What we don't know won't hurt us?

by: Sue Prent

Wed Feb 08, 2012 at 00:49:00 AM EST

It bears mentioning again that, while any effort to apply lessons learned  to current nuclear operations seems to be advancing without appreciable urgency, there is plenty of evidence that industry and government agents in Japan and here at home hastily circled the wagons even before the affected population had been warned to evacuate.  

The grisly truth is that, in the aftermath of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, protecting economic interests has been given a far higher priority than human health and safety.

In a February 2 interview conducted by CCTV host Margaret Harrington, Maggie Gundersen of Fairewinds Assoc. points out that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...that's our guys...knew how serious the situation at Fukushima was, fully nine days before residents were ordered to evacuate!

So effective has the effort been to deflect negative messaging from Fukushima that, if one does not go well out of one's way to find information about radiation impacts, or even the progress of stabilization efforts at the devastated facility, one is unlikely to know anything at all.

We are dependent on the efforts of independent investigators, like Fairewinds Associates, who, facing a desperate information void, have seized the initiative to do the thankless work of analysis and public education that so-called "regulatory" agencies and governments have completely abdicated.

Shining the Light on the Triple Meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

On January 7, none other than the Economist carried this observation about the first government commissioned report concerning Fukushima, and how unlikely it is that the nuclear energy cabal will embrace any of its lessons:

Such reports are, after all, confidence-building exercises. They are meant to reassure the public that, by exposing failures, they will help to prevent them from being repeated. In the case of Fukushima Dai-ichi there is still plenty to be nervous about. Although the government declared on December 16th that the plant had reached a state of "cold shutdown", much of the cooling system is jerry-rigged and probably still not earthquake-proof. On January 1st a quake temporarily caused water levels to plunge in a pool containing highly radioactive spent-fuel rods...Until somebody in power seizes on the report as a call to action, its findings, especially those that reveal sheer ineptitude, suggest that the public has every reason to remain as scared as hell.

While we're on the subject, I wanted to share an interesting website that a friend passed along to me.  Together with a roster of articles on current technical issues at nuclear plants all over the world, it includes this live, rather chilling video window on the wreckage of Fukushima Daiichi.  Notice how the only sound is the whistling wind and the whitecaps breaking against the nuclear shoreline.  Brrr!