We’re killing the planet. Actually, more accurately, we’re making this planet uninhabitable.

The picture above is one of a few I saw posted around the interwebs this morning of the “water” that’s coming out of faucets in Charleston, WV today – after authorities gave the all-clear and said the stuff was safe to drink, bathe in, and give your kids. Lovely, huh?

And even though information from Japan about what’s going on at and around Fukushima is now non-existent due to a new state secrets law that prohibits the dissemination of information (and even prohibits journalists from asking the questions!), there are some things we do know – and they’re not good.

Noted radiation expert/nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson has been answering questions. He’s actually less concerned than many about the amount of radiation that has reached the US west coast, but warns that he wouldn’t eat any Pacific seafood and that there’s nowhere to escape the toxic damage we’ve done to the planet.

Harvey Wasserman was at the forefront of the No Nukes movement when the term was coined, as one of the organizers of Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) concerts. He’s continued the fight over the decades, and today is editor of NukeFree.org.

Although we’re able to get precious little actual news from the Fukushima region, there is a lot we do know and from various sources.  A few pages to bookmark:

In the Editor’s Blog at NukeFree.org, Harvey Wasserman’s latest “Toll Mounts Among U.S. Sailors Devastated by Fukushima Radiation” tells of the US Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was nearby when the earthquake hit Japan on March 11, 2011, and the sailors onboard were among the first responders.

Within a day of Fukushima One’s March 11, 2011, melt-down, American “first responders” were drenched in radioactive fallout. In the midst of a driving snow storm, sailors reported a cloud of warm air with a metallic taste that poured over the Reagan.

Then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan, at the time a nuclear supporter, says “the first meltdown occurred five hours after the earthquake.” The lawsuit charges that Tokyo Electric Power knew large quantities of radiation were pouring into the air and water, but said nothing to the Navy or the public.

Had the Navy known, says Bonner, it could have moved its ships out of harm’s way. But some sailors actually jumped into the ocean just offshore to pull victims to safety. Others worked 18-hour shifts in the open air through a four-day mission, re-fueling and repairing helicopters, loading them with vital supplies and much more. All were drinking and bathing in desalinated water that had been severely contaminated by radioactive fallout and runoff.

Then Reagan crew members were enveloped in a warm cloud. “Hey,” joked sailor Lindsay Cooper at the time. “It’s radioactive snow.”

The metallic taste that came with it parallels the ones reported by the airmen who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and by Pennsylvania residents downwind from the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island.

It’s sickening, literally. And our government’s response silence is shameful.

We’ll stay on this story, as there’s nothing else we can do.

Susie Madrak checked in to talk about the news, including Christie’s continuous woes, yesterday’s filibuster of emergency Unemployment Insurance and more.

And Bruce Springsteen weighed in on BridgeGate, musically, last night with Jimmy Fallon. Bruuuuuuuuuce!