Japanese officials consider cell transplants for nuclear workers

By Ian Sample

Frozen blood stem cells could save workers’ lives if they become ill after exposure to high levels of radiation

Workers at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant are taken to hospital under a blue sheet after they were exposed to high levels of radiation. Photograph: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images

Japanese authorities are considering plans to collect and freeze cells from engineers and water cannon operators at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in case they are exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

The proposal has been drawn up as a precautionary measure that could potentially save the lives of workers if they receive high doses of radiation while battling to bring the damaged nuclear reactors under control.

High levels of radiation can cause serious illness and death from bone marrow failure, but the condition can be treated if patients are seen quickly enough and given transplants of blood stem cells collected before they are exposed.

The procedure requires workers to take a drug for several days that causes their bone marrow to release stem cells into the blood. They are then hooked up to a machine through which their blood is passed and filtered to extract the stem cells.

[more at guardian.co.uk...]

Bill Bard says:

Just so you know, it’ll be alright, nothing to worry about!!!

By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo

Workers who have been fighting to bring the reactors under control at Japan’s strick nuclear plant expect to die from radiation sickness, according to the mother of one of the men.

The so-called Fukushima 50, the group of around 300 technicians, soldiers and firemen who work in shifts of 50, have been exposed repeatedly to dangerously high radioactive levels as they attempt to avert a nuclear disaster.

The mother of one of the men has admitted that the group have discussed their situation and have accepted that death is a strong possibility.

“My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary in the long-term.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said the world needed international safety standards on nuclear power by the end of the year as fears surrounding the extent of radiation leaks in Japan continued to grow.

Mr Sarkozy, on the first trip by a foreign leader to Japan since the devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, said he would call a meeting of the G20's nuclear power watchdogs to discuss safety regulations. “We must address this anomaly that there are no international safety norms for nuclear matters … We need international safety standards before the end of the year.”

[more at telegraph.co.uk...]

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Japanese officials consider cell transplants for nuclear workers

By Ian Sample

Frozen blood stem cells could save workers’ lives if they become ill after exposure to high levels of radiation

Workers at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant are taken to hospital under a blue sheet after they were exposed to high levels of radiation. Photograph: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images

Japanese authorities are considering plans to collect and freeze cells from engineers and water cannon operators at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in case they are exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

The proposal has been drawn up as a precautionary measure that could potentially save the lives of workers if they receive high doses of radiation while battling to bring the damaged nuclear reactors under control.

High levels of radiation can cause serious illness and death from bone marrow failure, but the condition can be treated if patients are seen quickly enough and given transplants of blood stem cells collected before they are exposed.

The procedure requires workers to take a drug for several days that causes their bone marrow to release stem cells into the blood. They are then hooked up to a machine through which their blood is passed and filtered to extract the stem cells.

[more at guardian.co.uk...]

Bill Bard says:

Just so you know, it’ll be alright, nothing to worry about!!!

By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo

Workers who have been fighting to bring the reactors under control at Japan’s strick nuclear plant expect to die from radiation sickness, according to the mother of one of the men.

The so-called Fukushima 50, the group of around 300 technicians, soldiers and firemen who work in shifts of 50, have been exposed repeatedly to dangerously high radioactive levels as they attempt to avert a nuclear disaster.

The mother of one of the men has admitted that the group have discussed their situation and have accepted that death is a strong possibility.

“My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary in the long-term.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said the world needed international safety standards on nuclear power by the end of the year as fears surrounding the extent of radiation leaks in Japan continued to grow.

Mr Sarkozy, on the first trip by a foreign leader to Japan since the devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, said he would call a meeting of the G20's nuclear power watchdogs to discuss safety regulations. “We must address this anomaly that there are no international safety norms for nuclear matters … We need international safety standards before the end of the year.”

[more at telegraph.co.uk...]

View the original article here

A kid-friendly tax shelter to consider before April 18 …

In my last few columns I’ve been talking about a number of ways you can both save for retirement and reduce your tax burden.

But today I want to talk about one more type of tax shelter that’s great for a child in your life — whether it’s a son, a granddaughter, or even a niece. In fact, I’ve been using this very same type of account for my daughter Vela since she was born in 2007.

