Well it’s been just over six months since Japan was hit by an earthquake, and the Daiichi nuclear plant was awash with copious amounts of extra sea water. As the initial disaster has been out of the news for a while, you might assume that all is well in the orient. You’d be out of your tiny mind you, but you could! So let’s have a recap and see if you still fancy a nice long holiday in Fukushima…
11th of March, 2011, the facts: it was a sunny day at the nuclear plant where everything was ticking along nicely. Then WALLOP, a magnitude 9 earthquake shattered part of Japan and this was followed by a 40m tsunami, two natural catastrophes one after another.
The first two disasters alone wiped out 20,000 people in one hit, and destroyed 125,000 buildings. The quake was so powerful it lowered the coastline by one metre and shunted Japan two metres closer to the USA! On the upside, think how much aviation fuel will be saved by the airlines, tickets will be cheaper for a start!
Anyway, you’d think that would be enough destruction for one day but no – enter disaster three. The tsunami headed for the nuclear plant, which went on to cause the multiple meltdown of three reactors. This intern released more radiation into the atmosphere than any accident since the Chernobyl debacle. Now, everything’s ginger and peachy, according the Japanese Government, but is it?
If parts of Chernobyl are still fenced off and uninhabitable, 25 years later, how can Fukushima be safe six months on? If I didn’t know better I’d say someone is telling porkies to up the country’s cash flow again!
Still, always keen to take in all sides of a story, here’s what the powers at be and the locals say. The government and the power company say the area is safe. But the locals say so much information has been withheld they no longer trust them. Sound familiar?
And as plain as day here’s why the locals have lost faith. Ministers have admitted holding back vital information in order to prevent a panic. (That old chestnut) What that really means is, if there was a panic it would cause problems when notifying the rich and powerful and moving them to safety first.
The day after the earthquake, there was an explosion in the No 1 reactor. A couple of day’s later; reactor three blew its stack, and the very next morning there were blasts at reactors two and four.
These explosions released a plume of radiation, but the government withheldprojections of its size and how it spread up and down the coast and inland to Fukushima city, Koriyama and Tokyo. The call went out and the statement to the plebs was, “Dear peasants, there is no immediate risk to human health.” This was an enormous great fib boys and girls.
The full details of what occurred at the reactor site are still emerging and they are far from complete, and here’s why. Government spokesmen initially denied there was a meltdown. Safety authorities ranked the accident at a mere four on the international scale of nuclear cock-ups.
Not until a month later did it upgrade this to a maximum seven – like Chernobyl. Fibbing on an enormous scale children! Well okay, let’s just sweep the death/loss of 20,000 people and the damage to a mere 125.000 buildings under a carpet for a moment, which is probably where they’ll stay, and take a look at what’s happening today.
You wouldn’t know there’d been a catastrophe; the whole area has been cleaned up. But dig a little deeper and the changes are there. Umbrella sales peaked due to the poisonous black rainthat fell after the explosions, and Geiger counters are selling like hot cakes that have been eradiated and are still warm! And the local food well, most food clicks doesn’t it! The good news, no-one in the contaminated areas will need an X-ray for the foreseeable future.
Clearly the safety goalposts have been moved and the nuclear figures received a thorough massaging, because what was deemed dangerous 12 months ago is now considered safe and legal? This leaves nearly 2 million residents living in areas where the annual radiation dose exceeds the safety target set by the government! Someone should at least write a stiff letter don’t you think!
Even in Tokyo – 240km from the reactors – levels have risen near to a stage where they would’ve been marked with a radiation hazard warning if they were found in a workplace. Nice!
So, now the dust has settled and the top 50cm of soil has been removed by bulldozers, another set of invisible disasters is emerging. Yes, as usual, it’ll be the cannon fodder of society, the workers who will show the true toll of a disaster such as this.
Now there’s a psychological crisis, which you can assume will go on cause uncertainty and depression amongst the survivors. Most of the local farmers are in despair about their contaminated soil. The young people are leaving, and in the past six months there’s been an increase in suicides.
Unlike an earthquake survivors don’t suffer with post-traumatic stress symptoms of insomnia, shaking and flashbacks. Instead, the radiation creates a slow, creeping, invisible pressure that can lead to prolonged depression. Some people say they want to die and others become more dependent on alcohol and many more will complain of listlessness.
But, don’t fret, don’t get down or depressed, all naughty nuclear tackle can be sucked out of the air and heavily contaminated soil with… SUNFLOWERS!
They’re everywhere now. Is it going to help? I can’t see it personally, but hey, it will brighten up Fukushima until they have to burn the stalks and petals releasing the concentrated radioactivity back into the environment! Call me old fashioned, but isn’t time to ditch the nuclear nonsense…
Can you hear clicking…
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