According to this Japanese researcher, the amount of radioactive pollution from the Fukushima catastrophe is 30 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb, and even worse, the radioactivity is about 100 times longer-lingering than the fallout from that bomb. He estimates it'll cost many trillions of yen to clean up, and the efforts that organizations - including his - are making now to do so are illegal due to esoteric bureaucracy. But what really gets him furious is the Japanese government's apparent negligence in allowing children to go to school and play in severely contaminated areas.
Thanks, TEPCO, for making such reliable and safe reactors.
I can't even imagine what this is doing to the Japanese people, their culture and national identity.
Chris
Thanks, TEPCO, for making such reliable and safe reactors.
I can't even imagine what this is doing to the Japanese people, their culture and national identity.
Chris
Comments
As for what it's doing to the Japanese people, I'd say not a lot. The widespread reduction in electricity supplies, dark streets in the cities and lack of amenities such as aircon are biting more deeply than the radiation contamination problems which are very limited in scope and range. The panic merchants and prophesiers of Doom are being given short shrift from what I saw and experienced when I visited Japan a month ago. The biggest psychological hit was the destruction and deaths from the tsunami, with entire villages and communities eliminated from the face of the planet in the space of a few minutes. There are heart-rending tales being told in Japan but they're not news any more outside the country, stories like the workaholic emergency services chief in a coastal area who's been at his desk organising relief and recovery for eighteen hours a day over the past few months. His home was swept away, along with his wife and his mother by the tsunami. He was the man who ordered his local rescue team down to the harbour to close the seagates when the tsunami warning was broadcast, and none of the forty-odd men and women in the team came back. The piddling effects of the radiation around Fukushima are a spit in a hurricane compared to that sort of impact, but the scary radiation boogyman is still the big, the only story in the rest of the world.