Dumping nuclear waste on defenseless Russians
Submitted by rossini on 27 November 2010 - 7:22pm
Reporter: There are few good stories in this place. The grass, the water, everything is radioactive. And he says....
Man living in Mayak: (Pointing to a streamside meadow) That is the most contaminated spot in our village. Women used to herd geese here and sit on the ground. They were exposed to the radiation the whole day. They’re all dead now.
Reporter: 30 kilometres upstream stands Russia’s oldest nuclear factory, Mayak. An appalling accident there in the 50s released massive amounts of radioactivity. Accidents keep happening in Mayak, the most recent three years ago. Mayak means irradiated milk, and a river 1,000 times as radioactive as normal. Genetic defects in people 25 times and cancer incidence four times the Russian average. Recycling with ancient technology, producing even more radiation. This, of all places, is to receive 951 radioactive fuel rods from Germany. That puzzles even Russian government advisors.
Vladimir Kustnetzov, former chief inspector of the Russian Nuclear Inspectorate:
Kustnetzov: The facility urgently needs to be modernised. It needs personnel and investments. Incidents are registered in Mayak every year in which radioactivity is released into the environment.
Reporter: The rods were supplied to communist East Germany by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and were used in a research reactor. Now the Saxony government wants to take the rods from the interim storage in Ahaus 4,000 kilometres to Russia. And why Mayak? The state invokes an old agreement between Russia and the USA, under which nuclear material goes back to where it came from. But this bilateral contract is not legally binding on Saxony, the Saxons admit. In response to our question, the Saxon science ministry told us matter-of-factly, “Of course cost issues come into the matter.”
Wolfgang Renneberg, former head of the reactor safety department of the federal environment ministry: “ Such a state authority can’t justify such transportation simply by arguing it’s cheaper to export this material to Russia. That is inadmissible in a law-governed state and is simply totally intolerable.
Reporter: Less cost in Germany, more radiation in Mayak.
Sylvia Kotting-Uhl, Alliance 90/The Greens Grünen, spokesperson for atomic policy: Everything around there is contaminated and we worsen that when we send fuel rods there and don’t know what’s going to be done with them, we’ll worsen the situation for the people living there.
Reporter (in clinic): The cancer clinic for the inhabitants of the region. Through the years the hospital has collected the data of 30,000 local people, the doctor says. The data show, she says, that the cancer incidence and the radiation dose are connected. Next door men wait to be examined.
Patient: They keep us here like experimental rabbits. Atomic physicists get a memorial, our kind only crosses for our graves. Burials every day. Five to six cemeteries, all full.
Reporter: And what does the German federal government say about the transportation? We’re with environment minister Röttgen, responsible for all questions of atomic safety. From the beginning, he backed the decision to take the spent fuel to Mayak. He wrote to the Member of Parliament Kotting-Uhl in October: The federal government welcomes the repatriation. In Mayak “considerable efforts have been made to improve safety”, he says.
Improved safety? The former chief inspector of the Russian nuclear inspectorate knows the installation exactly. Has safety improved?
Vladimir Kustnetzov: No, of course not. How can one talk about solved problems when waste is drained into the open effluent drainage system? Nothing has changed. Nor has anything new been built, to do that would need colossal investment.
Reporter: So, is that admissible? German nuclear law states unmistakeably that “radioactive residual materials are used without causing damage or have to be disposed of as radioactive waste in an orderly manner”.
Prof. Alexander Rossnagel, nuclear law specialist at Kassel University: Without causing damage means that neither the population in the surroundings nor the environment are allowed to be damaged.
Renneberg: These materials are not allowed to stay abroad.
Reporter: Why?
Renneberg: Because at the moment no orderly disposal, no final storage, no secure final storage abroad can be referenced. And because that is so, the material has to come back to Germany.
Reporter: And if it doesn’t?
Renneberg: Well, if it doesn’t then we’ve rid ourselves with a very cheap trick of radioactive materials in a way violating nuclear law.
Reporter: Does environment minister Röttgen intend to break the law he’s in charge of? Earlier this week his ministry wrote to us: “The radioactive waste resulting from reprocessing will stay in the Russian Federation and will be stored there permanently.”
But nowhere in Russia is a final repository for highly radioactive waste. The minister won’t give us an interview on these contradictions.
Germany is exporting its disposal problems to a place where there will be no resistance. They’re poor there and have no lobby.
(Reporter asking woman) Have you had explained to you what foodstuffs are most dangerous?
Woman farmer: They tell us everything has to be brought in from outside. But how am I supposed to live without my garden? What am I supposed to buy here from 80 euros a month? We all eat our own things.
