそ１００トンの溶けた核物質です。A robot got in there and took that picture about a year after the nuclear accident. 事故の約１年後にロボットが内部に入ってこの写真を撮影しました。It was so highly radioactive that no one’s gone near that ever since. そこは放射能が非常に強いので、事故以来誰もそこには近づいていません。Because obviously, I think we all know that Chernobyl did release radiation – the map of Europe. なぜなら、明らかに…私たちはみなチェルノブイリが放射線を放出したことを知っていると思います。これはヨーロッパの地図です。And it shows that the – basically the Ukraine was highly contaminated, but it didn’t stop at the border. そしてこの地図は、おおむねウクライナが高濃度に汚染されていることを示しています。けれど放射線は国境では止まりません。The radiation didn’t say whoa! This accident happened in Ukraine, I’m not going to cross that line. 放射線は、「おっと、この事故はウクライナで起きたんだから国境は超えないでここで止まっておこう。」などとは言いませんでした。It was first detected up in Sweden and then later it showed up in England. チェルノブイリからの放射線は最初にスウェーデンで検出され、のちにイギリスで検出されました。Even today, cattle in Wales cannot be eaten because they’re contaminated. 今でもウェールズの牛は汚染されているので食べることができません。Even today, wild boar that hunters catch in Germany can’t be eaten because they’re radiologically contaminated. 今でもドイツでハンターが捕まえる野生のイノシシは、放射能に汚染されているため食べることができません。Even today, the Laps in Lapland can’t eat reindeer because they’re contaminated. 現在でもラップランドのラップ人はトナカイを食べることができません。放射能で汚染されているからです。
Well, where is the core at Fukushima? さて、福島の炉心はどこにあるのでしょう。No one knows. 誰も知りません。Fukushima is so radioactive and there’s so much destruction that we don’t have a picture of the core at Fukushima. 福島はとても放射線が強く、ひどく破壊されているので、炉心の写真はありません。So it’s left to the imagination where those three nuclear cores might be. ですから福島の３つの原子炉炉心がどこにあるのかは想像の域を超えません。But we do know that unlike Chernobyl and unlike Three Mile Island, they’re in direct contact with groundwater. しかし、チェルノブイリやスリーマイル島と違って、福島では炉心と地下水が直に接していることがわかっています。I’ll show you a couple of pictures of radiation releases from Chernobyl (sic), though. でもチェルノブイリ（原文のまま）から放出された放射線の写真をいくつかお見せしましょう。The first one is a time lapse. 最初の１枚は低速度で撮影されています。This whole event happened in two seconds. この出来事は２秒間の間に起こりました。It’ll take me maybe 15 seconds to get through it. 今こうやってスローで通しで見ると１５秒くらいかかりますが。But this is Fukushima Daiichi 2, 3 and 4 – those white boxes from left to right are 2, 3 and 4. しかしこれは福島第一原発の２、３、４号機です。この白い箱のような建物が左から右に向かって、２号機、３号機、４号機です。And unit 1 had already blown up. そして１号機は既に爆発しています。It’s a little bit to the left on the scale. それは縮尺目盛の少し左です。I want you to keep your eye on the white box in the middle. 真ん中の白い建物に注目してください。Okay – right there – that flash is something that the day before Fukushima actually happened, no one believed that that flash was possible. そうです、そこです。その閃光は、福島の事故が実際に起こる前日には、誰もそのようなことが起こりうるとは信じなかったほどのものです。It’s called a detonation shock wave. それはデトネーションの衝撃波と呼ばれます。And it destroyed the building in a period of two seconds. そしてこの衝撃波が２秒の間にその建物を破壊しました。Kind of looks like a face. 顔のように見えます。That whole event happened in two seconds. この出来事は２秒間の間に起きました。It was one of six explosions at Fukushima Daiichi and released an enormous amount of radiation, but it wasn’t just these explosions that released the radiation. それは福島第一原発で起きた６回の爆発の１つで膨大な量の放射線を放出しました。でも放射線を放出したのはこれらの爆発だけではありませんでした。It was the chronic and long-lasting radioactive releases that are contaminating Japan even to today. 長期的かつ持続的に放射能が放出されており、現在でも日本を汚染し続けています。
