Mainichi offers an editorial about how the nuclear crisis at Fukushima has amounted to an exhibition of panic by the elite, who were so terrified of "public panic" that they decided to lie, lie again, and lie some more. It's a very interesting piece, made more interesting by the writer's apparent surprise at how calmly the Japanese people went about evacuating even after such devastation from the natural disasters that caused the nuclear crisis. As if… as if there were ever a single nuclear accident anywhere in the world that actually led to mass citizen panic. Which, of course, there hasn't been.
What the writer apparently missed is the rather glaring fact that it wasn't fear of public panic that caused TEPCO and the Japanese government to lie, it was fear that their own malfeasance and criminality would be found out by the public, who might then demand some justice. Because if there's anything the elite fears most in this world, it's that they might someday have to face judgment for their sins. Even as the Kyushu Electric company's attempt to manipulate public opinion for restart of their reactors is highlighting just how little that elite has actually learned from TEPCO's mistakes.
So… what have WE learned?
We have learned in recent weeks that TEPCO, the U.S. military in Japan as well as the NRC, France's national nuclear corporation Areva and pretty much everyone else watching the situation at Fukushima Daiichi in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami all knew that three of the six reactors suffered "total meltdown" and breached their containment vessels within 16 hours, before the first reactor building (of an eventual 4) blew up. We have learned that the international nuclear industry - including Areva, Toshiba-Westinghouse and EDF conspired with the government of Great Britain to cover up the severity of the situation in order to save the planned "Nuclear Renaissance" from the truth about Fukushima.
Don't think our government hasn't been involved. At first it was just a few NRC inspectors who went to Tokyo to "consult," but Obama sent GE CEO and Chair of the 'Jobs and Competitiveness Council' as well. Not to TEPCO, the melted reactors being GE's babies, but straight to Japanese PM Kan right around the time the Japanese government entered into collusion with TEPCO to limit information coming out of Fukushima. Took the Brits awhile longer to catch on, the TEPCO-government coverup was revealed nearly two months ago. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is working some media charm at the National Press Club luncheon on July 18.
Industry PR efforts began immediately following the meltdowns and kept right on going with industry-governmental planning and media participation (willing or forced is another question)…
Too late now. Just as the talk of a global nuclear renaissance was rapidly becoming reality, the industry has taken a huge blow that could set it back by several years. There can be no worse PR for nuclear power than live television images of not one, not two, but three reactor buildings exploding and mushroom clouds of smoke billowing into a clear blue Japanese sky.
It would be easy to abandon nuclear power. For most countries, however, that would be a mistake. Most nations do not suffer earthquakes and tsunamis on the scale of Japan and modern reactor technology promises greater safety. Nuclear power remains the most credible source of low-carbon generation offering baseload power and energy security.
And for an added treat, we get The Heritage Foundation informing us all that it's all about that ubiquitous "human error" that can always easily get fixed by this new rule or that new rule, without ever having to do a thing about insane technology, lousy engineering, criminally lax oversight and maintenance, or even natural disasters like 9.0 earthquakes and giant tsunamis (or mega-twisters or 1,000-year floods or…). Just make the operators pass a new test question and everything's hunky dory again.
And now we also know that even while providing teams of management, engineering and technical consultants to TEPCO within days of the meltdowns, France's Areva produced a slick, 33-page 4-color brochure entitled the "Fukushima Files" denouncing the engineering design flaws of GE's Mark I reactor containments distributed to members of the U.S. Congress and other U.S. government officials in early April. That brochure alleged that fuel assemblies in the unit-4 spent fuel pool had melted, and formalized the charge that TEPCO was covering up information about the true conditions at the Daiichi reservation. Positively Orwellian.
Areva's CEO Anne Lauvergeon was fired in mid-June after a public spat with the head of French state utility EDF Henri Proglio, whose close ties to French President Nicolas Sarkozy no doubt helped spur the early retirement of his rival.
Meanwhile, the nuclear PR wars rage on, as pro-nukes charge that anti-nuclear activists must not be allowed to use the ongoing mass meltdown disaster at Fukushima to add weight to their charges that nuclear power is inherently dangerous, and anti-nuclear activists charge that pro-nuclear coverups, political dirty tricks, money-grubbing and outright lies must be met head-on so that limited available funding goes to clean energy and renewables development instead of dirty coal and dangerous, outrageously expensive nukes.
It is difficult for those who have not paid much attention to the energy PR wars - or various nuclear incidents in the news - to know who's right or wrong. DKos itself hosts pro-nuclear members who have gone to great lengths since March 11 to downplay every event and technicality happening at Fukushima, occasionally going so far as to claim these babies were DESIGNED to blow up and expose the overheated, occasionally burning fuel pools directly to atmosphere. When that tack proved untenable in the face of truths that did manage to find their way out of Japan, the old standby tactic of attacking the messenger became the preferred fall-back position.
So before the usual suspects arrive to launch into the usual lies, misinformation and name-calling, read this analysis of data from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan about how the original earthquake affected the Daiichi nuclear reservation.
Vertical: The entire reservation 'dropped' 50 centimeters [2.13 feet], damaging the foundations of the reactor buildings.
Horizontal: The entire reservation was moved 220 to 250 centimeters toward the east.
…and that's BEFORE the 13.1 meter tsunami hit. That translates to 42.97 feet, in case you were wondering.
Not to worry, as TEPCO now reports that work to remove fuel rods at Fukushima Daiichi can begin in just 10 years!
Meanwhile, elderly evacuees are having a difficult time. One woman, dejected over the ongoing crisis and the constant fear that her family will again be disrupted and split apart, decided to evacuate herself to the grave. So when you see one or more of the live-in nuclear apologists here iterate for the thousandth time that the 'only' health effects expected from the Fukushima disaster can be entirely written off to 'stress', it's good to know that Japan's health ministry has decided to add psychiatric illness to the list of 4 "major diseases" it will focus on in its medical treatment program after research found that psychiatric illness caused more death and disability than either diabetes or cancer.
Consider that well in light of the fact that here in the United States there is no "health ministry" and people who might suffer health effects from radioactivity dumped by our nuclear installations could not receive health care on any level if they didn't have good insurance, and even if they had good insurance could not expect adequate treatment for psychiatric disorders.
Given this reality there is no excuse for reliance on nuclear power in this country, and even less excuse for expanding that reliance. For the first time renewables are producing more energy in the U.S. than nuclear.
No Nukes. We can do this. We are doing this. And we must keep the pressure on to shut down the aging and increasingly dangerous U.S. nuclear power industry.