{"id":11102,"date":"2011-03-28T00:00:07","date_gmt":"2011-03-27T22:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=11102"},"modified":"2015-03-09T09:51:30","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T09:51:30","slug":"what-theyre-covering-up-at-fukushima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/03\/what-theyre-covering-up-at-fukushima\/","title":{"rendered":"What They’re Covering Up at Fukushima"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduced by Douglas Lummis<\/em><\/p>\n

Okinawa<\/em><\/p>\n

Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex.\u00a0 Probably his best known book is \u00a0Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo<\/em> in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they’re safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?<\/p>\n

He did the TV interview that is partly translated below somewhat against his present impulses.\u00a0 I talked to him on the telephone today (March 22 , 2011) and he told me that while it made sense to oppose nuclear power back then, now that the disaster has begun he would just as soon remain silent, but the lies they are telling on the radio and TV are so gross that he cannot remain silent.<\/p>\n

I have translated only about the first third of the interview (you can see the whole thing in Japanese on you-tube), the part that pertains particularly to what is happening at the Fukushima plants.\u00a0 In the latter part he talked about how dangerous radiation is in general, and also about the continuing danger of earthquakes.<\/p>\n

After reading his account, you will wonder, why do they keep on sprinkling water on the reactors, rather than accept the sarcophagus solution\u00a0 [ie., entombing the reactors in concrete. Editors.] I think there are a couple of answers.\u00a0 One, those reactors were expensive, and they just can’t bear the idea of that huge a financial loss.\u00a0 But more importantly, accepting the sarcophagus solution means admitting that they were wrong, and that they couldn’t fix the things.\u00a0 On the one hand that’s too much guilt for a human being to bear.\u00a0 On the other, it means the defeat of the nuclear energy idea, an idea they hold to with almost religious devotion.\u00a0 And it means not just the loss of those six (or ten) reactors, it means shutting down all the others as well, a financial catastrophe.\u00a0 If they can only get them cooled down and running again they can say, See, nuclear power isn’t so dangerous after all.\u00a0 Fukushima is a drama with the whole world watching, that can end in the defeat or (in their frail, I think groundless, hope) victory for the nuclear industry.\u00a0 Hirose’s account can help us to understand what the drama is about. Douglas Lummis<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hirose Takashi:\u00a0 The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and the State of the Media<\/strong><\/p>\n

Broadcast by Asahi NewStar, 17 March, 20:00<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interviewers: Yoh Sen’ei and Maeda Mari<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yoh:<\/strong> Today many people saw water being sprayed on the reactors from the air and from the ground, but is this effective?<\/p>\n

Hirose<\/strong>:\u00a0 . . . If you want to cool a reactor down with water, you have to circulate the water inside and carry the heat away, otherwise it has no meaning. So the only solution is to reconnect the electricity.\u00a0 Otherwise it\u2019s like pouring water on lava.<\/p>\n

Yoh:<\/strong> Reconnect the electricity \u2013 that\u2019s to restart the cooling system?<\/p>\n

Hirose<\/strong>:\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 The accident was caused by the fact that the tsunami flooded the emergency generators and carried away their fuel tanks.\u00a0 If that isn\u2019t fixed, there\u2019s no way to recover from this accident.<\/p>\n

Yoh:<\/strong> Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner\/operator of the nuclear plants] says they expect to bring in a high voltage line this evening.<\/p>\n