I have two geeky pictures to show you. オタク的な写真を２枚お見せしましょう。This is an infrared picture looking down on Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3. これは福島第一原発の３号機を見下ろした赤外線写真です。The big white spot in the middle is the boiling nuclear fuel pool.真ん中の白い場所は沸騰する使用済み核燃料プールです。But what’s more important, just to the right of that is a little tiny white spot and it’s labeled 128C. しかしもっと重要なのは、プールのすぐ右に小さな白い場所があり、１２８度と表示されていることです。That’s 128 centigrade or 250 degrees Fahrenheit. それは摂氏１２８度、すなわち華氏２５０度です。And if you remember your high school physics, water boils at 212. 高校の物理の授業を思い出してみれば、水は華氏２１２度で沸騰しますね。That’s not steam being released from the containment at Fukushima Daiichi. それは福島第一の格納容器から放出されている蒸気ではありません。That’s hot radioactive gases. 高温の放射性ガスです。The next picture is a piece of dust. 次の写真は塵芥の一部です。It was found in Negoya, which is 300 miles away from the accident. 名古屋で発見されました。What makes this piece of dust unique is that it’s highly radioactive. この塵芥が特異なのは、その放射線量が高いからです。If instead of a fleck of dust, I had a pound of it in my hand, the front rows would be dead in about a minute or two, and the back would probably be dead in about 20 minutes. もしそれがちり一つでなく、私が手にそれを１ポンド持ったとしたら、前列に座っている方々は１、２分で、後ろの方の方々はおそらく約２０分で死に至るでしょう。That’s hot nuclear fuel that wound up 300 miles away in Negoya. それは３００マイル離れた名古屋にたどり着いた高温の核燃料なのです。We call that a hot particle. 私たちはそれをホットパーティクル（放射性粒子）と呼んでいます。We saw them in Japan but also in Seattle. 私たちはそれを日本で見ましたが、シアトルでも見つけました。These are air filters from cars in Japan. これらは日本国内の自動車のエアフィルターです。The lab – Fairewinds in the lab that we work with asked for people to send us their air filters. 私たちフェアウインズが提携している研究所が、人々に彼らの使っているエアフィルターを送ってくれるように頼みました。On the far right is an air filter from Fukushima City, about 20 miles away. 一番右のものは原発から約２０マイル離れた福島市からのエアフィルターです。And those black spots are spots where radiation has actually burned the photographic film. そしてこれらの黒い部分は放射線が実際に写真のフィルムを焼いた点なのです。A car engine breathes about the same amount of air in the course of a day as a human lung. 自動車のエンジンは人間の肺が一日の間に呼吸するのとほぼ同じ量の空気を取り込みます。So imagine what’s in the lungs of the people in Fukushima City. ですから、福島市の人々の肺に何があるか想像してみてください。The middle one is Tokyo – again, highly contaminated with hot particles. 真ん中のは東京のものです。これもホットパーティクルで高度に汚染されています。And the lab we work with at Fairewinds set up a filter in Seattle and we can pretty clearly show that from the end of March all the way through April of 2011, the average person in Seattle breathed in about 10 hot particles a day. 私たちフェアウインズが提携している研究所はシアトルにフィルターを設置しており、２０１１年３月末から４月一杯まで、シアトルの一般の人たちが一日に約１０個のホットパーティクルを吸い込んだということを、はっきり示すことができます。And if you were an athlete and you were out running, it might be as high as 20 hot particles a day. そしてもしあなたがスポーツ選手で外を走っていたとしたら、一日に吸い込んだホットパーティクルは２０個にまで達しているかもしれません。It’s the saddest picture in the bunch. これが一連のものの中で最も悲しい写真です。We asked for people to send us sneakers – kids’ sneakers. 私たちは人々に子供のスニーカーを送ってくれるように頼みました。And the bars on the left are sneakers from Japan; the bars on the right are sneakers from the U.S. 左の線の数値は日本のスニーカーのもので、右の線は合衆国のスニーカーのものです。The minimum level of detection is 10. 検出限界は１０です。So the sneakers from the U.S. are clean. つまり合衆国のスニーカーは汚染されていません。Kids were in those sneakers. 子供たちはこのスニーカーを履いていました。And kids tie their shoes, then put their hands in their mouth. そして子供達は靴ひもを結び、その手を口に持っていきます。So the kids are contaminated. だから子供たちも汚染されているのです。Now this is just the airborne radiation that’s continuing to come out of Fukushima. さて、これは福島から放出され続けている空中を浮遊する放射性物質だけのことです。
