photo by Paul Fusco

With so many horrible things going on in the world - wars, genetically modified food, factory farming, corrupt politicians, terrible conditions in the clothes production industry, complete internet surveillance, only to name a few - people get frustrated for good reason. The problem is, though, that most people feel helpless and resign. 

I think it‘s wrong. It‘s wrong because resigning prevents change. We‘re so many people on earth it‘s wrong to resign because we‘re powerful. We can‘t let all this go unchallenged, we the people need to stand up and say no. What‘s the point of being a human being when you just let everything happen without protest?

We humans are responsible, responsible for ourselves in the first place and responsible for our environment and other people as well. Sounds extensive and like a lot of work? It‘s not, it‘s about doing little things right. Our own behaviour regarding things we do or take for granted have a big impact on the environment and other people‘s lives. We don‘t necessarily need to help others actively but changing our behaviour in many areas can help others to have a better life or to keep our precious earth intact. Not taking plastic bags in the supermarket for example helps to prevent even more plastic to get into our oceans and pollute fish and the sea world.

But to bring it back to my point of not resigning and standing up the complexity of problems requires to set priorities. Some problems in our world today are minor compared to others. Some problems are lethal. One of those problems is radioactivity. You may ask, radioactivity? Why radioactivity? That‘s a legitimate question because we don‘t hear about problems with radioactivity anymore. Fukushima seems to be forgotten and Chernobyl all the more. The fact that public media doesn‘t speak about it anymore doesn‘t mean the problems were resolved. Politicians don‘t speak about it anymore because they play together with the big electricity companies and cover it up.

I don‘t wanna talk about Chernobyl today. I wanna talk about Fukushima. I am following events since the disaster happened in March 2011, I sat in front of the TV in Ascona, Switzerland, and cried. I can still remember when Chernobyl happened. My parents were building our own house in summer 1986 and we kids were not allowed to play in the sand outside the brick shell because of the „acid rain“. I cried in 2011 not only because we‘ve been to Japan two years earlier and visited cities like Sendai that have been badly hit and destroyed by the tsunami before the nuclear catastrophe and we‘ve been to places like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I also cried because I immediately realized what this incident would mean for the Japanese people and this wonderful country. I felt that this was a true disaster and at least as horrible as Chernobyl 25 years earlier. I also cried because I was so sad and angry about our politicians and the electric power industry not having learned a lesson at all from Chernobyl and that the worst had to happen again in one of the most advanced countries in the world. Fukushima showed once again that nuclear energy is lethal and uncontrollable. Nuclear energy is disproportional because it threatens the health of people, it even risks and takes their life. If you do a weighting of the advantages and risks you come to the conclusion that there simply is no justification for risking people‘s lifes, and money should actually be taken out of consideration. As a lawyer you would have to call nuclear energy generation to be illegitimate, especially after events like Chernobyl but also those like Three Mile Island or Sellafield. Anyway, people have not learned from Chernobyl and did the best to cover up all that came with it, especially the thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of cancers. I cried because all this is coming to Japan, too, the country we fell so in love with. I cried because I knew the story would repeat and that responsible people would cover it up again despite other people getting sick and die. These responsible people need to be sued and go to jail. This is so outrageous, it‘s the worst disgrace in our modern world in my eyes.

I‘m coming up with this today because I stumbled over some interesting news regarding Fukushima in the last days. TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, who is responsible for what gets into public media is lying for two and a half years. First I thought it was wise to not let millions of people panic and make it even worse. I soon realized that it was their strategy and team play with nuclear companies, industrial nations, the health care industry and everybody making a money out of this dangerous business all over the world.

To make it short they all lie to keep the business going, reality is that Fukushima is far from being under control and it‘s in some ways much worse than Chernobyl. We got four reactors with three complete melt downs directly beside the sea, here the Pacific ocean. The molten mass is in the ground somewhere below the plant and there is no way to remove it. Japan had to admit a couple of weeks ago that 300 tons of highly contaminated water has been flowing into the Pacific every day for the last two and a half years and still does. There were tuna caught off the California coast a year ago all contaminated, as time goes by it gets worse and worse. The bad thing is, there is no way to stop all this. The only thing the Japanese can do is pour more water over the destroyed reactors and fuel rods still in the top stories of the four buildings. The contaminated water will flow into the sea probably forever as the radioactive mass has to be cooled so long. The only „good“ thing for us people in other parts of the world is that the Pacific is big enough that this tragedy will only be really bad for the people quite close to Fukushima, the Japanese. Anyway, you probably wouldn‘t eat fish in California anymore knowing that it‘s not deadly but still contaminated.

There‘s another really big problem in Fukushima. The reactors made by General Electric have their spent fuel rod pools in the top stories of the buildings. All four buildings are severely crippled with building four to be the weakest structurally, so there‘s a high risk the building may collapse, especially as there‘s still a chance of earthquakes. The spent rods need to be removed as soon as possible and stored the way it‘s done in intact plants on a general basis. The problem in Fukushima is that no machines can be used to remove the 1.300 rods, they simply don‘t work in such highly radioactive environment. The delicate removal has to be done by humans in extremely strong protective clothing, including very small and very thick glass to look through. This makes the undertaking even more delicate and dangerous.

The biggest problem still is the possibilty of a chain reaction and the many different ways this may occur after a sudden „weather event, power outage, earthquake, tsunami, cooling system failure, or explosion and fire in any way, shape, or form, at any location on the Fukushima site.“

So to summarize we have the cooling that constantly pollutes the sea with highly contaminated water, we have the risk of a chain reaction that can lead to an “Open-air super reactor spectacular“ as Dr. Christopher Busby calls it. We have the fuel rod removal problem and we have the three molten fuel blobs somewhere in the ground doing something nobody knows because it never happened before. This is pretty bad and for the rest of all our time a risk that endangers at least the life of the Japanese and the health of all other people in this world.

Dire ... So, we need to power down all nuclear plants, something we should have done for the last 27 years, at once, simple! And please don't tell me we couldn't do it, that's not even ridiculous, it's reckless and stupid!

KIKI

sources: Interview with fallout researcher Christina Consolo, 300 tons of contaminated water daily, Accusing TEPCO, Contaminating the whole Pacific?, Pump and Pray by Christopher Busby, Worse than Chernobyl by Christoper Busby, RT is an international multilingual Russian-based television network