Hirose<\/strong>: Yes, there\u2019s a little bit of hope there.\u00a0 But what\u2019s worrisome is that a nuclear reactor is not like what the schematic pictures show (shows a graphic picture of a reactor, like those used on TV).\u00a0 This is just a cartoon.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what it looks like underneath a reactor container (shows a photograph).\u00a0 This is the butt end of the reactor.\u00a0 Take a look.\u00a0 It\u2019s a forest of switch levers and wires and pipes.\u00a0 On television these pseudo-scholars come on and give us simple explanations, but they know nothing, those college professors.\u00a0 Only the engineers know.\u00a0 This is where water has been poured in.\u00a0 This maze of pipes is enough to make you dizzy.\u00a0 Its structure is too wildly complex for us to understand. For a week now they have been pouring water through there.\u00a0 And it\u2019s salt water, right?\u00a0 You pour salt water on a hot kiln and what do you think happens?\u00a0 You get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze.\u00a0 They won\u2019t move.\u00a0 This will be happening everywhere.\u00a0 So I can\u2019t believe that it\u2019s just a simple matter of you reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate.\u00a0 I think any engineer with a little imagination can understand this.\u00a0 You take a system as unbelievably complex as this and then actually dump water on it from a helicopter \u2013 maybe they have some idea of how this could work, but I can\u2019t understand it.<\/p>\n

Yoh:<\/strong> It will take 1300 tons of water to fill the pools that contain the spent fuel rods in reactors 3 and 4.\u00a0 This morning 30 tons.\u00a0 Then the Self Defense Forces are to hose in another 30 tons from five trucks.\u00a0 That\u2019s nowhere near enough, they have to keep it up.\u00a0 Is this squirting of water from hoses going to change the situation?<\/p>\n

Hirose<\/strong>:\u00a0 In principle, it can\u2019t.\u00a0 Because even when a reactor is in good shape, it requires constant control to keep the temperature down to where it is barely safe.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s a complete mess inside, and when I think of the 50 remaining operators, it brings tears to my eyes.\u00a0 I assume they have been exposed to very large amounts of radiation, and that they have accepted that they face death by staying there.\u00a0 And how long can they last?\u00a0 I mean, physically.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the situation has come to now.\u00a0 When I see these accounts on television, I want to tell them, \u201cIf that\u2019s what you say, then go there and do it yourself!\u201d\u00a0 Really, they talk this nonsense, trying to reassure everyone, trying to avoid panic.\u00a0 What we need now is a proper panic.\u00a0 Because the situation has come to the point where the danger is real.<\/p>\n

If I were Prime Minister Kan, I would order them to do what the Soviet Union did when the Chernobyl reactor blew up, the sarcophagus solution, bury the whole thing under cement, put every cement company in Japan to work, and dump cement over it from the sky.\u00a0 Because you have to assume the worst case.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because in Fukushima there is the Daiichi Plant with six reactors and the Daini Plant with four for a total of ten reactors.\u00a0 If even one of them develops the worst case, then the workers there must either evacuate the site or stay on and collapse.\u00a0 So if, for example, one of the reactors at Daiichi goes down, the other five are only a matter of time.\u00a0 We can\u2019t know in what order they will go, but certainly all of them will go.\u00a0 And if that happens, Daini isn\u2019t so far away, so probably the reactors there will also go down.\u00a0 Because I assume that workers will not be able to stay there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low.\u00a0 This is the danger that the world is watching.\u00a0 Only in Japan is it being hidden.\u00a0 As you know, of the six reactors at Daiichi, four are in a crisis state.\u00a0 So even if at one everything goes well and water circulation is restored, the other three could still go down.\u00a0 Four are in crisis, and for all four to be 100 per cent repaired, I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic.\u00a0 If so, then to save the people, we have to think about some way to reduce the radiation leakage to the lowest level possible.\u00a0 Not by spraying water from hoses, like sprinkling water on a desert.\u00a0 We have to think of all six going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low.\u00a0 Everyone knows how long it takes a typhoon to pass over Japan; it generally takes about a week.\u00a0 That is, with a wind speed of two meters per second, it could take about five days for all of Japan to be covered with radiation.\u00a0 We\u2019re not talking about distances of 20 kilometers or 30 kilometers or 100 kilometers.\u00a0 It means of course Tokyo, Osaka.\u00a0 That\u2019s how fast a radioactive cloud could spread. Of course it would depend on the weather; we can\u2019t know in advance how the radiation would be distributed.\u00a0 It would be nice if the wind would blow toward the sea, but it doesn\u2019t always do that.\u00a0 Two days ago, on the 15th, it was blowing toward Tokyo.\u00a0 That\u2019s how it is. . . .<\/p>\n

