'Why are we letting a private, for profit company, manage a problem that affects all of us to this magnitude?' asks, Jim Walsh, MIT professor and respected international security expert, on Anderson Cooper 360. Tuesday Night, March 15, 2011, in an episode I highly recommend.
Cooper and his reputable guests, react live, in real-time to an almost unbelievable series of news reports of what they are now calling the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. And several reputable analyst, such as Albert Alvarez believe it could get substantially worse if the spent fuel rods catch fire.
Drew Griffen amplifies, 'TEPCO has a proven record of ineptitude,' and says they have outright lied.
The Japaneous Prime Minister is so furious he is reported to have used profanity in a phone call to TEPCO managers. TEPCO is the for profit Japanese unility corporation that operated the six nuclear reactors in crises at Fukushima, Daichi.
Anderson Cooper relays a report that a Japanese government spokesman announces that they had 'suspend operations at the plant,' due to radiations levels harming the workers.
Walsh asserts incredulously, 'They can't leave. They need to keep putting water in these reactors to prevent meltdown's or fire of spent fuel.'
"The government needs to step in and take this from TEPCO," says Walsh.
What a terrible tragedy.
We need to study it closely for many lessons.
One timely, issue is what degree of governence to we need over "sub-systems" such as TEPCO's management of a what has already been described at the worst nuclear reactor disaster since the 1987 Chernobyl accident that released 6 million curies of Cesium 137 into the environment.
For comparision, Albert Alvarez, a US expert, claims that each of the many spend fuel storage ponds in Fukushima probably contains up to 50 million curies of Cesium 137.
Cesium 137 has a half life of 30 years, and is readily absorbed into the food chain and human body as if it were potassium. So it is used as bellwether for the many other radioactive isotopes contained in these fuel rods.
Chernobyl left several hundred miles uninhabitable to this day. And, the rate of cancer and genetic mutation are elevated in those populated affected.
So why are we all watching this unfold to the forth day, to fifth day, while an inept, untrusty profit making group of managers making decision that impact the whole world?
Poignantly, an elderly woman says, "This is worse than Hiroshima, because Hiroshima was the past, but this is our future."
I don't have a transcript yet, but I encourage you to watch or read this program.
It might be the most important episode Anderson Cooper has ever produced. He and his guest ask the right questions, live, anded in an open, and non-censored way, that is refreshing amidst all of the pre-packaged political and corporate spin we usually get on these topics.
Thank goodness for the bravery of these 50 workers who may be giving their lives for the benefit of the rest of us.