It’s Called a Coverdell ESA,
And Here’s How It Works …

Yes, the name sounds pretty intimidating … but what is now called a Coverdell Education Savings Account used to be known simply as an Education IRA. I guess lawmakers later decided that calling it a retirement account was silly since these things have to be used by age 30. Either that or they were looking for something to name after yet another Senator (in this case, Paul Coverdell of Georgia)!

Of course no matter what you want to call it, the Coverdell account does function very much like Roth IRAs designed for young students.

Like Roth IRAs, they allow you to sock away money — $2,000 a year, in this case — by tax day. And like Roth IRAs, as long as the funds are used for the benefit of schooling costs, any returns earned in the account will be distributed free of additional taxation going forward.

While that’s not an eye-popping number, it’s still a nice start and will add up over time. Plus, it’s perfect for using any tax refund money you receive.

Meanwhile, don’t underestimate the benefit of that tax shelter! Heck, let’s say you happened to put $2,000 into your child’s Coverdell account and invested it so wisely that within ten years it had miraculously turned into $200,000. That full amount would be available to pay for your kid’s education, and not one penny of taxes would need to be paid as you pulled it out!

Another cool feature of Coverdell accounts is that — unlike ever-popular 529 Plans — they can be used for expenses related to all types of schooling: High-priced pre-K classes, private secondary education, and many associated costs such as computers and books. It’s worth noting that this feature was set to expire in 2010 — but as part of the recent tax package, it has now been extended.

The contribution limit was also set to drop down to just $500 a year in 2011, but the tax package also extended the $2,000-a-year limit through 2012.

What about income restrictions, you ask?

A Coverdell can be a great way to save some money for future education expenses.

Well, like the Roth IRA there are some caps to be aware of: Technically, you cannot fund a Coverdell if you have MAGI above $110,000 filing singly or $190,000 married filing jointly. Phase-outs kick in at lower levels, too.

But here’s where it gets interesting — even a child with no earned income can contribute to a Coverdell!

So if you’re above the income threshold, you can just gift the $2,000 to the child under the Uniform Transfer to Minors Act and they can put it in the Coverdell themselves.

Yes, it’s a stupid formality, but if it works in your favor, go with it!

And again, please note that you can establish a Coverdell for ANY child in your life — not just a direct relative but even a friend’s child or grandchild. Corporations and trusts are also free to establish Coverdells.

The only thing to know is that the Coverdell’s beneficiary can only have $2,000 contributed to his or her account in any given year. So you should always ask whether an account already exists and how much has been deposited before establishing one on your own. Contributions must also be made before the beneficiary turns 18.

As I noted earlier, a Coverdell beneficiary has to use the funds before turning age 30, or else taxes and penalties will likely be owed. However, the account can always be switched to another beneficiary before then — even if the new recipient is between ages 18 and 30!

Bottom line: You don’t get the potential for tax deductions that you do with 529 plans, but as you can see, Coverdells are a unique way to sock away a little extra money for someone special. And they can be fully funded in addition to 529 plans. So if you’re an aggressive saver and planner, they are definitely worth investigating no matter what.

If you’re interested in establishing a Coverdell, just check with your regular brokerage house or other financial institution. Most offer them, and it’s just a matter of completing some simple paperwork. But remember, you only have a couple weeks left to open one for the 2010 tax year!

Best wishes,

Nilus

P.S. While I’m using a Coverdell to help plan for my daughter’s future education expenses, I’m helping my dad plan for his retirement with a regular IRA. To learn more about what we’re doing there, just click here.

Nilus Mattive has been obsessed with dividend-paying stocks since the sixth grade. And after graduating from college, he began working for Jono Steinberg's Individual Investor Group, where he wrote a regular investment column. Later, Nilus spent five years at Standard & Poor's editing the company's flagship investment newsletter, The Outlook. During that time, Nilus also penned his first finance book, The Standard & Poor's Guide for the New Investor. These days, Nilus loves telling investors about dividend-paying stocks in his monthly newsletter, Income Superstars.