Then there’s the ocean.次に海があります。 Unlike Chernobyl and unlike TMI, Fukushima continues to bleed into the ocean because those nuclear cores have melted down and are in direct contact with the groundwater.チェルノブイリともTMIとも違って、福島では放射性物質が海に流れ込み続けています。なぜなら福島第一原発の炉心はメルトダウンして地下水と直に接しているからです。It will bleed for centuries perhaps and certainly decades to come. それはたぶん数世紀に渡って続き、今後数十年は確実に続くでしょう。So when you compare these nuclear accidents, we have to say TMI was a partial meltdown, all contained. Then came Chernobyl – full meltdown but didn’t hit the groundwater. なので、あなたがこれらの原発事故を比較する場合、私たちはTMIは部分的にメルトダウンしたが原子炉内に留まり、チェルノブイリは全面的にメルトダウンしたが地下水には達しなかったと言わざるをえないでしょう。And then came Fukushima with its contamination in the ocean. そしてその後福島の事故が起きて海を汚染しました。Now you’re health professionals. 今やあなたがたは健康の専門家です。What does this mean to health professionals? これは健康の専門家にとって何を意味しているでしょう。What’s the impact of this radiation? この放射線の影響はどのようなものでしょうか。This is my favorite comic of all time – it’s a Dilbert. これは私の一番のお気に入りのマンガ、ディルバートです。The pointy-headed boss asks for an analysis. 尖った髪のボスが分析を依頼します。Dilbert says “I can do this feasibility analysis in two minutes.” ディルバートはこう言います。「この実行可能分析は２分でできます。」And Dilbert then says, “It’s the worst idea in the world. Numbers don’t lie.” それからディルバートはこう言います。「これは世界で最悪のアイデアだ。数字は嘘をつかない。」And the boss says, “But our CEO loves the idea.” ボスはこう言います。「でも我が社のCEOがこのアイデアを気に入っているんだ。」And Dilbert says, “Luckily, assumptions do lie.” ディルバートはこう言います。「幸運なことに、想定は嘘をつく。」And the bottom line here is that if you talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about Three Mile Island, on their website they say no one died. ここで肝心なのは、もしあなたがスリーマイル島の事故について原子力規制委員会に問い合わせたら、彼らは委員会のウェブサイト上で誰も死ななかったと言っているということです。And Doctor Wing’s analysis clearly shows that lots did. 一方ウイング博士の分析はあきらかに多くの人が亡くなったと示しています。If you talk to the International Atomic Energy Agency about Chernobyl, they’ll say that 28 people to 100 died. もしあなたがチェルノブイリについて国際原子力機関に問い合わせたら、彼らは２８人から１００人が亡くなったと言うでしょう。But Dr. Alexi Yablakov (?14:20) who was the science advisor to Boris Yeltsin when Russia was created, has written a book with dozens of collaborators showing a million people did. しかしロシア連邦が成立した時にボリス・エリツィンの科学顧問だったアレクセイ・ヤブロコフ博士は多数の協力者と共に本を書き、１００万人が亡くなったと指摘しました。Big disparity here. 大きな差がありますね。
The day that Fukushima was melting down, nuclear experts said working in a nuclear plant is safer than working in Toys R Us. 福島第一原発でメルトダウンが起こっていた日、原子力の専門家たちは原子力発電所の中で働くのは、トイザラスで働くのより安全だと言いました。That’s a direct quote. これは（彼らの発言を）そのまま引用したものです。And yet there’s experts out there like me – independent experts – who are saying that as many as a million cancers may result from that accident. でも私のように独立した専門家たちもいて、１００万人もの人々がガンになるかもしれないと言っています。So it reminds me – and I think one of the – there’s some simpatico here with my audience, I hope – when I speak truth to power at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, they don’t want to hear it. そういうわけで、それは私にこのことを思い出させます。そして今ここで聞いてくださっている人たちの一人…何人かは私とうまが合うと願っていますが、私が原子力規制委員会の有力者に真実を語るとき、彼らはそれを聞きたがりません。And it reminds me very much about what chiropractors go through when they talk to the AMA. そしてそのことで、私はカイロプラクターの人たちが米国医師会と話したときに体験したことをありありと思い出します。You’re dealing with an orthodoxy that really doesn’t want to hear the facts. あなたがたは本当に事実を知りたがらない正統主義に対処しているのです。And that’s what independent experts like me face pretty much on a daily basis when we talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. そしてそれは私のような独立した専門家たちが原子力規制委員会と話す場合に、毎日のように直面することなのです。So the bottom line is that accidents are getting worse; the severity of accidents is getting worse not less worse. ですから肝心な点は原発の事故はどんどんひどくなっていること、事故の重大性は軽減しているのではなく深刻化しているということです。Okay. オーケー。
