Authored by Robert Hunziker via Counterpunch.org,
Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which experienced three massive meltdowns in 2011, is running out of room to store radioactive water. No surprise! But now, what to do about phosphorescent water?
Addressing the issue, Japan’s environmental minister Yoshiaki Harada held a news conference (September 2019). Unfortunately, he proffered the following advice: “The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it.” (Source: Justin McCurry in Tokyo, Fukushima: Japan Will Have to Dump Radioactive Water Into Pacific, Minister Says, The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2019)
“The only option”… Really?
Over the past 8 years, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has scrambled like a Mad Hatter to construct emergency storage tanks (1,000) to contain upwards of one million tonnes of contaminated radioactive water, you know, the kind of stuff that, over time, destroys human cells, alters DNA, causes cancer, or produces something like the horrific disfigured creature in John Carpenter’s The Thing! That’s the upshot of a triple nuclear meltdown that necessitates constant flow of water to prevent further melting of reactor cores that have been decimated and transfigured into corium or melted blobs. It’s the closest to a full-blown “china syndrome” in all of human history. Whew! Although, the truth is it’ll be a dicey situation for decades to come.
Ever since March 11, 2011, TEPCO has scrambled to build storage tanks to prevent massive amounts of radioactive water from pouring into the ocean (still, some lesser amounts pour into the ocean every day by day). Now the government is floating a trial balloon in public that, once the tanks are full, it’ll be okay to dump the radioactive water into the ocean. Their logic is bizarre, meaning, on the one hand, the meltdown happens, and they build storage tanks to contain the radioactive water, but on the other hand, once the storage tanks run out of space, it’s okay to dump radioactive water into the ocean. Seriously?
Meantime, the Fukushima meltdown brings the world community face to face with TEPCO and the government of Japan in an unprecedented grand experiment that, so far, has failed miserably. Of course, dumping radiation into the Pacific is like dumping radiation into everybody’s back yard. But, for starters, isn’t that a non-starter?
Along the way, deceit breeds duplicity, as the aforementioned Guardian article says the Japanese government claims only one (1) death has been associated with the Fukushima meltdown but keep that number in mind. Reliable sources in Japan claim otherwise, as explained in previous articles on the subject, for example, “Fukushima Darkness, Part Two” d/d November 24, 2017, and as highlighted further on in this article.
When it comes to nuclear accidents, cover-ups reign supreme; you can count on it.
As such, it is believed the Japanese government is lying and should be held accountable for hoodwinking the world about the ravages of Fukushima, especially with the Olympics scheduled for next year.
For example, the following explains how death by radiation is shamefully hidden from the public via newspeak: Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station worker deaths “that expire at home” are not officially counted. Accordingly, how many workers on a deathbed with radiation sickness leave home to go to work (where deaths are counted) just before they die? Oh, please!
Meanwhile, the last thing the world community needs in the face of an uncontrollable nuclear meltdown, like Fukushima, is deceptiveness and irresponsibility by the host government. Too much is at stake for that kind of childish nonsense. And just to think, the 2020 Olympics are scheduled with events held in Fukushima. Scandalously, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is A-Okay with that.
In contrast, a Greenpeace International March 8th 2019 article entitled: Japanese Government Misleading UN on Impact of Fukushima Fallout on Children, Decontamination Workers:
“The Japanese government is deliberately misleading United Nations human rights bodies and experts over the ongoing nuclear crisis in areas of Fukushima… In areas where some of these decontamination workers are operating, the radiation levels would be considered an emergency if they were inside a nuclear facility.” Enough said!
“In its reporting to the United Nations, the Japanese government deliberately misrepresents the scale, complexity, and radiation risks in areas of Fukushima, the working practice and conditions for workers, and its disregard for children’s health and wellbeing. This reality should shame the government to radically change its failing policies,” said Kazue Suzuki, Energy Campaigner of Greenpeace Japan.
As such, either Greenpeace or the IOC is “dead wrong” about the conditions at Fukushima. Take your pick.
After all, the trend of misrepresentation of nuclear accidents has been established for decades.
Not only Fukushima, Chernobyl (1986) is a nuclear disaster zone where the “official death count from radiation exposure” has been considerably discounted by various governmental agencies and NGOs. For inexplicable reasons (actually explicable but a long story), nuclear accidents are given Get Out Jail Free cards by the world’s press and associated governmental orgs and NGOs.
Yet, over time, the truth comes out, and when it does it’s dreadfully atrocious:
A BBC special report, The True Toll of the Chernobyl Disaster d/d July 26, 2019 says: “The official, internationally recognized death toll, just 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl while the UN estimates that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster.”
That’s the official tally. Ugh! It’s so far off the mark that, if it were a baseball pitch, it’d be in the dirt, and a prime example of the public not getting the truth about the ravages of nuclear power accidents.
