The Catastrophe That Keeps On “Giving”

One of the scariest events in recent memory happened in Japan on March 11, 2011. On that day, a magnitude-9 earthquake shook northeastern Japan for six minutes and unleashed a devastating tsunami. These disasters killed nearly 16,000 people, made 300,000 homeless, and caused serious shortages of food, water, medicine, and other necessities.

The tsunami created an even worse problem: It disabled the emergency generators at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, preventing them from cooling the reactors. The lack of sufficient cooling led to the meltdown of three nuclear reactors, hydrogen air explosions, and the release of radioactive material.

So far, no solution has been found for these problems. In fact, since 2011 they’ve only gotten worse. “We were told that it was only three partial meltdowns, and that we shouldn’t worry about it,” explains Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at City College in New York and CUNY Graduate Center. “Now we know it was 100 percent melt in all core reactors... We’re in totally unchartered territory now.”

Other experts agree. “[What happened in] Japan is by orders of magnitude many times worse than [the event at] Chernobyl,” says Dr. Helen Caldicott, an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate.

Searching For A Solution

Authorities simply don’t know how long it will be until reactors 1, 2, and 3 could be dismantled and cleaned. Some have estimated this could take as long as 40 years, and others say it will take even longer. Dr. Caldicott thinks even this latter opinion is too optimistic. “They simply can’t clean it up,” she says.

Other nuclear accidents have also caused problems, but by every measure the problems at Fukushima dwarf all of those. In Japan, millions of bags of radioactive sand and debris have been stored for years on the nearby beach; they are lying there because no one knows how to dispose of them safely. A research vessel set out to determine when – if ever – fish caught in the nearby waters would be safe to eat. But they had very few fish to study as their entire catch fit into one small bucket.

Japanese experts say the problems at Fukushima are unique. For example, in incidents of this kind, the rods need to be removed from the reactors, but in this case the rods became bent so removing them is impossible. Moreover, radiation and related problems are not being contained and may be spreading far beyond Fukushima.

Can You Bank On It?

To a great extent, Fukushima has fallen out of the news, and even when it does get mentioned there are no details about the possible threat it still poses to people, property, wildlife, and nature. Meanwhile, contamination from the plant continues to flow into the ocean, raising additional concerns.

Is it just an oversight that a story as important as this one is not getting more coverage in the media? Or do certain powerful forces want this story to be covered up?

Banks in Japan have loaned an estimated $100 billion to build Japan’s nuclear power plants, and billions more in cleanup and other expenses. The cost of the accident is estimated at a multiple of this.

The banks, understandably, want to be repaid, but the only way this can happen is if the plants are restarted.

However, 70 percent of the Japanese public is now opposed to nuclear power. If public opinion prevails and the plants remain closed, what will happen to these banks? A more important question is what will happen to Japan?

Over Land And Sea

Another question also begs to be asked: What will happen to other countries – such as America? Hot particles (tiny radioactive particles) have been found in Seattle, San Diego, and other areas along the West Coast; they’ve also been found in Quebec.

Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry executive with 44 years of experience in the industry, is also a whistleblower. “We are seeing not only small amounts of radiation but growing amounts of radiation on the West Coast,” he says.

But he believes that of even greater concern are liquid releases. “Fukushima has an enormous amount of radioactive material in the ground that will continue to purge itself out into the Pacific,” he says. This is worrisome because organisms that live at the bottom of the ocean absorb this radioactivity, get eaten by bigger organisms, which in turn get eaten by still bigger ones, and so on up the food chain. The result: “We are seeing fish 200 miles away with well above the radioactive limits for fish,” he says.

The Japanese have standards that are 10 times tougher on safety than America has. “A fish in Japan that doesn’t meet those standards can be shipped to the US and will never be inspected.” As a result, Gundersen does not eat fish that were caught in the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, more radiation continues to pour into the ocean every day. The 2011 earthquake shattered the aquifers near the plant and allowed the basins to crack. Ground water now moves into and out of those radioactive basins to the tune of 300 tons a day.

To get an idea how much this is, tanker trucks that spray water to hold the dust down hold about 20 tons. This translates to 15 tanker trucks spilling radioactive water into the Pacific every day. And to date, this has gone on for 1,500 days – the equivalent of 23,000 tanker trucks pouring radioactive water into the Pacific. And this is not expected to stop any time soon.

Safety First?

There are 23 nuclear plants with the same design as Fukushima here in the States, all of them near major population centers; worldwide there are 35 such plants. In total, there are more than 400 nuclear power plants around the world and many of them are said to have “far weaker safety standards than Japan’s.”

Not everybody shares these fears. According to The Guardian, “Less than 1 percent of the affected people in Japan got a dose of more than 1 millisievert from external exposure,” says Sae Ochi, a pediatrician who went to Fukushima as a volunteer after the accident. The global average annual background dose from natural sources of radiation is about 3 millisieverts in a year.

Other experts say the fear of cancer and other diseases from the radiation are unwarranted. While Gundersen, among others, is concerned about an increase in cancer in Japan, this too is disputed. “We don’t expect any health effects from radiation at Fukushima,” says Gerry Thomas of Imperial College London.

Scientific American reports that engineers still have to locate the molten fuel, which seems to have melted through steel vessels. It remains so radioactive that no humans can enter the reactor buildings. Tepco, the company that owns the Fukushima plant, has “no idea where and how much fuel debris is in the reactor now,” says nuclear engineer Tadahiro Katsuta of Meiji University.

Fukushima is truly frightening, and to get a better idea of the totality of the disaster it’s important to look at some of the ramifications. Most important is how much danger the accident poses to people in Japan and in other countries. Investors will consider if the problems associated with nuclear power plants will cause this technology to be discarded and which other industries might benefit. Shoppers will give more thought to the safety of the food they purchase, and environmentalists will search for solutions to very complicated problems.

Even if an answer to the leaking radiation were found right now, if it would be possible to guarantee that no one’s health will be impacted from the accident and that life in Japan could somehow revert to the quiet there was before the earthquake and tsunami, the suffering so many people experienced till now makes this one of the worst disasters in memory. Let’s pray that the world is spared from any additional disasters.

Sources: fairwinds.org; noaa.gov;
scientificamerican.com; standeyo.com;
theguardian.com; wikipedia.com.

By Gerald Harris