It seems to have been the “perfect storm” of natural disaster and gross negligence.
For sheer long-term impact, perhaps the most under-appreciated event of 2011 is the nuclear accident at Fukushima.
That this convergence of worst-case scenarios continues to be compounded by decisions made to protect industry and political interests is a shame and a crime. Witness: the Japanese government’s Nuclear Accident Interim Report which found that
Plans laid out by the Nuclear Disaster Special Measures Law did not function properly because the scale of the disaster was unimaginable.
Following a 2007 offshore earthquake at Niigata that damaged a nuclear facility, Japanese nuclear regulators began an investigation to determine the potential for a catastophic nuclear emergency precipitated by natural disaster. They were forced to terminate the effort for political reasons.
…local governments opposed this probe, saying that if a claim was made that the earthquake caused the nuclear accident, the public would be overly apprehensive. The agency then concluded, “There is virtually no possibility that a natural disaster could cause a nuclear disaster,” and the probe was terminated.
Fast forward to 2011, post-Fukushima, where damage control still seems to be the order of the day.
On December 16, the Japanese government declared that the situation at the crippled nuclear plant has been resolved, a statement that was endorsed with enthusiasm by U.S. nuclear interests.
However, as we noted just days ago, the disaster at Fukushima may have been largely forgotten by the mainstream media, but it is hardly over.
Arnie Gundersen explains in the latest Fairewinds Assoc. video why the “stability” of the plants is of an extremely tenuous nature, with makeshift fixes holding the line only so long as no further seismic upsets occur to topple them like a house of cards.
We are also told that, besides water-born contamination escaping from the crippled reactors, a conscious decision has been made to dump incinerated nuclear waste into Tokyo Bay.
Furthermore, human exposures appear to have been (and continue to be) badly mismanaged.
TEPCO Believes Mission Accomplished & Regulators Allow Radioactive Dumping in Tokyo Bay from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.
“…the scale of the disaster was unimaginable,” my Aunt Fanny.
Don’t we hear this after every single industrial accident? The BP oil rig? Exxon Valdez? Bhopal? (And Katrina, of course.) “Who could possibly have imagined…” Every damn time.
So what you’re saying is that we don’t have a failure of regulation, industry practices, or disaster response — we have a failure of imagination. So, I’d like all nuclear plant owners and all regulators around the world to put down their Blackberries and join the late, great Gene Wilder in song…
“Come with me
And you’ll be
In a world of pure imagination.
Take a look
And you’ll see
Into your imagination.
…
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Wanta change the world?
There’s nothing to it.
There is no
Life I know
To compare with pure imagination.
Living there
You’ll be free
If you truly wish to be.”
And here in America the NRC and the nuclear power industry is fighting tooth and nail to get rid of the one, single regulator that isn’t 100% co-opted by the nuclear industry to make sure that no one in any position of control will dare say anything that the industry has not pre-approved.
And when I hear Japan say, “There is virtually no possibility that a natural disaster could cause a nuclear disaster” and in the next breath, “the scale of the disaster was unimaginable”, I immediately think of Entergy, Atomic Rod and the NRC discussing decrepit nuclear reactors in the US that are leaking deadly poisons, built on earthquake fault lines, operating 20% above their designed capacity at the end of their designed lifespan, or are of a known inherently faulty design (like Fukishima Daichi #1 and Vermont Yankee are).
Entergy, Atomic Rod and the NRC all say that the Fukushima disaster can’t happen here, and when asked why their response is exactly as flimsy as saying, “Because their control rooms are labelled in Japanese and ours are in English, that’s why! Now shut up, you future-hating hippie! Oh, and keep your fingers crossed…”
If we had a Free Press, if we had a government For The People, if we had a Free Market economy, then all nuclear reactors would be shut down in America immediately.
Lisa: “But dad, don’t you think…”
Homer: “Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don’t have to think all the time. Just like that rain forest scare a few years back. Our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn’t they?”
Lisa: “No, Dad, I don’t think…”
Homer: “There’s that word again!”
Something many folks seem to lack. Maybe gutting all those arts programs wasn’t such a good idea after all….
Happy New Year GMD!
.You could even say the amount of jobs it will create will be in direct proportion to how long the plant stays open. There would be a broad selection of jobs, from health and human services, firefighters, waste management, to construction. Lead would redefine sartorial culture, even if you wouldn’t be caught dead in it, and no one would want a cheap knock off.
For many it would cut down on the work day from hours to minutes. Public transit would improve and with it jobs, because of the distance most would be traveling to get to the job. And if people don’t mind traveling most of the day to get to and from work, it would create a more leisurely day, there for creating service industry jobs.
According to Time Science: Even now, the effort to contain the Chernobyl accident is far from over: workers in white suits and respirator masks show up for work every day, constructing a new concrete shield to replace a massive sarcophagus built in 1986 that contains the still-radioactive core.
The article goes on to say: Because some of the isotopes released during a nuclear accident remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years, cleanup is the work not just of first responders but also of their descendants and their descendants’ descendants. Asked when the reactor site would again become inhabitable, Ihor Gramotkin, director of the Chernobyl power plant, replies, “At least 20,000 years.
Now there’s some job security. That’s 1000 generations of VY workers.
What it would sound like today if you could imagine a matrilineal family doing a job this long would be something like: “Hi my name is Rhiannon Saber Tooth. My family has a long tradition of building homes, traveling, and hunting wooly mammoth. As of January 1, 8112 BC we no longer carry wooly mammoth products, but still have the best agricultural free nuts and berries money can buy. ” Visit: NOMADICHOMES™ Est. 18112 BC.”
People would know there family history because nothing would change, There will be names like, Mason Shift #3 East Entrance 8th Wheel Barrel the LDCXXXII.
We are truly fucked.
.