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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Obsession, My Obsession

Obsession, My Obsession

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The leak of highly radioactive water at Fukushima has stopped, as less radioactive water is dumped into the sea to make room in storage tanks for more radioactive water. A scary NRC report leaked to the press recommends, among other things, that nitrogen be injected into the containment at the plants to stave off another hydrogen explosion, and TEPCO will will be doing that today or tomorrow.

One of the interesting take homes from this disaster is that the IAEA is fairly useless, or as the former director of the Soviet effort to clean up Chernobyl put it:

The IAEA should share blame for standards, he said, arguing it was too close to corporations building and running plants. And he dismissed an emergency incident team set up by the Vienna-based agency as “only a think-tank not a working force”:

“This is only a fake organization because every organization which depends on the nuclear industry — and the IAEA depends on the nuclear industry — cannot perform properly.

“It always will try to hide the reality.

“The IAEA … is not interested in the concentration of attention on a possible accident in the nuclear industry. They are totally not interested in all the emergency organisations.”

Reader Interactions

15Comments

  1. 1.

    BR

    What’s going to happen to a nation that eats fish with every meal now that fish are turning up with low levels of radiation in them? (So much so that other countries are stopping imports from Japan.)

  2. 2.

    eponymous

    Not quite sure what the issue with the IAEA – while the IAEA is an autonomous entity, it does report to the United Nations (General Assembly and Security Council).

    While I share the concerns of the individual regarding Chernobyl, the IAEA is only as strong as other countries willing to fund and support their efforts. Since Russia is a Security Council member, maybe they should do more to give the IAEA support necessary to deal with these kinds of issues.

    This is not to say that other countries shouldn’t do so as well – but any international organization that doesn’t get broad support from countries – especially those countries with economic and military clout – will not be as effectual as they could be.

  3. 3.

    NobodySpecial

    Isn’t this the guy who basically ordered folks into the containment area with concrete and sentenced them to death to build the sarcophagus?

    If so, why am I not particularly concerned about his opinions on dick?

  5. 5.

    Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy

    Ah, but the NRC is “serious”.

  7. 7.

    Jack

    Like health care and several other issues that inherently cannot be “market-based”, nuclear power and the disaster in Japan is showing how wrong the GOP is in saying “government is always the problem”.

    We’re all going to eventually die one way or another because some jerkwad is trying to increase his profit.

  8. 8.

    Joey Maloney

    In the early hours and days after the tsunami, the only person on the teevee box whose guesses and predictions I recall coming at all close to the actual scope of the nuclear problem at Fukushima was an IAEA scientist.

  9. 9.

    Brachiator

    I realize that some people want to focus on the nuclear disaster in Fukushima as though it is the only problem Japan is facing, but damn, get some perspective. Hundreds of thousands of people are still homeless, villages, farms and entire industries have been wiped out. Some World Bank estimates:

    Japan has said it will cost as much as 25 trillion yen ($309bn; £189bn) to rebuild the country after the deadly earthquake and tsunami.
    __
    The cost is about 6% of Japan’s total economic output in 2010 and is the biggest estimate so far.
    __
    According to the World Bank, Japan will need up to five years to rebuild and recover from the damage caused.

    And there is this, from an Aid Worker’s Diary:

    I visit the Red Cross hospital in Ishinomaki. Staff tell me they keep abreast of developments and check radiation levels every day. They have been trained in what to do following a nuclear event, but as yet they have not treated anyone for high levels of radiation. Not one patient has asked about it.

    I visit one evacuation centre after another and wait for someone to bring up the topic; no one does. Even in Fukushima prefecture, which is home to the now famously troubled nuclear plant, when asked, tsunami survivors are more worried about when they’ll be able to move out of the evacuation centres and return home.
    __
    This is what is stressing them, their inability to live a normal life, not that radiation levels are higher than normal….
    __
    “I just want my home back,” cries one woman. Here on the ground, it is clear what their priorities are.

    And this:

    Japanese Red Cross doctors tell me they are now treating more patients for influenza and hypothermia. Body temperatures are plummeting in the cold weather. People, particularly the vulnerable elderly population, are shivering and confused. It is a challenge to meet their needs.
    __
    Red Cross teams have searched but cannot find adequate shelter for them. Even if they did find better accommodation, there isn’t the fuel to transport people and most don’t want to leave. They want to stay in surroundings they are familiar with, even if those surroundings are full of broken buildings, twisted metal, and overturned cars.

  10. 10.

    TJ

    OTOH
    Reuters

    The core at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel, Democratic Congressman Edward Markey told a hearing on the nuclear disaster on Wednesday.

    This pretty much means they’re going back, oh, I’d say sometime just this side of never.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    @TJ: RE: The core at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel, Democratic Congressman Edward Markey told a hearing on the nuclear disaster on Wednesday.

    This pretty much means they’re going back, oh, I’d say sometime just this side of never.

    Some of the hardest hit areas were Sendai and Minamisanriku, which are north of Fukushima. There might be circumstances where the problems at Fukushima will add to problems elsewhere, but still it is only part of a much larger disaster:

    Kuji and Ōfunato were almost entirely destroyed[79][80] Also destroyed was Rikuzentakata, where the tsunami was reportedly three stories high. Other cities reportedly destroyed or heavily damaged by the tsunami include Kamaishi, Miyako, Ōtsuchi, and Yamada (in Iwate Prefecture), Namie, Sōma and Minamisōma (in Fukushima Prefecture) and Higashimatsushima, Onagawa, Natori, Ishinomaki, and Kesennuma (in Miyagi Prefecture)….he tsunami washed away the sole bridge to Miyatojima, Miyagi, isolating the island’s 900 residents.[92] A two meter high tsunami hit Chiba Prefecture about 2 1/2 hours after the quake, causing heavy damage to cities such as Asahi.

  12. 12.

    virag

    it bears repeating, the iaea is solely a lobbying organization for the nuclear power industry. it’s purpose is to spread the use of nuclear power with the bonus of limiting the membership in the club of nuclear-armed nations, aka places we won’t bomb for freedom.

  13. 13.

    Ruckus

    How similar this all sounds. Nuclear power, health care, financial services, public safety.
    None of these work well when the call is for profit instead of actual service. Government may not work as well as intended or desired but it sure can work a whole lot better than screwing profits out of modern necessities does.

  14. 14.

    lonesomerobot

    fwiw, in the NY Times article mistermix linked:

    The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.

    So… this could mean perhaps some of the fuel could have ended up in the ocean. Another possible source for the ridiculously high readings there. And now it appears that they basically can’t get into the buildings 1-3 at all because radiation is literally off the meter.

    interesting times.

  15. 15.

    Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy

    lonsomerobot: I wouldn’t worry about fuel in the ocean so much as the approx 3k tons of fuel (of which some 500 to 1k tons is in a damaged or melted state) that is still very localized and dangerous.

    I wouldn’t underplay the danger of seabourne contamination, but further explosions, melting, melt-through, and fires are where the greter dangers lay.

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