Canada’s Nuclear Freakout at Pickering Reactors |YRTW

Canada Nuclear false alarm – Text of the warning sent via cell phones to residents Sunday morning in Toronto regarding the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station – talk about your wake-up call!

This Week on the Nuclear Hotseat Libby Interviews Angela Bischoff, of Ontario Clean Air Alliance

Canada nuclear false alarm – Ontario Canada got a real nuclear wake-up call on Sunday, January 12, when warning of an accident at the 8-reactor Pickering nuclear facility was sent to Toronto-area cell phones at 7:33 in the morning — and wasn’t rescinded until 9:11 a.m.. So what has been the fallout from that nuclear fail?  To find out, Libby spoke with Angela Bischoff, who is Director of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance on Tuesday, January 14, 2020. 

There still remain several unanswered questions a week after the emergency alert was sent out to people across Ontario warning of an unspecified incident at one of the worlds oldest nuclear reactors in operation, the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. The province’s solicitor general has stepped in and says an investigation into the incident should be completed fairly quickly. However, the nuclear scare has still left residents on edge with over 32,000 potassium iodide, or KI, pills ordered in the first two days alone following the incident.

A DE-PROGRAM NOTE ABOUT IODINE YOU SHOULD KNOW:

Despite what “experts” say: In the event of a radioactive release from a nuclear reactor, potassium iodide ONLY protects against 2 radioactive isotopes out of more than 1,800 known released into the environment. iodine I-131 with a half-life of about 8 days and I-129 that has a half-life of 15.7 MILLION YEARS. Which do you think “experts” and the mainstream press will tell you about? Clearly KI is used as a pacifier for the misinformed public.

In the body, iodine has a biological half-life of about 100 days for the body as a whole. It has different biological half-lives for various organs: thyroid – 100 days, bone – 14 days, and kidney, spleen, and reproductive organs – 7 days. Radioactive iodine is a bio-mimicker

For potassium iodide to be effective it needs to be taken at least 24 hours before an exposure. Contraindicated for a multitude of medications, KI can damage the thyroid, and brings with it other side effects in the form of:

• Red, bumpy, itchy skin
• Painful joints
• Facial and body swelling

After using potassium iodide for a long period of time, a series of other serious health complications may also surface including thyroid cancer.

The National Health and Nutrition Survey undertaken by the CDC showed iodine levels falling over 50% in the last 30 years. Therefore in order to bring iodine levels to full sufficiency we require 12.5mg of iodine daily. The recommended daily intake set by the DRI is 150mcg. Iodine’s true role—making up more than 1/2 of the body’s Immune System—is not well understood. Deficiencies in iodine have a great effect on the immune system and its response to infectious diseases.

“At 6 grams daily (which is 6 million micrograms/day or 6,000 milligrams/day!), a much higher dose, iodine has been used to cure syphilis, skin lesions, and chronic lung disease,” says Cousens. “From a larger physiological perspective, it is important to realize that the thyroid is only one gland of many glands and tissues that needs iodine. Other glands/organs/systems with high iodine uptake are the breasts, ovaries, cervix, blood, lymph, bones, gastric mucosal, salivary, adrenal, prostate, colon, thymus, lungs, bladder, kidney, and skin. Iodine is found and used in every hormonal receptor in the body.”

Read more about the heath benefits & precautions of iodine.

According to the CDC website on Potassium Iodide they state in part:

Do not use dietary supplements that contain iodine in the place of KI (potassium iodide). They can be harmful and non-efficacious. Only use products that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Knowing this and their track record, would your trust them with your health?

So who was responsible for sending the alert?

A radiological hazard alert was issued on January 12th at 7:23 AM ET by the Province of Ontario’s Emergency Operations Centre through the Alert Ready system. According to the Alert Ready Emergency Alert System website, the agency works with several federal, provincial and territorial emergency management officials, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Pelmorex, a broadcasting industry and wireless service provider, to send the alerts. Martin Belanger, the director of public alerting for Pelmorex, a company that operates the alert system, said there are a number of safeguards built in, including having two separate platforms for training and live alerts. “The software has some steps and some features built in to minimize that risk and to make sure that users will be able to know whether or not they’re sending an alert through the training platform or whether they’re accessing the live system in the case of a real emergency,” he said.

Despite assurances from “officials” the AREAS notice sent out stated an interesting caveat:

It is at the sole discretion of the authorized government issuer, in this case, the Province of Ontario, to determine when an alert is issued, the content of the alert and the geographical area that is to receive the alert.

We are working with the Province of Ontario to determine why this alert was distributed to the public.

Emergency alert – Province plans to keep old Pickering Plant running

Hard on the heels of a blunt wake-up call – in the form of an erroneous emergency alert – about the dangers of operating a large nuclear station in the heart of our largest urban area, it has now been revealed that Premier Ford actually wants to keep operating this old and unsafe plant past its current shutdown deadline.

After cancelling wind power projects and refusing Quebec Premier Legault’s repeated offers of water power at half the price of power from Pickering, Premier Ford is said to be pushing for operations to continue at the Pickering Nuclear Plant beyond 2024.

The 3^rd oldest (and one of the largest) nuclear stations in North America is surrounded by twice as many people (2.2 million within 30 km.) as any other nuclear plant on the continent. It relies on seriously outdated technology, including computer systems running software from the 1970s.  Pickering’s shared containment for multiple reactors is a dangerous design that would never be allowed today. Its reactor’s positive void coefficient reactivity, is a design flaw that was also present in the Chernobyl reactors.

Far from having “a safety record that is “the best in the world” as Pickering MPP Peter Bethlenfalvy erroneously claimed in the Toronto Star, the plant has been plagued with safety problems, including a major loss of coolant accident in 1983. The entire Pickering A plant was shut down in 1997 due to safety concerns. Attempts to rebuild these reactors were a fiasco of delays and cost overruns, with Ontario Power Generation eventually giving up on refurbishing two of the four A reactors.

Pickering’s six operating reactors are offline roughly 30% of the time, meaning they continue to perform poorly and lead to increased use of gas-fired generating plants and greenhouse gases. In fact, the station is the among the most expensive and least reliable nuclear stations in the world according to a report written for the Ontario Energy Board.

Extending the life of this old and dangerous nuclear plant will require the approval of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). We believe the CNSC should refuse to allow any further operation of a patched-up and already well beyond its design life plant beyond 2024. Instead, the people of Pickering and east Toronto who have lived with this dinosaur on their doorsteps for close to 50 years should be given back its 600 acre waterfront site to spur new community opportunities.

Rather than waiting for the next emergency alert, let’s give Pickering-Uxbridge MPP Bethlenfalvy a wake-up call and tell him it is time to shut this old and dangerous plant down – call him now at 905-509-0336 and email him at [email protected]

Also please sign this petition to STOP the planned nuclear repository on the shore of Lake Huron near the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant. we don’t need the largest bodies of fresh water to be polluted with nuclear waste.

Million a Week Club – YRTW 2020.1 – Your Cumulative Radiation

Cruel Death rides the winds around the world.

References

• Alert Ready Emergency Alert System
• Nuclear Hotseat
• Ontario Clean Air Alliance
• SOS Great Lakes
• Willing Victims of Bumblehood
• 170 Million Americans are Drinking Radioactive Water – This Interactive Map Shows If You Are Too
• Your Radiation This Week – YRTW 2020.1

Source: The De-program Network