Yoh:<\/strong> Every day the local government is measuring the radioactivity.\u00a0 All the television stations are saying that while radiation is rising, it is still not high enough to be a danger to health. They compare it to a stomach x-ray, or if it goes up, to a CT scan.\u00a0 What is the truth of the matter?<\/p>\n

Hirose<\/strong>: For example, yesterday.\u00a0 Around Fukushima Daiichi Station they measured 400 millisieverts \u2013 that\u2019s per hour.\u00a0 With this measurement (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Edano admitted for the first time that there was a danger to health, but he didn\u2019t explain what this means.\u00a0 All of the information media are at fault here I think.\u00a0 They are saying stupid things like, why, we are exposed to radiation all the time in our daily life, we get radiation from outer space.\u00a0 But that\u2019s one millisievert per year.\u00a0 A year has 365 days, a day has 24 hours; multiply 365 by 24, you get 8760.\u00a0 Multiply the 400 millisieverts by that, you get 3,500,000 the normal dose.\u00a0 You call that safe?<\/span><\/strong> And what media have reported this?\u00a0 None.\u00a0 They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it.\u00a0 The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping.\u00a0 What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside.\u00a0 These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say?\u00a0 They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance.\u00a0 I want to say the reverse.\u00a0 Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body.\u00a0 What happens?\u00a0 Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter.\u00a0 That\u2019s a thousand times a thousand: a thousand squared.\u00a0 That\u2019s the real meaning of \u201cinverse ratio of the square of the distance.\u201d\u00a0 Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion.\u00a0 Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that\u2019s the danger.<\/p>\n

Yoh:<\/strong> So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning.\u00a0 Because you can breathe in radioactive material.<\/p>\n

Hirose:<\/strong> That\u2019s right.\u00a0 When it enters your body, there\u2019s no telling where it will go.\u00a0 The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children.\u00a0 Now they\u2019re talking about iodine and cesium, but that\u2019s only part of it, they\u2019re not using the proper detection instruments.\u00a0 What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air.\u00a0 Their instruments don\u2019t eat.\u00a0 What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material. . . .<\/p>\n

Yoh:<\/strong> So damage from radioactive rays and damage from radioactive material are not the same.<\/p>\n

Hirose<\/strong>:\u00a0 If you ask, are any radioactive rays from the Fukushima Nuclear Station here in this studio, the answer will be no.\u00a0 But radioactive particles are carried here by the air.\u00a0 When the core begins to melt down, elements inside like iodine turn to gas.\u00a0 It rises to the top, so if there is any crevice it escapes outside.<\/p>\n

Yoh:<\/strong> Is there any way to detect this?<\/p>\n

Hirose<\/strong>: I was told by a newspaper reporter that now Tepco is not in shape even to do regular monitoring.\u00a0 They just take an occasional measurement, and that becomes the basis of Edano\u2019s statements.\u00a0 You have to take constant measurements, but they are not able to do that.\u00a0 And you need to investigate just what is escaping, and how much.\u00a0 That requires very sophisticated measuring instruments.\u00a0 You can\u2019t do it just by keeping a monitoring post.\u00a0 It\u2019s no good just to measure the level of radiation in the air.\u00a0 Whiz in by car, take a measurement, it\u2019s high, it\u2019s low \u2013 that\u2019s not the point.\u00a0 We need to know what kind of radioactive materials are escaping, and where they are going \u2013 they don\u2019t have a system in place for doing that now.<\/strong><\/p>\n

_________________
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Douglas Lummis is a political scientist living in Okinawa and the author of Radical Democracy<\/strong><\/a>. Lummis can be reached at ideaspeddler@gmail.com<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading his account, you will wonder, why do they keep on sprinkling water on the reactors, rather than accept the sarcophagus solution [ie., entombing the reactors in concrete. Editors.] I think there are a couple of answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,56,147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-asia-pacific","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}