Fukushima - the continuing saga

[ChineseTiger1986]

When Chernobyl occurred, the Soviet Union risked hundreds of men to contain the disaster. You will not see that kind of resolve in Japan. The fact that only about 50 staff were left on site after the explosions started going off tells me of cowardice and incompetence of the management.

Communists would often emphasize the sacrifice of the minority to save the majority.

And i think this Fukushima cover up would no longer prevent people to know the truth. Those stupid Japanese are threatening the whole humanity with their incompetence and selfishness.

Something has to be done.

 

[terranMarine]

I'm afraid the whole Pacific is lost, the nuclear plant keeps leaking radioactive water through the ground into the Ocean. Dozens of US marines who went to help Japan have been diagnosed with leukemia, brain tumor etc.., Now these people are seeking compensation. All it takes is another earthquake or tsunami near the area and BAM those radioactive stored water will be released.

 

[bolo]

When Chernobyl occurred, the Soviet Union risked hundreds of men to contain the disaster. You will not see that kind of resolve in Japan. The fact that only about 50 staff were left on site after the explosions started going off tells me of cowardice and incompetence of the management.

The Japs are hiring homeless people to do the dirty work now. But you will never hear about this on CNN.

 

[Fsjal]

Living in East Coast of Australia, I just hope none of the fishes here get any radiation. i enjoy eating seafood, especially sushi.

 

[BoQ77]

I'm afraid the whole Pacific is lost, the nuclear plant keeps leaking radioactive water through the ground into the Ocean. Dozens of US marines who went to help Japan have been diagnosed with leukemia, brain tumor etc.., Now these people are seeking compensation. All it takes is another earthquake or tsunami near the area and BAM those radioactive stored water will be released.

Forget about the like/dislike, my pals ...
To face the nature disaster, especially its affect onto all of us ... better join them or give support to resolve the problem....

The mistake belongs to the one who hide the damage of disaster, ... if they share and call for help, let's be the first one to respond.

 

[Genesis]

Maybe Abe should eat some more fish to show how not poison the fishes are.

Then this whole east china sea problem solved.

 

[Obambam]

Maybe Abe should eat some more fish to show how not poison the fishes are.

Then this whole east china sea problem solved.

Japan MP Yasuhiro Sonoda drinks Fukushima water:

 

[cnleio]

Gift from Japan to America.

 

[Pangu]

The Japanese Government Hides the Truth: Fukushima Radiations are Killing Children, TEPCO Employees

Students walk near a geiger counter, measuring a radiation level of 0.12 microsievert per hour, at Omika Elementary School, located about 21 km (13 miles) from the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, in Minamisoma, Fukushima prefecture.(Reuters / Toru Hanai)


Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of Futaba, a town near the disabled Fukushima nuclear plant, is warning his country that radiation contamination is affecting Japan’s greatest treasure – its children.


Asked about government plans to relocate the people of Fatuba to the city of Iwaki, inside the Fukushima prefecture, Idogawa criticized the move as a “violation of human rights.”


Compared with Chernobyl, radiation levels around Fukushima “are four times higher,” he told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze, adding that “it’s too early for people to come back to Fukushima prefecture.”


“It is by no means safe, no matter what the government says.”


Idogawa alleges that the government has started programs to return people to their towns despite the danger of radiation.


“Fukushima Prefecture has launched the Come Home campaign. In many cases, evacuees are forced to return. [the former mayor produced a map of Fukushima Prefecture that showed that air contamination decreased a little, but soil contamination remains the same.]“

Screenshot from RT video

According to Idogawa there are about two million people residing in the prefecture who are reporting “all sorts of medical issues,” but the government insists these conditions are unrelated to the Fukushima accident. Idogawa wants their denial in writing.


“I demanded that the authorities substantiate their claim in writing but they ignored my request.”


Once again, Idogawa alludes to the nuclear tragedy that hit Ukraine on April 26, 1986, pleading that the Japanese people “never forget Chernobyl.” Yet few people seem to be heeding the former government official’s warning.


“They believe what the government says, while in reality radiation is still there. This is killing children. They die of heart conditions, asthma, leukemia, thyroiditis… Lots of kids are extremely exhausted after school; others are simply unable to attend PE classes. But the authorities still hide the truth from us, and I don’t know why. Don’t they have children of their own? It hurts so much to know they can’t protect our children.


“They say Fukushima Prefecture is safe, and that’s why nobody’s working to evacuate children, move them elsewhere. We’re not even allowed to discuss this.”