Of course, it is important to take note of how “wordsmiths” describe the death numbers, i.e., “died as an immediate result of Chernobyl” can only include someone standing at the site when it happened, leaving out all cases of radiation exposure that kills and cripples over subsequent days, months, and years. Or, in the case of the UN statement, “only 50 deaths can be directly attributed.” Only those standing there when it happened… ahem!
According to the BBC article, the Russian Academy of Sciences said as many as 112,000-125,000 died by 2005. That’s 2,500xs more deaths than the official reports, which also never increase in number over time as radiation takes its merry ole time blasting, destroying, and/or altering human cell structure. Ukrainian authorities claim death rates of Chernobyl cleanup workers rose from 3.5 to 17.5 deaths per 1,000 between 1988 and 2012 on a database of 651,453 cleanup workers, which equates to 11,392 deaths. Additionally, Belarus had 99,693 cleanup workers, equating to 1,732 deaths. Not only that, disability among workers shows that approximately 5% are still healthy in 2012 (only 5%, meaning 95% unhealthy) with commonality of cardiovascular and circulatory diseases and nervous system problems.
By 2008 in Belarus alone 40,049 liquidators or cleanup workers of Chernobyl were registered with cancer.
Viktor Sushko, deputy director general of the National Research Centre for Radiation Medicine (NRCRM) based in Kiev, Ukraine, describes the Chernobyl disaster as: “The largest anthropogenic disaster in the history of humankind,” Ibid.
Thus begging the most obvious of questions re Fukushima victims in the years ahead; how many cases of cancer, and how many will die? Unfortunately, radioactive isotopes don’t stop once they’re activated in a nuclear meltdown. They’re pernicious over time destroying and/or grotesquely altering human cell structure. For proof, visit second-generation Chernobyl children locked up in orphanages in Belarus.
“As of January 2018, 1.8 million people in Ukraine, including 377,589 children, carried status of victims of the disaster, according to Sushko and his colleagues. Not only that, there has been a rapid increase in the number of people with disabilities, rising from 40,106 in 1995 to 107,115 in 2018,” Ibid.
According to a USA Today article – Chernobyl’s Legacy: Kids With Bodies Ravaged by Disaster, April 17, 2016: “There are 2,397,863 people registered with Ukraine’s health ministry to receive ongoing Chernobyl-related health care. Of these, 453,391 are children — none born at the time of the accident. Their parents were children in 1986. These children have a range of illnesses: respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, eye diseases, blood diseases, cancer, congenital malformations, genetic abnormalities, trauma.” Many of the children are hidden away deep in the forested countryside in orphanages in Belarus.
Back to Fukushima, there are numerous instances of governmental meddling to hide the truth, starting with passage of the 2013 government secrecy act, The State Secrecy Law, aka: Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets (SDS), Act No. 108, which says that civil servants or others who “leak secrets” will face up to 10 years in prison, and those who “instigate leaks,” especially journalists, will be subject to a prison term of up to 5 years. Subsequently, Japan fell below Serbia and Botswana in the Reporters Without Borders 2014 World Press Freedom Index.
Horrifically, at the end of the day, when nuclear goes bad, it takes everyone along on a daunting trip for years and years and more years, outliving life spans but continuing generation after generation, like the 453,391 Chernobyl-radiated-influence children born after the nuclear blowout in 1986. Chernobyl altered their genes before they were born…. Imagine that!
Cliodhna Russell visited children’s orphanages in Belarus in 2014: “Children rocking back and forth for hours on end, hitting their heads against walls, grinding their teeth, scraping their faces and putting their hands down their throats.” (Source: How My Trip to a Children’s Mental Asylum in Belarus Made Me Proud to be Irish, the journal.ie, March 18, 2014.)
* * *
Postscript: “It’s a real shame that the authorities hide the truth from the whole world, from the UN. We need to admit that actually many people are dying. We are not allowed to say that, but TEPCO employees also are dying. But they keep mum about it,” Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of Futaba (Fukushima Prefecture) Fukushima Disaster: Tokyo Hides Truth as Children Die, Become Ill from Radiation – Ex-Mayor, RT News, April 21, 2014)
Post-Postscript: “The ashes of half a dozen unidentified laborers ended up at a Buddhist temple in a town just north of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Some of the dead men had no papers; others left no emergency contacts. Their names could not be confirmed and no family members had been tracked down to claim their remains. They were simply labeled “decontamination troops” — unknown soldiers in Japan’s massive cleanup campaign to make Fukushima livable again five years after radiation poisoned the fertile countryside,” (Source: Mari Yamaguchi, Fukushima ‘Decontamination Troops’ Often Exploited, Shunned, AP & ABC News, Minamisona, Japan, March 10, 2016)
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Makes me want some fish from the west coast.
killing us softly…
i don’t eat oceanic fish from the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, China, India, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam. Alaskan salmon scares me. i’d rather eat farmed salmon, though it’s not my first choice overall. BP oil drilling ruined my love of crawfish. i live in view of a Michigan river that has warning signs posted about the danger of eating its fish. and the perch in Lake Michigan are adulterated by nanoplastic. i do eat scallops from the Atlantic, and cod.