Reporter (as woman milks a cow): And do you drink your milk often?
Farmer: How can I not drink my own milk?
Reporter: Survival at the most polluted place on the globe.
21.11.2010 11:50
The German government is ridding itself of highly dangerous nuclear waste by dumping it on rural people in Russia who can’t defend themselves. They’ve already suffered terribly in Mayak, said to be the most radioactively contaminated place on the globe. See 
http://archive.greenpeace.org/mayak/mayakstory/index.html
Now, hoping it will be out-of-sight-out-of-mind, German provincial and national authorities plan to send nearly 1,000 spent fuel rods there, probably next month. One of Germany’s leading political television magazines, Monitor, recently showed the horrific lives nuclear waste has caused people in the area. If you understand German, you may want to watch at http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/sendungen/2010/1118/atom.php5 .
Presenter Sonia Seymour Mikich: The CASTOR protests of Gorleben ( http://indymedia.org.au/2010/11/11/50000-opposed-german-nuke-waste-transportation) have shown yet again how nuclear waste has entrapped us. There’s no final repository anywhere. There are no disposal suggestions that would be suitable for a million years – that’s how long the fuel rods radiate. And yet the power station running times are blithely extended and the radioactive waste keeps growing. So the federal environment ministry and the state of Saxony have come up with a great idea: we’ll export the problem. 951 highly radioactive fuel rods from a research reactor in Dresden are to be taken to Russia. Then we’d be finally rid of them, 4,000 kilometres away, in Mayak.
http://indymedia.org.au/2010/11/11/50000-opposed-german-nuke-waste-transportation) have shown yet again how nuclear waste has entrapped us. There’s no final repository anywhere. There are no disposal suggestions that would be suitable for a million years – that’s how long the fuel rods radiate. And yet the power station running times are blithely extended and the radioactive waste keeps growing. So the federal environment ministry and the state of Saxony have come up with a great idea: we’ll export the problem. 951 highly radioactive fuel rods from a research reactor in Dresden are to be taken to Russia. Then we’d be finally rid of them, 4,000 kilometres away, in Mayak.Reporter: There are few good stories in this place. The grass, the water, everything is radioactive. And he says....
Man living in Mayak: (Pointing to a streamside meadow) That is the most contaminated spot in our village. Women used to herd geese here and sit on the ground. They were exposed to the radiation the whole day. They’re all dead now.
Reporter: 30 kilometres upstream stands Russia’s oldest nuclear factory, Mayak. An appalling accident there in the 50s released massive amounts of radioactivity. Accidents keep happening in Mayak, the most recent three years ago. Mayak means irradiated milk, and a river 1,000 times as radioactive as normal. Genetic defects in people 25 times and cancer incidence four times the Russian average. Recycling with ancient technology, producing even more radiation. This, of all places, is to receive 951 radioactive fuel rods from Germany. That puzzles even Russian government advisors.
Vladimir Kustnetzov, former chief inspector of the Russian Nuclear Inspectorate:
Kustnetzov: The facility urgently needs to be modernised. It needs personnel and investments. Incidents are registered in Mayak every year in which radioactivity is released into the environment.
Reporter: The rods were supplied to communist East Germany by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and were used in a research reactor. Now the Saxony government wants to take the rods from the interim storage in Ahaus 4,000 kilometres to Russia. And why Mayak? The state invokes an old agreement between Russia and the USA, under which nuclear material goes back to where it came from. But this bilateral contract is not legally binding on Saxony, the Saxons admit. In response to our question, the Saxon science ministry told us matter-of-factly, “Of course cost issues come into the matter.”
Wolfgang Renneberg, former head of the reactor safety department of the federal environment ministry: “ Such a state authority can’t justify such transportation simply by arguing it’s cheaper to export this material to Russia. That is inadmissible in a law-governed state and is simply totally intolerable.
Reporter: Less cost in Germany, more radiation in Mayak.
Sylvia Kotting-Uhl, Alliance 90/The Greens Grünen, spokesperson for atomic policy: Everything around there is contaminated and we worsen that when we send fuel rods there and don’t know what’s going to be done with them, we’ll worsen the situation for the people living there.
Reporter (in clinic): The cancer clinic for the inhabitants of the region. Through the years the hospital has collected the data of 30,000 local people, the doctor says. The data show, she says, that the cancer incidence and the radiation dose are connected. Next door men wait to be examined.
Patient: They keep us here like experimental rabbits. Atomic physicists get a memorial, our kind only crosses for our graves. Burials every day. Five to six cemeteries, all full.
