US radiation levels exceed evacuation level

SAN FRANCISCO—High radiation levels exceeded the evacuation level requiring the wholesale evacuation of civilians at many locations in the States over the past four years, from 2011 to 2014. Those who remain are supposed to be wearing hazmat suits.

Did evacuation happen in your town or city? No, of course not. It did not happen anywhere that I know of.

This heavy radiation influx precedes the Fukushima Daiichi, Japan three reactor meltdowns. Therefore, by definition it cannot be just strictly from the Fukushima radiation releases. The killing radiation came from someplace else, plus Fukushima’s rad. This pattern is repeated again and again in cities throughout America. What happened to beautiful zapped America?

Certain scuttlebutt in the nuclear community is that America’s is the most irradiated population in the world. Getting zapped like that leads to “shortened life spans” in the quaint expression of the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It means the rad kills you before your time. This is from greatly increased rates of radiation induced heart disease, radiation induced cancers and hundreds of other radiation induced illnesses.

Today’s HazMat suit required and evacuation level cities include a lot of locations. Notable due to very high radiation levels are the following:

Billings, Montana, 769 CPM
Idaho Falls, Idaho, 488 CPM
Rapid City, South Dakota, 463 CPM
Grand Junction, Colorado, 465 CPM
Colorado Springs, Colorado, 536 CPM
San Diego, California, 417 CPM and
Raleigh, North Carolina, 474 CPM

The “evacuation required” level is 300 CPM (counts per minute). A single count is one radioactive decay.

Evacuate to where?

Evacuation is required by national and international law, with no mechanisms to implement it, other than private funds, i.e., the victims’ own money in most cases.

“Where” the radioactive people are to go is unknown. How to pay for their required health care is unknown. How to dispose of that many radioactive bodies is unknown.

Is Fukushima to blame?

The three destroyed and melted down reactors are not solely to blame for the nuclear deaths, illnesses and these, as yet undone, required evacuations.

The current evacuation required cities of Billings, Idaho Falls, Rapid City, Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, San Diego, and Raleigh endured greatly elevated radiation levels before Fukushima happened.

The contaminated cities were close to or above Evacuation Levels 4 years ago and they still are. They are just higher because of Fukushima.

What to do?

Although excess radiation is now planet-wide, for people with two or more houses in different parts of the country or world, it is easy to simply move further away from the radioactive contaminated hot spots.

The vast majority of people can’t do that. Their only solution to the contagion is euphemistically called shelter in place. People do the best they can with what they have. Everybody gets irradiated by recent or previous radiation releases. Everyone is included. No one is left out. No one escapes.

Those with two or more homes may be able to extend their lives a bit. How much? Don’t know—it depends on the individual and the locations.

Those that don’t own two or more houses in “safe” areas? Do the best they can with their “shortened life span?” That’s absurd; but, what other answer is there?

Example: See the graph of Billings’ radiation below. The deadly level of radiation in Billings preceded Fukushima, as it did in many other American cities.

The 4 year CPM graph clearly shows the radiation count at or above the Evacuation Level for four years. The Sept 8, 2010, radiation level was 630 CPM. That was before three Fukushima reactors blew up on March 11, 2011.

The peak Billings’ radiation level in the last four years was 1,087 CPM on Nov 1, 2012. That is 3.6 times the evacuation level and more than 10 times the alert level of 100 CPM.

Oct. 20’s Gamma CPM: current 769 High 1,087 Low 435 Average 597.

Notes

Radiation levels are sourced from the EPA and NETC.com The graph is from NETC.com using the paid member version for Oct 20, 2014.

HazMat suits on Amazon.

Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner, a staff writer for Veterans Today, a correspondent for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper and a frequent contributor to various online publications. He reports on war, politics and the two nuclear weapons labs in the Bay Area. Nichols is writing a book based on 20 years of nuclear war in Central Asia. He is a former employee of an Army Ammunition Plant. You are encouraged to write Nichols at duweapons@gmail.com