This is the six-month anniversary of the Japanese tsunami and meltdown at Fukushima. Here’s a good roundup of the last six months at the plant. In short, TEPCO has been struggling with the immense quantities of highly radioactive water necessary to cool the reactors, water purification systems haven’t worked as planned, and they still haven’t finished building the polyester “wrappers” that will be replacing the reactor building exteriors destroyed by explosions.
This Guardian piece about life in Fukushima, and among Fukushima evacuees, is worth a read if you want a fuller picture of what it’s like to live in and around a highly contaminated area. As an example, one of the extracurricular activities at Fukushima area schools is looking for (and finding) contamination in the schoolyard.
SST
Pedantic quibble: ‘anniversary’ comes from ‘annum,’ which means ‘year.’ It irritates me when people use ‘anniversary’ when talking about weeks or months, because, etymyologically speaking, that’s not what the word means.
Good post, though, other than that.
SST
Pedantic quibble: ‘anniversary’ comes from ‘annum,’ which means ‘year.’ It irritates me when people use ‘anniversary’ when talking about weeks or months, because, etymologically speaking, that’s not what the word means.
Good post, though, other than that.
ETA: Aaand double posts are also annoying, so I’ll go scold myself now.
Cat Lady
I think about those poor people there all the time, and wonder what their karma is to have suffered so much. Then I read that their hope to survive may lie with sunflowers. There’s a symmetry to that somehow.
QFT.
jrg
Yay! Another day of non-stop patriotism pron, where every mouthbreathing Republican I know posts “never forget” on Facebook, when none of them can recall a damned thing that happened between ’03 and ’08.
Linda Featheringill
Well, “anniversary” or not . . . .
I am still amazed at how incompetent TEPCO seems to be.
Or perhaps, like on the Titanic, they didn’t think about the unthinkable.
Sam Houston
@SST: I plant semiannuals and have noticed they are bad spellers, too.
Fred Bortz
Thank you for this. I will soon be creating a page for my website where the middle-grade readers of my new book (Meltdown! The Nuclear Disaster in Japan and Our Energy Future, January 2012, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761386602/drfredsplac) can find updates that were published after the book’s text was finalized. Both articles cited are balanced and informative. I will include both links and thank balloon-juice.
SiubhanDuinne
Slightly O/T but in keeping with the reminiscence theme: RIP Cliff Robertson. Who here is old enough to remember PT 109? Or Charly?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@SiubhanDuinne: Flowers for Algernon.
handsmile
Mistermix, thank you very much for posting this thread on Japan’s mournful anniversary.
Truly is there a more invaluable news organization than the Guardian? While coverage of this unfolding environmental catastrophe has almost entirely vanished from other Western news sources, every week there is one or more articles on the consequences of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
For example, this article from Thursday chillingly summarized an interview with former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan with the Tokyo Shimbum newspaper. He revealed that TEPCO had considered simply abandoning the Fukushima nuclear power complex, an action that he believes would have resulted in the evacuation of Tokyo and the collapse of the country itself:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/08/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-pm-japan
It should be noted that Kan was forced to step down as PM last month, largely as a result of the natural disaster.
By contrast, we have been subjected this week to an endless parade of those responsible, politically and economically, for the aftermath of September 11, not a single one of whom has been held to account for his/her decisions.
SiubhanDuinne
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Yup. The movie Charly was based on the book FfA. I loved them both, but haven’t returned to either in many many decades.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@SiubhanDuinne: me too
barath
@handsmile:
It’s weird – without ever planning to do so, for the past year or so the Guardian has been the only newspaper/news website I visit. (Before that for years I hadn’t been to any MSM news websites.)
Dennis SGMM
@handsmile:
At the very least, George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and Dick Cheney should be paraded through the streets of Manhattan every September 11th. They will each be forced to wear sandwich boards. Bush’s will read “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” Rice’s will be “No one could have anticipated.” Cheney will get by with a simple “Fuck you!”
Edit: New Yorkers will be encouraged to stock up on rotten fruit and vegetables for the parade.
Elizabelle
@jrg:
your comment 4. so true
Villago Delenda Est
@Dennis SGMM:
A friendly amendment: the heads of those three criminals should be paraded through Manhattan on pikes.
Yevgraf
Triumphs of the fiscal conservatism of deferring maintenance and upgrades:
http://m.courier-journal.com/Indiananews/article?a=2011309100051&f=1732
handsmile
@Dennis SGMM: (#13)
You must be a writer of utopian fiction. Either that or someone who sincerely believes (believed?) in the vaunted justice of a representative democratic system of government.
For the past week, the Guardian has featured a comprehensive, multi-media special section on the September 11 commemoration. It is a superb resource, in no small part for the range of coverage and analysis it presents.
This column by Gary Younge published last Sunday, incisively reflects my own conflicted feelings about today’s anniversary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/04/narcissim-america-reality-failure.
(Disclosure FWIW: New York City resident then and now.) The keening intensity of the article’s more than 300 comments are well worth reading.
Elizabelle
Los Angeles gets the NHK evening news broadcast. I don’t often catch it, but excellent reminder of how far-reaching the effects of the tsunami and nuclear plant damage.
KCET, which used to be a local PBS station. Now broadcasts BBC and Al Jazeera news in the evening; a block of international news. Really good for another perspective, and a fuller picture.
Their news broadcasts are hourlong; presented commercial free.
wrb
@SiubhanDuinne:
In fifth grade our teacher, with no warning, asked us to name our favorite book.
Without time to think, I named FfA, which I’d just finished.
Big titters, “flowers?! a boy likes flowers??!!”