The former mayor found it ironic that when discussing the Tokyo Olympics, scheduled for 2020, Prime Minister Abe frequently mentions the Japanese word, “omotenashi,” which literally means that you should “treat people with an open heart.”


In Idogawa’s opinion, the same treatment does not apply equally to the people most intimately connected with Fukushima: the workers involved in the cleanup operations.


“Their equipment was getting worse; preparation was getting worse. So people had to think about their safety first. That’s why those who understood the real danger of radiation began to quit. Now we have unprofessional people working there.

Reuters / Chris Meyers

They don’t really understand what they’re doing. That’s the kind of people who use the wrong pump, who make mistakes like that.


“I’m really ashamed for my country, but I have to speak the truth for the sake of keeping our planet clean in the future.


Idogawa then made some parallels with one of the most tragic events in the history of Japan: the use of atomic bombs on the industrial cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of World War II.


“The authorities lied to everyone (about the effects of the atomic bombings)…They hid the truth. That’s the situation we are living in. It’s not just Fukushima. Japan has some dark history. This is a sort of a sacrifice to the past.”


When pressed on the details of a United Nations report that says there have been no radiation-related deaths or acute diseases observed among the workers and general public, Idogawa dismisses it as“completely false,” before providing some of his own experiences at the height of the crisis.


“When I was mayor, I knew many people who died from heart attacks, and then there were many people in Fukushima who died suddenly, even among young people. It’s a real shame that the authorities hide the truth from the whole world, from the UN. We need to admit that actually many people are dying. We are not allowed to say that but TEPCO employees also are dying. But they keep mum about it.”


When asked to provide solid figures on the actual number of people who died under such circumstances, Idogawa refrained, saying “it’s not just one or two people. We’re talking about ten to twenty people who died this way.”


Asked about other options that Japan has for providing energy sources to its 126 million people, he responded that despite having many rivers, the government neglects to promote hydro energy.


Why? Because it’s not “profitable for big companies!”


Idogawa goes on to provide a blueprint for fulfilling Japan’s energy needs that sounds surprisingly simple.


“We can provide electricity for a large number of people even with limited investment, without taxes. Just use gravity, and we may have so much energy that there’ll be no need for nuclear plants anymore.”


Premonitions of disaster


Even before the massive failure at the Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, the day northeastern Japan was hit by an earthquake-triggered tsunami that caused the meltdown of three of the plant’s six nuclear reactors, Idogawa knew the facility was dangerous.


“I asked them about potential accidents at a nuclear power plant, pretending I didn’t know anything about it, and it turned out they were unable to answer many of my questions,” he said. “Frankly, that’s when it first crossed my mind that their management didn’t have a contingency plan. It was then that I realized the facility could be dangerous.”


The former mayor, who happened to be in a nearby town on the day the tsunami struck, recalled driving back to Futaba upon news of the earthquake. Only later did he discover how close he came to losing his life in the approaching tsunami.
“I managed to get there before the bigger tsunami came. It was only later that I realized that I escaped the water… I got lucky. The tsunami came after I drove off that road and up the mountains.”

Members of the media and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) employees wearing protective suits and masks walk toward the No. 1 reactor building at the tsunami-crippled TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture March 10, 2014.(Reuters / Toru Hanai)

Questions regarding the nuclear power plant dominated his thoughts on the 30-minute drive home. “I just kept thinking, ‘If it’s that strong, what will happen to the power plant? What if the reactor is damaged? What if the water leaks? What will the city do? What am I to do as mayor?’”


Once in his office, Idogawa looked out the window and was confronted by what he described as “a terrifying sight.”
“Usually you couldn’t see the sea from there, but that time I could see it just 300-500m away,” he said.


It was at that point that the mayor realized that the nuclear power plant had probably suffered some sort of damage. After spending the night watching news reports on television, the only source of information since even mobile phones were not working, Idogawa announced an emergency evacuation early the next morning. Not all of the residents, however, heard the emergency broadcast.


“Later, I learned that not all Futaba residents heard my announcement. I feel guilty about that…I found out that the Fukushima prefecture hadn’t given me all the information in a timely fashion. And now the government isn’t taking any steps to ensure people’s safety from radiation, and isn’t monitoring the implementation of evacuation procedures.”


Beyond nuclear energy


Katsutaka Idogawa believes a transformation to a cleaner, safer form of energy source for Japan would require a willingness to change the country’s laws.


“There are many laws in Japan, perhaps too many. There are laws about rivers and the ways they’re used. We could change laws regarding agricultural water use and start using rivers to produce electricity. Changing just this law alone will allow us to produce a lot of energy.”


All of this could be accomplished “without contaminating our planet.”