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Should Residents Of Tokyo Be Preparing For Massive Radiation Exposure? 12 Disturbing Facts To Consider

Does anyone really know what is going on at the Fukushima nuclear complex?  When problems at the facility first surfaced, authorities promised that no significant amounts of radiation would be released.  Then we were told that only those living within 20 kilometers of the complex needed to take precautions.  After that we were told that radiation was showing up in many different types of vegetables all over northern and central Japan but that it was not a major concern.  Now we are being told that the tap water in Tokyo is unsafe for infants to drink.  So what are they going to tell us next?  Should residents of Tokyo be preparing for massive radiation exposure from this disaster?  Tokyo is only 150 miles away from the Fukushima nuclear complex.  If a worst case scenario plays out at Fukushima, exactly what would that mean for the over 30 million people that live in and around Tokyo?

Sadly, so far the authorities in Japan have not been very transparent about this crisis.  But what should we expect?  Internationally, standard operating procedure during a nuclear crisis is to keep the public from becoming too alarmed.  The real scope of the danger is always downplayed in order to avoid a panic.  We saw this at Chernobyl and we are seeing this now.

Not only that, but in a world where legal liability plays such a key role, there is a huge incentive for TEPCO executives not to admit everything that they know.  Admitting something now could potentially cost them massive amounts of money later.

Right now airborne radiation in Tokyo is four times the normal level, but Japanese authorities do not seem too concerned yet.  They still insist that everything is going to be okay.

But things at Fukushima seem to be taking a turn for the worse again.  Today, thick black smoke was belching from Unit 3.  Unit 3 is considered the most dangerous of the reactors because it contains plutonium.  If a large scale release of plutonium were to take place that would be absolutely catastrophic.

But plutonium is far from the only significant danger.  For example, cesium isotopes have a half-life of about 30 years.  All of the cesium that is currently being released at Fukushima will be highly radioactive for decades.

So how much cesium is being released at Fukushima?  Well, nobody knows for sure, but Keith Harmon Snow is estimating that each spent fuel pool at the Fukushima nuclear complex could have 24,000 times the amount of cesium that was produced by the nuclear bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War 2.

Yes, this is a very, very serious crisis.

But up to this point many in the mainstream media have been doing their best to play down the potential dangers.

In fact, some prominent scientists have really done a disservice to the public by putting out blatant falsehoods.

For example, in a disgraceful article published just a few days after the tsunami, Dr. Josef Oehmen of MIT promised that there would not be "any significant release of radioactivity" from the damaged Fukushima nuclear complex....

I repeat, there was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors.

By "significant" I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on - say - a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.

You know, a lot of people actually believed Dr. Josef Oehmen when they read this nonsense.  We are supposed to be able to depend on our top scientists to tell us the truth.

Sadly, these days it is hard to know who you can depend on for the truth.  The following are 12 facts about the crisis in Fukushima that should have all of us deeply concerned....

#1 The Kyodo News Agency is reporting that radiation levels around the Fukushima nuclear facility are now up to 1,600 times the normal level.

#2 According to The Daily Mail, 5 of the now famous "Fukushima 50" are believed to have already died.

#3 Tokyo government officials have announced that radiation levels in Tokyo tap water are now so high that it is unsafe for infants to drink.  In fact, CNN says that tests show that the amount of radioactive iodine in the water is twice what is considered safe for infants....

Government samples taken Tuesday night found 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram of water -- two times higher than the limit that the government considers safe for infants.

#4 Elevated levels of radiation have been found in 11 different types of vegetables grown in the vicinity of the Fukushima nuclear complex.

#5 The government of Fukushima Prefecture is instructing residents that they should not eat any leafy vegetables that have been grown in the prefecture recently.

#6 Government officials have ordered all dairy farms within 18 miles of the Fukushima nuclear complex to suspend all shipments.

#7 Over 100 km south of Fukushima, Spinach containing radioactive iodine 27 times the legal limit has been discovered.  The level of cesium found in the same spinach was 4 times the legal limit.

#8 25 miles from the Fukushima complex, one batch of a leafy green vegetable known as kukitachin was recently discovered to contain 11 times the legal limit of radioactive iodine and 82 times the legal limit of cesium.

#9 The U.S. government has now put in place import alerts on milk products and fresh produce from any of the prefectures surrounding the Fukushima nuclear complex.

#10 25 foreign embassies have already either shut down or moved temporarily out of Tokyo.