Major faux pas in 1969 5th grade
Elizabelle
@handsmile:
Here’s another link. One in 17 doesn’t work. Thanks for bringing Younge’s column to our attention.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/04/narcissim-america-reality-failure?INTCMP=SRCH
Robert Waldmann
The thing which puzzles me is that the Fukishima fifty, who stayed to contain the meltdown and some of whom will die of cancer as a result, were not publicly celebrated as national heroes. I expected a parade. Or at least that emperor Akahito would shake their hands or something (I mean really what are emperors for ?).
I guess there is a problem decided exactly whom to honor, since many others came to the plant to spray water and fly helicopters and such. But really it wouldn’t be a very long parade.
I guess that in Japan people are just expected to risk their lives when it is necessary. But I would expect any competent politician to try to get a bit of glory by humbly thanking the heroes. I mean it isn’t rocket science (or nuclear physics).
Fred Bortz
Thank you for this. I will soon be creating a page for my website where the middle-grade readers of my new book (Meltdown! The Nuclear Disaster in Japan and Our Energy Future, January 2012) can find updates that were published after the book’s text was finalized. Both articles cited are balanced and informative. I will include both links and thank balloon-juice. (Comment resubmitted with link to book removed.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Yevgraf:
Actually, it’s a case of “phony fiscal conservatism”, in that a REAL conservative would have planned for arranging for resources to maintain the infrastructure as a matter of course, in that your objective is to keep the bridge in service, safely, for as long as possible to get the most value out of the initial investment. A true fiscal conservative would insist that funding be assured to maintain the bridge over its life cycle, and that plans be in place to replace it when it reaches the end of its useful life.
However, the modern GOP is not made up of conservatives, amongst its elected officials or its base. It’s made up of short term thinking opportunists, who are concerned primarily with the next election cycle, not the long term health of the country.
ornery
“…a REAL conservative would have planned for arranging for resources to maintain the infrastructure as a matter of course, in that your objective is to keep the bridge in service, safely, for as long as possible to get the most value out of the initial investment.”
LOL. No, that is liberalism. (Have you ever checked out what conservative societies look like?)
Villago, there are no ‘real’ conservatives, that self-serving mask was ripped away with the outbreak of WWII. They are the larval form of fascism and oligarchy; the handmaidens of power, nothing more.
They exist only in your belief.
superluminar
“in fifth grade our teacher, with no warning, asked us to name our favourite book”
My Pet Goat?
Villago Delenda Est
@ornery:
That’s the problem with modern “conservatives”.
The name has nothing to do with it’s root. Which explains why they loathe environmentalists, who actually are into conserving the planet.
Robert Sneddon
@Robert Waldmann: The Fukushima Fifty (a construct of the news cycle, a name to hang a headline on) are not dead or even sick. There’s some doubt whether they will in fact experience any ill-health from what they went through. I could tell you an amusing anecdote about radiation and cows…
In the case of Tchernobyl about fifty-odd workers of the 120 or so who suffered radiation poisoning during the meltdown on-site died shortly thereafter (within a few weeks). Acute radiation poisoning is a clearly obvious insult to the body requiring a lot of radiation exposure usually over quite a short period of time. Even then with medical support many sufferers with limited exposure to even high levels of radiation survive with little ill-effects to them in the short and medium term. As far as I know no-one at all at Fukushima Daiichi has received a radiation dose sufficient to cause even minor radiation sickness (nausea, vomiting, reduced white cell counts). The case of the two workers who received beta-particle skin burns from wading through contaminated water made the headlines when it happened; the fact they were released from hospital a few days later slipped by the world’s press pretty much unnoticed.
Shit does happen — the Tokaimura criticality screwup in Japan about ten years ago resulted in three deaths from acute radiation sickness and a bunch of other workers were hospitalised and treated after receiving lesser doses during the exposure and the subsequent cleanup operation. The big worry with radiation is if an exposure happens over a short period of time as it did to the three fatalities at Tokaimura; that’s not to say that long-term exposure to lower levels isn’t also detrimental. Once the levels get low enough and the periods long enough then their effects tend to be statistical rather than individual. That’s the reason setting solid exposure limits is such a political minefield.
Gravenstone
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ve long held that Bush/Cheney’s grinning skulls should be mounted on either side of the main gate leading the White House ground. Use them as an eternal reminder of the cost of imperial hubris and overreach.
M-Pop
Thanks for posting this – the 24-hour news cycle makes burying continuing tragedies like this one easier and that’s very unfortunate. It had dropped off my radar and I am going to follow up on this story.
virag
the guardian is world treasure. if only we had media like that in this country.
i’m sure that the nuclear aspect has been the reason that the japanese disaster situation has so completely disappeared from the tv and the papers and the rest. the establishment media did a boatload of work trying to minimize the nuclear power catastrophe, and when the situation became irredeemably awful, the coverage went ‘poof!’. from obama and choo-choo chu to g.e. and exelon, there’s still a lot of worry that they’re gonna lose it all in the glare of unhelpful reality.
magurakurin
@Dennis SGMM:
and you folks don’t want to hear what the punishment shall be for any jackass pundit who makes the comment, “Bush and Cheney kept us safe.”
right after they didn’t(and even then they didn’t), but heh, bygones…
Robert Sneddon
@virag: The BBC put a 6-month retrospective about the tsunami’s effects on coastal Japan up on their webpages; a photographer who went to Tohoku a month after a whole lot of villages were wiped off the face of the planet went back again earlier this month and took more photos. The report accompanying the report suggests the farmers in those areas won’t be able to plant their fields for at least three years because of the pollution from the tsunami and with an ageing rural population many of them may not live that long.
I’ve seen a lot more reporting about the effects of the Fukushima radiation leaks (which have killed or seriously injured no-one, as yet) over the past few months compared to news about what has been happening in the areas hit by the tsunami but then again destroyed towns and piles of wreckage aren’t as scary or newsworthy as invisible radiation to most folks.