Nuclear power’s big advantage is also its critical flaw. 原子力の大きな利点はまたその重大な欠点でもあります。This is a fission – and see that bright spot in the middle – everyone knows that when you split a uranium atom up it gives off a lot of heat. これは核分裂です。真ん中の明るい点を見てください。ウラン原子に核分裂を起こさせると多量の熱を放出することは皆さんご存知です。If that’s all that happened, it would be okay. それが起きることのすべてならそれでいいかもしれません。But what they don’t tell you in that picture in there, what they don’t tell you in the high school texts, are the radioactive rubble that’s left behind – those two pieces – we call them fission products – remain physically hot and radioactively hot. しかし彼らがこの写真で言っていないこと、高校の教科書に書いていないこと、それは、放射性の残留物です。この２つがそうです。私たちはそれを核分裂生成物と呼びます。核分裂生成物は物理的に高温で放射能が高いままです。Physically hot for five years; radioactively hot for thousands. 物理的な高温は５年間続き、放射能は数千年続きます。Well, what that means is when a nuclear reactor shuts down, it’s really not shut down. これが意味するのは、原子炉を停止する場合、それは本当の停止ではないということです。It has to be cooled for five years. 停止した原子炉は５年間冷却する必要があります。This is a satellite picture looking down on the intake structures that were on the water at Fukushima Daiichi. これは海上にあった福島第一原発の取水設備の衛星写真です。The tsunami destroyed the cooling pumps. 津波が冷却用ポンプを破壊しました。All that rubble along the coast are the cooling pumps that were designed to cool that chain reaction after the shutdown. 海岸沿いのがれきは原子炉停止後の連鎖反応を冷却するよう設計された冷却用ポンプのものです。It didn’t happen. 冷却はされませんでした。We call that a LOUHS – Loss of the Ultimate Heat Sink. 私たちはそれをLOUHS（最終ヒートシンク喪失）と呼びます。Well, it didn’t just happen at Fukushima Daiichi. 福島第一では冷却はただ起こらなかったのです。There were 14 nuclear plants that had their cooling pumps knocked out. １４の原子力プラントの冷却用ポンプが使えなくなりました。This picture shows – in the north, there’s Onagawa that had three nukes. この写真が示しています。北には女川原発の原子炉３基があります。Then came Fukushima Daiichi with six nukes. それから福島第一原発の原子炉６基があります。Then came Fukushima Daini, with four nukes and then just to the south of that was Tokai with one nuke. それから福島第二原発に原子炉が４基あり、ちょうどその南が東海原発で原子炉が１基あります。And all of them lost their pumps. そしてそれらすべてのプラントが冷却用ポンプを失いました。And here’s where luck came in. そしてここで幸運が起こりました。Technology failed. 科学技術は役に立ちませんでした。There’s no doubt technology failed. 科学技術が役に立たなかったことに疑いの余地はありません。And here’s where luck came in. ここで幸運が起こったのです。If that accident – the accident happened on the day shift on a Friday. もしあの事故が…事故は金曜日の日中の勤務時間中に起きました。There was a thousand people at Daiichi, there was a thousand people at Daini, Onogawa and Tokai.福島第一には１０００人、福島第二、女川、東海にも１０００人の職員がいました。 If the earthquake and tsunami had happened in the evening, there would have been 100 people there. もし地震と津波が夜間に起きていたら、職員の数は１００人だったかもしれません。And it was courageous people that stopped the meltdown from being even worse than what it was. そしてメルトダウンが当時の状況よりも深刻化するのを阻止したのは勇気ある職員たちでした。So a 12-hour difference in the timing of that tsunami would have resulted in the contamination, the destruction of Japan – and the contamination of the whole northern hemisphere. つまり津波のタイミングが１２時間違っていたら、日本は壊滅し、北半球全体が汚染されていたかもしれないのです。