#11 Radiation levels in one city north of Tokyo, Utsunomiya, were recently reported to be 33 times above normal levels.

#12 It is also being reported that there were over 600,000 spent fuel rods stored at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex.  Each one of those 600,000 spent fuel rods is a potential "dirty bomb".

Some of the best information that I have found on what is really going on at Fukushima comes from an interview recently posted on Counterpunch with nuclear energy expert Hirose Takashi.  He says that spraying water on the reactor buildings in Fukushima is like "sprinkling water on a desert", and he says that if a worst case scenario does play out a deadly cloud of radiation could cover all of Japan in a matter of days....

As you know, of the six reactors at Daiichi, four are in a crisis state.  So even if at one everything goes well and water circulation is restored, the other three could still go down.  Four are in crisis, and for all four to be 100 percent repaired, I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic.  If so, then to save the people, we have to think about some way to reduce the radiation leakage to the lowest level possible.  Not by spraying water from hoses, like sprinkling water on a desert.  We have to think of all six going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low.  Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan; it generally takes about a week.  That is, with a wind speed of two meters per second, it could take about five days for all of Japan to be covered with radiation.  We’re not talking about distances of 20 kilometers or 30 kilometers or 100 kilometers.  It means of course Tokyo, Osaka.  That’s how fast a radioactive cloud could spread.

In addition, Takashi says that the media is not telling us the truth about the true danger that radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear complex poses....

Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts – that’s per hour.  With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn’t explain what this means.  All of the information media are at fault here I think.  They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space.  But that’s one millisievert per year.  A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.  Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose.  You call that safe?  And what media have reported this?  None.  They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it.  The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping.  What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside.  These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say?  They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance.  I want to say the reverse.  Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body.  What happens?  Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.  That’s a thousand times a thousand: a thousand squared.  That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.”  Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion.  Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

Are you alarmed by what Takashi is saying there?

I know that I was alarmed when I first read it.

The truth is that radioactive material is nothing to mess around with.

Hopefully the authorities in Japan can get this situation under control, because no rational person wants to see a worst case scenario play out.

Let us pray for Japan and the Japanese people.  What they have been through already is nightmarish beyond all imagination, and the last thing they need right about now is a full-blown nuclear catastrophe.

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What do you consider rich?

I recently was reading the Economist special report about global readers and it got me thinking about a few different things. One of them is about what the definition of being rich means. It’s a very difficult thing to define and most that give it a try use absolute numbers to do so. Capgemeni, a consultant, defines a rich, or a high net worth individual as being someone with investable assets of $1M or more. By that measure, there are about 10 million rich people on the planet.

My two big problems with that measure are that:

-it does not account for the cost of life (some places such as the US cost many times more to live in than others such as Vietnam)
-only counting investable assets seems tricky. Does an entrepeneur that owns a private company worth millions not qualify? What about someone who owns a $1M house without a mortgage?

Credit Suisse uses net assets of $1M as the criteria which is simple and makes more sense to me. That estimate qualifies more individuals as “rich”: 24.2 million or 0.5% of the world population.

To me, that is a better criteria but it still lacks consideration for some parts of being rich.

Personally, I will consider myself as rich when my monthly passive income will be enough to pay for my expenses. Too simplistic? Not really in my opinion! I do understand that it would be virtually impossible for companies to estimate how many individuals qualify.

So would I exclude a lot of those “standard rich”? Absolutely. In my opinion, having a lot of debt and a very costly lifestyle (expensive cars, etc) may work fine for a number of years, but if you can’t survive a few months after losing that great job, you are far from rich. I guess it could be debated in many different ways but I feel very strongly about it.

Now the irony here might be that having enough money to live off of through passive income requires one, two and often all of these criteria;

#1-a “passive” business or large amount of cash & investments
#2-a reasonable level of spending
#3-a solid and systematic investment methodology

Of course, billionaires will be able to qualify without looking too carefully at their spending but for most of us, reasonable spending become a big key of the ingredient. That is ironic because our society often promotes big spending as the best way to show off how great things have been going.

Do you agree? Do you think that being rich should be defined in another way? I’d love to hear from you about this.?

If you liked this post, you can consider subscribing to our free newsletters here This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 5:00 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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