Reporter: And what does the German federal government say about the transportation? We’re with environment minister Röttgen, responsible for all questions of atomic safety. From the beginning, he backed the decision to take the spent fuel to Mayak. He wrote to the Member of Parliament Kotting-Uhl in October: The federal government welcomes the repatriation. In Mayak “considerable efforts have been made to improve safety”, he says.
Improved safety? The former chief inspector of the Russian nuclear inspectorate knows the installation exactly. Has safety improved?
Vladimir Kustnetzov: No, of course not. How can one talk about solved problems when waste is drained into the open effluent drainage system? Nothing has changed. Nor has anything new been built, to do that would need colossal investment.
Reporter: So, is that admissible? German nuclear law states unmistakeably that “radioactive residual materials are used without causing damage or have to be disposed of as radioactive waste in an orderly manner”.
Prof. Alexander Rossnagel, nuclear law specialist at Kassel University: Without causing damage means that neither the population in the surroundings nor the environment are allowed to be damaged.
Renneberg: These materials are not allowed to stay abroad.
Reporter: Why?
Renneberg: Because at the moment no orderly disposal, no final storage, no secure final storage abroad can be referenced. And because that is so, the material has to come back to Germany.
Reporter: And if it doesn’t?
Renneberg: Well, if it doesn’t then we’ve rid ourselves with a very cheap trick of radioactive materials in a way violating nuclear law.
Reporter: Does environment minister Röttgen intend to break the law he’s in charge of? Earlier this week his ministry wrote to us: “The radioactive waste resulting from reprocessing will stay in the Russian Federation and will be stored there permanently.”
But nowhere in Russia is a final repository for highly radioactive waste. The minister won’t give us an interview on these contradictions.
Germany is exporting its disposal problems to a place where there will be no resistance. They’re poor there and have no lobby.
(Reporter asking woman) Have you had explained to you what foodstuffs are most dangerous?
Woman farmer: They tell us everything has to be brought in from outside. But how am I supposed to live without my garden? What am I supposed to buy here from 80 euros a month? We all eat our own things.
Reporter (as woman milks a cow): And do you drink your milk often?
Farmer: How can I not drink my own milk?
Reporter: Survival at the most polluted place on the globe.
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Dumb as a rock, for sure.
Anyone who regards the US as a trustworthy partner or views US elections as democratic, has their head in the sand.
I'm particularly confused by the part about Germans regarding the US primaries as democratic. The '08 primaries were when the superdelegates stepped in and overrode the delegates chosen by the voters.
I wonder how much attitudes have changed since that 2008 cable.
got one.....
Yup, that looks like a US agent.
A friend to the US and Mission Germany? Is Mission Germany the US operation to control German elections?
da Man is on a mission
no doubt. Don't even need to leave home, Base, numero Uno.
Bagdhad is Base numero Dos.
Heavy dose.
Got one 4 sho.
outed his ass.
There's a real problem with rebranding.
Somehow Nazi fascism managed to rebrand itself as American democracy.
Yes, the US bombed Germany, but not the factories that the US had built for Hitler, and not in any way that might have impeded the concentration camps.
Yes, the US put some Nazis on (show) trial in Nuremberg, but not the thousands of more important ones it smuggled into the US and put in charge of US policy.
In fact, if not for fear of the Russians winning, the US might not have invervened in Germany at all, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it.
We were at war with Japan because the Japanese aren't white, Christian, or Aryan, but we weren't really at war with Germany.
And after the success in keeping the Russians from winning, the first thing we did was rebuild Germany with the Marshall Plan.
Meanwhile all the big corporations that got rich from slave labor were allowed to continue to flourish without any penalties.
I think the German people got hoodwinked. Maybe not as badly as the Americans did, but pretty badly.
I used to think that the US was democratic and anti-fascist when I was younger. Turned out to be lies, but a lot of people still believe those lies.
and another one, almost like the other one
this time from Munich
Just for the hell of it
one grab while the site is still up.........
How America Views the Germans
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,731645,00.html
With the US history of interfering in elections all over the world, there's probably been a lot of covert US influence on German elections also.
Based on the Cable Views from Munich.....
i.e., the ones I read before the site went down today, well, to say the least, I was shocked.
I was shocked at how minutely intricate the reports were. The USA of course has had loads of time, decades to infiltrate German politics. I had always expected this would be the case but not to this degree, not this deep. Of course we don't have proof that any one particular German politician is working for the US State Dpt. or even the CIA or any of the other 50 or 60 or even 70 some such agencies unknown to us common Volk but we can be certain this is the case in at least one case, more likely a handful.
Moles dig deep.