So the second – the third point then – the first point was accidents are going to happen frequently. Second is they’re getting worse – and they could have been much worse, is my third point. ですから、二つ目と三つ目のポイントはこうです。最初のポイントは事故は頻繁に起きるだろうということでした。二つ目のポイントは事故は悪化しているということ、私の三つ目のポイントは事故はもっとひどくなる可能性もあったということです。(18:31 Fukushima was a technological breakdown. 福島は技術的には崩壊しました。Nothing worked. なにも機能しませんでした。And it was through luck and the courage of perhaps several thousand people that this accident didn’t result in the destruction of Japan. そしてこの事故で日本が壊滅しないで済んだのは幸運とおそらく数千人の人々の勇気のおかげです。I’ve gotten to know Naoto Kan, who was the Prime Minister of Japan when the accident happened. 私は事故当時日本の首相であった菅直人と知り合いました。And he said – I think he says it best in one sentence – he said, “Our existence as a sovereign nation was at stake.” そして彼は言いました。彼はそれを一つの文章で最もよく表現していると思います。彼はこう言いました。「主権国家としての我々の存在が危機に瀕していた。」Now he’s not the only one who had to face down a nuclear accident. 現在、原発の事故に勇敢に立ち向かわなければならかったのは彼一人ではありません。Mikhail Gorbachev in his memoirs says that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not due to Perestroika. ミハイル・ゴルバチョルは回顧録の中でソビエト連邦の崩壊はペレストロイカが原因ではないと言っています。It was due to Chernobyl. チェルノブイリが原因でした。
So we’ve got two examples – a democratically elected and a communist dictator – who both believe that nuclear power can fundamentally destroy a culture overnight. ですから私たちには二つの先例があることになります。一人は民主的に選ばれ、一人は共産主義の独裁者で、二人のどちらも原子力は一つの文化を一夜のうちに根本的に破壊しうると信じているのです。We know that it’s too big to fail. 原子力は大きすぎてつぶせないと私たちは知っています。The Spanish armada was too big to fail. スペインの無敵艦隊は大きすぎてつぶせませんでした。We all know that. 私たちはつぶせないと思っていました。The Titanic was too big to fail. タイタニック号は大きすぎてつぶせませんでした。We all know that. 私たちはつぶせないと思っていました。And Wall Street was too big to fail. そしてウォールストリートは大きすぎてつぶせませんでした。We all know that. 私たちはつぶせないと思っていました。Well, we also think that nuclear is too big to fail. また、私たちは原子力は大きすぎてつぶせないと考えています。And I think in our hubris, that’s a lesson we really should take from Fukushima. 思い上がった私たちにとって、それは本当に福島から学ぶべき教訓なのだと思います。This is not a technology that’s too big to fail. これは大きすぎてやめられない技術ではありません。I have a way of saying it. こう言いましょう。I say that sooner or later in any foolproof system, the fools are going to exceed the proofs. いかに安全確実なシステムにおいても、いつかは問題が起きるということです。
So to sum up, we’ve got accidents that are going to happen once a decade, they’re going to be incredibly severe and the radiation doesn’t stop at the border. まとめると、私たちは１０年に一度は事故が起き、その事故は非常に深刻なものになることが予想され、放射線には国境がないという状況にあるということです。We know that from Three Mile Island sort of stayed in Pennsylvania. 私たちはそれをペンシルバニア州内に留まったスリーマイル島の事故から知っています。But then Chernobyl contaminated all of Europe. しかしその後チェルノブイリの事故がヨーロッパ全土を汚染しました。And Fukushima is contaminating the entire Pacific. So the question is to us, we have an opportunity now. そして福島の事故が太平洋全域を汚染しています。ですからこの課題は私たちに対するものです。今、私たちにはチャンスがあります。This is not in my way of thinking a sustainable solution. 私の思考回路では原子力は持続可能な解決策ではありません。This is not a holistic solution. 原子力はホリスティックな解決策ではありません。And I really think that’s why perhaps I’m here today, to talk about maybe sustainability and a holistic solution. そしてだからこそ、今日私は持続可能性とホリスティックな解決策について話すためにここにいるのだと本当に思います。This is not that way. 原子力はそんなものではありません。And we can implement from the bottom up a policy that convinces our policymakers to change course before it’s too late. そして私たちは、手遅れになる前に軌道修正するよう政策立案者たちを納得させる草の根からの政策を実行することができるのです。Thank you very much. ありがとうございました。(翻訳文責：佐藤枝理)
