Fukushima residents may never return to their homes.
Work to shut down the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is proceeding rather slowly, due to TEPCO, the nuclear regulator and the Japanese Government being indecisive and unwilling to face facts. This callous disregard for the continued radiation released by not covering up the melt down nuclear reactor plants with earth, concrete and boric acid and thus effectively burying the reactors and sealing their fate — is resulting in additional massive release of radioactivity…
Finally the government admits the obvious — nuclear energy reactors are prone to melt downs when an earthquake hits. And thus the other shoe drops on the much vaunted global nuclear renaissance.
Also finally the people of Japan and specifically the Fukushima residents are allowed to hear the truth about not being able to return home ever. Because of the nuclear folly.
And seems they finally woke up and heard the sound of the other shoe falling…
That along with the realization that Fukushima is just as uninhabitable as Chernobyl and will be this way for ever.
And the awful truth takes time to sink, because only now the outgoing Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan in a fit of understatement, announced that the areas around Fukushima nuclear plant will be uninhabitable for many years…
And that is because all the data from the Ministry of Science & Technology suggest that in most places around Fukushima the yearly radiation dose would be well over 1,500 millisieverts and clearly unsuitable for human habitation.
We agree fully. That is clearly uninhabitable territory, especially when the International Commission on Radiological Protection itself suggests no more than 1 millisievert of exposure to radiation is allowed each year for the general public. And no more than 20 millisieverts per year of radiation exposure is permitted for workers in nuclear power plants. Here it’s worth noting that all Fukushima workers have received many times the allowable limit dose.
This spate of bad news follows after the death and destruction from the catastrophic nuclear energy factory melt down of the Japanese Fukushima plant which took place more than six months ago and has been releasing radiation ever since.
This nuclear melt-down of volcanic dimensions keeps spewing out radioactivity that now can be found and measured throughout the world as it’s raining down on agriculture and water aquifers and consumed by us as an invisible and insipid quiet killer.
Further this month it was revealed that the Fukushima nuclear plant was found to have been crippled and ‘sent’ into meltdown by the earthquake. This clearly contrasts with the nuclear industry’s assertion that the ensuing tsunami was responsible for the catastrophe and not the overall nuclear plant design that was unable to withstand earthquakes…
The fact of the matter is that Japan’s nuclear reactors cannot cope with intense earthquakes — same as all similar designs of nuclear energy plants worldwide. It’s worth noting that this particular design is the most prevalent nuclear energy plant design favoured by both world leaders US and Russia as well as France and by the leading companies GE and Westinghouse as well as by Arriva, Toshiba, Samsung, the Russian industries and most other industrial heavy hitters around the world.
Yours,
Pano
PS: So much for the much vaunted nuclear renaissance. May this be the final tombstone for this wrong-headed industry… Yet I wouldn’t hold my breath on this.
PS2: Much more work needs to be done in order to replace the electricity baseload with renewable energy and that is the best focus of our work efforts.
PS3: And in the US with the three earthquakes in the last three days one has to wonder how safe the nuclear plants are or the same vintage and design like Fukushima. First in Colorado, then Virginia’s quake that shook the US from South Carolina to New England and finally, when San Francisco had a major rattler we all hold our breath and pray that nothing like Fukushima’s melt down of the nuclear reactors happens again in the US….
