Article: Fukushima, Japan, & Sonoma County

[Shepherd]

By Shepherd Bliss

“Nuclear Free Zone” reads the comforting, official sign at the corner of Highway 116 and Lynch. It welcomes people coming into Sebastopol from the south.


“What’s a nuclear free zone?” 8-year-old William recently asked his mother, Lynda Williams, who teaches physics at Santa Rosa Junior College. The Sonoma County anti-nuke activist took it as a teaching moment and explained the sign’s meaning.

Unfortunately, nuclear radiation is heading toward the West Coast from Fukushima, Japan. How safe are we? What can we do?

An unprecedented triple disaster hit Fukushima in March, 2011—earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns. The earthquake and tsunami were short-lived catastrophes; 20,000 people were killed and 90,000 lost their homes. However, the crisis at Fukushima is not over and potentially more devastating. Physician Carol Wolman, M.D., recently wrote that “a damaged nuclear facility is like a wounded beast—exceedingly dangerous and hard to control.”

A dozen people from the new Fukushima Response group have been meeting weekly in the last month. They have decided to help organize three July educational forums. Women from the Fukushima Mothers Delegation, eyewitnesses to the catastrophe, will visit the West County in mid-July. They recently staged a Die-In, now on youtube. The new hour-long documentary “Fukushima Never Again” will also be shown, probably on July 18, and accompanied by visitors from Japan to answer questions. The film exposes the cover-up by the Japanese government and TEPCO, a company that runs nuclear power plants.

Dr. Wolman, a long-time researcher on nuclear risks, will make a public presentation at the Sebastopol Grange on July 29. A retired engineer from Japan touring the U.S. to promote the Fukushima cleanup, Yastel Yamada, 72, will join her. “We have to contain this accident,” the humble, soft-spoken cancer survivor was reported as saying to the New York Times.

The organizers and their expert consultants are concerned that people have not been adequately informed of the dangers of radioactive contamination reaching us. “We have a choice,” writes psychiatrist Dr. Wolman. “We can deny the imminent threat posed by the damaged reactors, or we can unite and work together…to defuse the danger.”

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon visited Fukushima this April. He is “pushing for faster action” to avoid radioactive plumes of nuclear waste reaching his state, according to the May 26 NY Times. Sen. Wyden is especially concerned with a pool of radioactive cesium sitting on top of the damaged reactor building # 4. He concluded that it poses “an extraordinary and continuing risk.” Dr. Wolman writes that another earthquake could topple that fuel pool and lead to “an unquenchable fire which would spew out 9 times as much radiation as Chernobyl.”

Kyoto University’s Professor Hiroaki Koide, who worked as a fuel engineer at Fukushima in the l990s, shares her concerns. “The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state. Any radioactive release could be huge,” he told the Times.

Another earthquake--and there have been hundreds in the region since March of 2011--could ignite that pool and create a horrendous radioactive fire that could not be extinguished by water. Fukushima Response advocates stabilizing that hazardous pond.

Meanwhile, the Japanese government continues to maintain that the problem has been contained. However, according to a June 8 Times article, “Some current and former government officials admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster.” The officials were apparently concerned that it could lead to public panic.

On June 17, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced restarting two of Japan’s 50 workable reactors, all of which have been offline since the March, 2011, catastrophe. A majority of the Japanese public objects to restarting them.

How concerned should we be in Sonoma County? “Here in California, we are directly in the path of winds and ocean currents coming from Japan,” writes Dr. Wolman. “The Japanese government seems more intent on reassuring people than on accelerating the cleanup…We must mobilize public support to force this quick change.”

More information: fukushimaresponse.org or Gabriella Randazzo at [email protected] and (707) 888-0923.

(Shepherd Bliss farms in Sebastopol, teaches college, and can be reached at [email protected].)

[podfish]

... However, the crisis at Fukushima is not over and potentially more devastating. Physician Carol Wolman, M.D., recently wrote that “a damaged nuclear facility is like a wounded beast—exceedingly dangerous and hard to control.”...

... Sen. Wyden is especially concerned with a pool of radioactive cesium sitting on top of the damaged reactor building # 4. He concluded that it poses “an extraordinary and continuing risk.” Dr. Wolman writes that another earthquake could topple that fuel pool and lead to “an unquenchable fire which would spew out 9 times as much radiation as Chernobyl.”

That seems like the real threat. It's not at all clear that the current levels of contamination are much of a threat outside the immediate area, scary though they are. But the stories coming out about the ongoing mismanagement and the potential for ongoing dispersal of radioactive contaminants are pretty convincing.

[Hotspring 44]

NYT headline lies yet the article under it contradicts it.
I am glad Fair.org exists. There should be many more and they also should be more mainstream.

Below article from Fair.org

Nuclear Power and the Not-So-Divided Japanese Public


Posted on 06/18/2012 by Peter Hart

The news that Japan will re-start some nuclear power facilities gives us this headline in the New York Times (6/17/12):
Japan Public Still Divided as 2 Reactors to Be Opened


But the lead by reporter Martin Fackler almost immediately contradicts the "divided" headline:

TOKYO — Brushing aside widespread public opposition to avoid feared electric power shortages, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda ordered the reactivation of two nuclear reactors at a plant in western Japan on Saturday.

If there's "widespread public opinion," can people really be divided? It turns out this is not just a problem with a headline writer. The article later states that the "Japanese people have remained deeply divided on the safety of nuclear power."

Have they? Fackler writes:

According to polls, two-thirds of Japanese express deep concern about the safety of nuclear plants after last year's accident, which contaminated food with radiation and shattered the myth of Japan's infallible nuclear technology. The day before Mr. Noda gave the order, his government was visited by an antinuclear group led by the Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe, which presented what it said were the signatures of 7.5 million people calling for the abolition of nuclear power.

Two-thirds of Japan being worried about nuclear power doesn't sound all that divided. And, as the Associated Press reported earlier this month (6/5/12), one poll showed a remarkable shift against nukes in the last year:

Japanese oppose nuclear power more strongly than they did while the tsunami-damaged Fukushima plant was still in crisis a year ago, according to a poll that found widespread dismay with the government’s handling of that disaster and the ongoing recovery.

The survey released Tuesday by the Washington-based Pew Research Center said 70 percent of Japanese believe the country should reduce its reliance on nuclear energy, up from 44 percent last year.

"Divided" appears to be used here in the special media sense of "mostly on the wrong side."