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Fukushima Update: Why We Should (Still) Be Worried

By Karen Charman | WhoWhatWhy | January 20, 2012

After the catastrophic trifecta of the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan last March—what the Japanese are referring to as their 3/11—you would think the Japanese government would be doing everything in its power to contain the disaster. You would be wrong—dead wrong.

Instead of collecting, isolating, and guarding the millions of tons of radioactive rubble that resulted from the chain reaction of the 9.0 earthquake, the subsequent 45- to 50-foot wall of water that swamped the plant and disabled the cooling systems for the reactors, and the ensuing meltdowns, Japanese Environment Minister Goshi Hosono says that the entire country must share Fukushima’s plight by accepting debris from the disaster.

The tsunami left an estimated 20 million tons of wreckage on the land, much of which—now ten months after the start of the disaster—is festering in stinking piles throughout the stricken region. (Up to 20 million more tons of rubble from the disaster—estimated to cover an area approximately the size of California—is also circulating in the Pacific.) The enormous volume of waste is much more than the disaster areas can handle. So, in an apparent attempt to return this region to some semblance of normal life, the plan is to spread out the waste to as many communities across the country as will take it.

At the end of September, Tokyo signed an agreement to accept 500,000 metric tons of rubble from Iwate Prefecture, one of eight prefectures designated for cleanup under a new nuclear decontamination law passed on January 1. The law allows for much of the radioactively contaminated rubble to be incinerated, a practice that has been underway at least since the end of June.

But the sheer amount of radioactive rubble is proving difficult to process. The municipal government of Kashiwa, in Chiba Prefecture to the west and south of Tokyo, recently shut down one of its main incinerators, because it can’t store any more than the 200 metric tons of radioactive ash it already has that is too contaminated to bury in a landfill.

According to the California-based Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN), burning Fukushima’s radioactive rubble is the worst possible way to deal with the problem. That’s because incinerating it releases much more radioactivity into the air, not only magnifying the contamination all over Japan but also sending it up into the jet stream. Once in the jet stream, the radioactive particles travel across the Northern Hemisphere, coming back down to earth with rain, snow, or other precipitation. Five days after the Fukushima meltdowns began, radioactive fallout from the disaster reached the West Coast of the United States. Approximately a week later, Fukushima fallout was measured as far away as France.

In October, the journal Nature reported that the Japanese government’s initial estimates of radiation from Fukushima were substantially less than what Scandinavian researchers calculated from a global network of radiation monitoring stations that the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization uses to detect nuclear weapons tests. … Full article

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January 24, 2012 - Posted by | Nuclear Power | ,

2 Comments

  1. People in the Western World, need to reexamine the “way” they view Japan and that includes not only how that Country is governed but what actual “say” the Japanese people have in their Governments process!

    It has taken almost a year to realize that Japan is actually being “run” by its Powerful Utility Companies and this “business” relationship extends in a “Control Continuum” that extends at one end, from actual Utility direct financial support of the highest Government Leaders in the Country, to the widely known use of organized gangs to keep citizens in line at the other!

    The idea that individual Japanese people actually have a say in how they are governed, much less the way their Energy is generated, is just a well publicized fantasy that the Utilities uses to put a nuclear “smily face” on the grim reality that ever facet of Japanese life is less important than what is good for these Utilities! These Powerful Utilities ARE Japan, and the Japanese people are only “forced” customers of these Utilities since they have no other choice of providers when it come to basic needs like electricity, at lest until now! Solar panels have allowed many to get the electricity they need and this is a huge threat to these Utilities, that must be “crushed” ASAP if they are to maintain their complete control over the Japanese people!

    Ever since 3/11, the rest of the World’s attention has been focused on the Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster at Fukushima and Japan’s response to their triple melt down. What we have learned is that the Government has allowed TEPCO to not only remain in Control of this debacle but they have actually enabled the Utility to place huge numbers of Japanese citizens at risk rather than demand that the Utility think first of human health instead of Corp. shareholder profits. The fact that radioactive pollution has now spread Globally and is affecting the rest of the Planet is hardly mentioned in MSM which points to an even greater problem for the rest of mankind; we are helpless and as yet unable to demand any “better” treatment from Japan because our own Leaders are for the most part are in full support of the those Utility backed Leaders in Japan.

    Kudos to Germany and many other Countries for pointing the finger at Nuclear Power and the Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster RISK every nuclear complex now represents! People globally now are becoming informed and starting to demand answers to basic questions and once people start asking questions perhaps change will occur, even if not for the Japanese themselves… one thing is for certain, the Japanese people will be affected by their Trillion Dollar Eco-Disaster for much longer than the estimated 40 to 100 years that it will take to “tidy up” after Fukushima…

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    Comment by CaptD | January 25, 2012

  2. […] Fukushima Update: Why We Should (Still) Be Worried (alethonews.wordpress.com) […]

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    Pingback by Rense & Rifat – A Fukushima Fallout Will Dwarf the US Arsenal « News Worldwide | April 5, 2012


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