Noooooooo!!!!! lol
If you have the time, please check out this article —– “5 Reasons to Avoid Farm-Raised Salmon – and Why Wild Salmon Is Better”
https://blog.daveasprey.com/farm-raised-salmon-vs-wild-salmon/
thanks. i said this mostly because if i eat salmon, it’s usually in a restaurant and likely farmed, so i do it rarely. i ask about the source, but the waitstaff never seem to know, and if they say “I’ll go ask” i don’t trust their answer. but if they advertise Pacific/Alaska salmon, which i believe to be radioactive, i pass altogether.
I figure if they use radiation to kill cancer, then a little radioactive fish could be just what the doctor ordered. I keep waiting for deals on Pacific salmon, but they keep not coming.
Copper River Wild King Salmon. Best you’ll ever have. It’s seasonal except for LLPOH.
Yeah, farmed salmon come from the ocean too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture_of_salmonids
Also “Carrageenan,” a widely used food additive for thickening things (like sour cream, ice cream, dressings, etc.) It is KELP … Northern Japan is the main source for this … bathed in Fukushima outflow.
Carrageenan is also a significant inflamatory agent for your arteries, so it should be avoided for that reason too.
This is the solution to the energy crisis. Buy a case of tuna – and it will give off enough light to illuminate an entire house.
Fukushima is an “off-limits” topic for One Reason:
The truth would cause certain actions among the 5-10 percent that are actually paying attention to something other than a hand-held device 24/7. Those actions might be a threat to the current order – actions like millions of people absolutely demanding an end to nuclear plants due to inherent dangers that Fukushima made visible. Governments have lost legitimacy and been challenged for less. The U.S. has far, far more quantity of fuel and spent fuel and many reactors are in prime earthquake zones.
Location Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Unit 4 Unit 5 Unit 6 Central storage
Reactor fuel assemblies 400 548 548 0 548 764 N/A
Spent fuel assemblies[59] 292 587 514 1331 946 876 6375[60]
Fuel type UO2 UO2 UO2/MOX UO2 UO2 UO2 UO2
New fuel assemblies[61] 100 28 52 204 48 64 N/A
So, unit 3 had MOX fuel….that means it contained plutonium in some percentage of assemblies/rods. One must question if 3 is the only one with MOX based upon the known lies and deceptions up to this point.
A fuel assembly in a Boiling Water Reactor has approximately 100 rods. Unit 3, for example, contained 514 assemblies of spent fuel – that is 51,400 individual fuel rods. A fuel rod contains approximately 300 pellets of enriched fuel and each pellet weighs about 7 grams. Fuel is enriched to about 4% for UO2 and 1% for MOX. 90%+ of fuel remains in “spent” rods. Several pounds of slightly less enriched fuel remains in all “spent” rods.
Unit 3 had a hydrogen explosion (or was it a full criticality explosion) that vaporized and ejected the spent fuel rods into the atmosphere. Cesium, zirconium, strontium and enriched material – all of it, vaporized and circulating.
Reactors 1 and 2 also saw meltdowns and ejections of vaporized materials.
The end.
and a 40,000 year half-life on the MOX.
Unit 4 spent fuel pool burn out … (seem to remember?).
If you honestly think that they have been storing all the water waste up until this point, then you are beyond naive. The problem is just SO BAD now that they can no longer hide it. Funny how the mainstream media made this “situation” vanish before anything was truly handled.
It seems to me that Hashima Island off Japan would be a good place for this water. The island has long been abandoned and there’s a coal mine there. Under the earth is the best possible place for this radioactive water.
Help me with the physics here….so the water per se H2O is actually ok it is just contaminated with higher level (radioactive) elements…..so isn’t the answer to boil off the water and then package the remaining radioactive stuff up like other nuclear waste (and bury it deep in a coal mine as mentioned)…..instead of just throwing up our hands and destroying the Pacific ocean. Yeah I know it takes infrastructure (money) to separate the water from the radioactivity but what else do those Nippers have to do other than watch tentacle porn and cherry blossoms?
makes me think of the US’s nuclear plants and what can occur during shtf. or incase of a peasant uprising, one malicious computer virus and guess what ? everyone in your state can evacuate to the fema camp and we will get you sorted out…