It should be an easy task to identify the moles. Once the site is back up, all we have to do is to look more closely at the reports from Munich and Berlin.
But how would the US State Dpt. most effectively work at influencing elections in Germany other than having their very own candidates?
Propaganda plays a major role of course, in Germany and all over the world. In other words, the press in Germany would have to be equally as important, would also be subject to widespread infiltration.
We can also look into who in Germany is pushing for on-line and e-voting.
In the end, Das Volk is as dumb as a goddamn rock. It's the silent minority that keeps the place tidy.
For the longest time, Germans looked up to the USA as a role model. Yours truly has always condemned this as a grave mistake, even before I knew it really was.
But let's face it, once an undesirable gains too much popularity, pop goes the weasel. Germany is home base numero uno outside CONUS. The place must be literally crawling with spooks in suits.
This makes me want to cry.
How sad that the governments of developed countries care only about money and not about human lives.
But that's what development is all about, turning a living planet, and living creatures, into a dead planet where nothing can live.
All so that a few very rich people can have their yachts and private jets and expensive cars, and big mansions, and a huge staff of servants to cook them the best food and see to their every need.
But if those rich people don't get what they want, they won't give money to the big political parties, and it takes a lot of money to keep the Greens and the leftist parties, some of whom actually care about life and the planet we live on, from being able to bring about change.
In the U.S., the big multinational corporations, under the direction of the wealthy elite who own the controlling shares, now spend billions of dollars getting out the vote even in mid-term elections.
Watch the little animated video that Naomi Klein tweeted:
http://fubarandgrill.org/node/754#comment-1747
How do they get away with that? Governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." People who vote give them that power. Why do people vote to turn over the national treasury to officials they can't hold accountable? Because the big corporations spend billions of dollars telling people that their vote is precious even though it might not even be counted, that their vote is a voice in government, which it certainly is not, that if they don't vote they can't complain, which is absurd as the right to gripe is an inalienable right and existed long before governments did, that if they don't vote the bad guys will win even though there aren't any good guys on the ballot and if there was they'd be assassinated, and that if they don't vote they're "doing nothing," although anyone with half a brain can see that doing nothing is a lot smarter than delegating your power to people who don't give a damn about you.
Wouldn't governments do the same things if nobody voted? Sure, but they would have no legitimacy, no consent of the governed.
How much power do German citizens really have? Yes, your votes are counted and ours aren't, but you still end up with a government that has no common sense and doesn't really give a damn if it kills innocent people for profit. Of course Merkel and Rottgen will irradiate the German people as readily as they irradiate Russians, if it is convenient. And use the full might of the German government to suppress any protests. If Russia balks, the radioactive waste will go to Gorleben, even if Merkel or some new Green Party or Die Linke Party head of government has to hire tens or even hundreds of thousands of extra police to make sure the rabble don't get in the way of the nuclear profiteers. What else could they do? The wastes have to go somewhere, and there is nowhere safe that they can go. Imagine that you're the new head of the German government, rossi. What do you do with the nuclear wastes? Yes, you can stop producing them, but what do you do with the stuff that's already there?
You have to do something with it, and no matter what you do, it will endanger somebody. You can't just let the stuff sit for a million years until it is no longer dangerous.
Many times in life we get a second chance. We fuck up, we try again. Sometimes we get a third, fouth, or fifth chance. But there are some things where you don't get a second chance if you fuck up. If you fuck up and kill a few billion people, you can always repopulate and try again. But if you fuck up and spread radioactivity all over the planet, there's no way to clean it up, no way to make it safe, no way to go back and undo it.
How much power do German citizens really have?
None whatsoever. It's a police state. As I've hinted on in other postings over the past few days, Germany is currently working on transforming the Army from an old style cold war tag along weekend bunch of warriors incapable of defending the country.... to a professional military made up of mostly civilian components that will eventually (sooner than later) be seen on the streets within the countries boundaries (currently unconstitutional) : Jackboots in Blue.
Das Volk? Asleep at the wheel, pacified and preoccupied with ones self.
Although we live in a police state, it's not Texas or Arizona. I do see a difference. It's hard to describe without going into detail. That leaves room for me to elaborate on the subject in the near future. My only fear is that no one will be interested. Germany is so far away and so small. Who cares? Let me begin the ending of that misconception with this statement: Germany is the power house of the European Union, financially and otherwise. You talk about Germany today, you're talking about Europe. Talk about Europe and you're talking parallels and in some cases, alternatives. Besides, we have history and projections. In other words, the USA is not the world's belly button. Each minute portion of the puzzle is important and should be of interest for each of us.
r
I am hearing ya
The people in power eat their own tails and everyone else's.