However, such bold proposals do not “appeal to big companies, because you don’t need big investments, you don’t need to build big power plants. It’s not that profitable for investors, for capitalists.”


But for the former mayor of a devastated Japanese town, lost to nuclear radiation, Idogawa senses a sea change forming in public opinion.


The Japanese people are beginning to “realize that we need to avert nuclear disasters, so 60-70 percent of the population is in favor of using natural energy.”


“It took us a long time, but one day we’ll follow the example of Europe, of Germany.”

The Japanese Government Hides the Truth: Fukushima Radiations are Killing Children, TEPCO Employees | Global Research

 

[Pangu]

Japan’s Great Wall of Ice: TEPCO starts work on Fukushima underground barrier
Published time: June 02, 2014 21:26
Get short URL

AFP Photo / Pool / Koji Sasahara

Tweet

Share on tumblr
Trends

Fukushima nuclear disaster
Tags

Accident, Ecology, Health, Japan, Nuclear
Aiming to isolate radioactive water build-up, Fukushima nuclear plant's operator, TEPCO, has started constructing a huge underground ice wall around the facility. The ambitious project will have to be maintained for well over a century to reach its goal.

Tokyo Electric Power Company has launched work on the 1.5 kilometer underground ice wall, which is to be built around four reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear power plant, Kyodo news agency reports.

According to Kyodo, 1,550 pipes will now be inserted into the ground to circulate coolant around the reactors, keeping the surrounding soil constantly frozen.

The government funded project, which will cost an estimated 32 billion yen (US$314 million), is scheduled for completion by the end March 2015. It will then take a few more months to fully freeze the soil after the coolant starts circulating, according to TEPCO.

Reuters

The work started days after Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) granted the go-ahead for the project, despite earlier reservations. TEPCO reportedly managed to convince the watchdog that the ice wall – which might cause some ground to sink – will not have any significant effect on the stability of the reactor buildings.

However, some experts remained skeptical of TEPCO’s plan, which is the latest move in the company’s struggle to contain the fallout of the March 2011 nuclear disaster triggered by a strong earthquake. TEPCO’s efforts have been overshadowed by revelations that the company repeatedly concealed the true radiation levels at the plant and “misreported” the radiation risks to US servicemen helping to contain the disaster. New evidence also allegedly shows that some 90 percent of workers were not present at the plant when the meltdown started.

While the frozen wall may indeed help to at least reduce the escape of contaminated liquid into the groundwater, it will still take decades – if not hundreds of years – for record-high radiation levels to clear away in the area, including in the ocean.

AFP Photo / Pool / Toru Yamanaka

Michio Aoyama, a professor at Fukushima University’s Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, told Kyodo that the Fukushima plant contains radiation equivalent to “14,000 times” the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, and has seriously affected the ocean and the coastal area.

The problem is thus left for the coming generations to tackle, stretching the impact of the accident into the future. Japan, meanwhile, is eyeing the resumption of work on some of its 20 nuclear power plants suspended or shut down after the 2011 earthquake, despite public protests. As of June, two units at Oi nuclear power plant are the only operating Japanese nuclear facilities.

Japan’s Great Wall of Ice: TEPCO starts work on Fukushima underground barrier — RT News

 

[Brainsucker]

If this Fukushima doesn't handled correctly, Japan will become the land of Godzilla in near future. So solve this problem quickly!!!

 

[Jlaw]

Assume this works, but already too late
"Michio Aoyama, a professor at Fukushima University’s Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, told Kyodo that the Fukushima plant contains radiation equivalent to “14,000 times” the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, and has seriously affected the ocean and the coastal area.."

Meanwhile, no one should be visiting Japan if they value their health.

 

[terranMarine]

Assume this works, but already too late
"Michio Aoyama, a professor at Fukushima University’s Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, told Kyodo that the Fukushima plant contains radiation equivalent to “14,000 times” the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, and has seriously affected the ocean and the coastal area.."

Meanwhile, no one should be visiting Japan if they value their health.

Better believe it the number of cancer victims in Japan shall rise sharply in the near future thanks to those incapable Japanese handling the disaster in a amateur manner.

 

[tranquilium]

...Whatever you do, make sure the fix actually sticks this time. As someone who actually worked in nuclear facility before, I understand it is not as bad as people make it out to be, but it is still quite a serious problem. Frankly it is like an annoying fly keep circling your kitchen, sure it will probably not do too much damage, but it is still disgusting.

 

[terranMarine]

Didn't our Japanese member proudly pointed out to us about Japanese quality as one of the finest? What a let down their fixes must have been