We had 9\/11; now we also have 3\/11, March 11 2011 (AT 1446), the triple seaquake-tsunami-radiation disaster.\u00a0 Ground zero was an ocean zero, and the country that gave the world the word “tsunami” was hit by one up to 41 meters high.\u00a0 And there was Fukushima Dai-ichi, one of Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants, with six units, 1-6; on the beach, offering itself to the primordial rage of the tsunami.<\/p>\n
A terrible disaster of historical proportions calling on local, national and global solidarity, pouring in from everywhere, the world at its best.\u00a0 Even some 260 prisoners in a Japanese prison collected 3 million yen to help the victims; a case among millions.<\/p>\n
Disaster management is on, and will remain so for months, years to come, in Japan, but fragmented<\/em>, for selected parts of the crisis. Radiation damage is and will be underplayed for the workers–very low class, in that poor district–hit, dying, dead, but we will hear little, and compensation will be missing.\u00a0 External radiation of the skin may be reported, but not inner damage to human bodies due to ingestion.\u00a0 State-Capital-Intelligentsia elites making the mantra “safe-clean-cheap” almost synonymous with “nuclear” is unlikely to change discourse.\u00a0 Evidently neither safe, nor clean.\u00a0 How cheap?<\/p>\n Let us focus on that one.\u00a0 Shukan Kinyobi<\/em>, The Week on Friday–no favorite of the State-Capital-Intelligentsia elite, reports that nuclear energy adds an unnecessary 28-29% potential energy supply given the actual demand in Japan<\/em>.\u00a0 Not counting renewable energy (solar energy is used by very many households), coal-oil and hydroelectric power can meet the demand; the demand curve–even flattening out in recent years–is well within that supply.\u00a0 And yet they were built, from 1964; many on the beach. Stupid? No, worse: probably rational cost-benefit analysis, accepting high risks with low probability, in return for high benefits with high probability.<\/p>\n Which were these benefits in a country famous for “nuclear allergy” after Hiroshima-Nagasaki; now ridden by a Fukushima even worse than Hiroshima?\u00a0 Hiroshima was part of a war scenario–unnecessary given Japan’s de facto capitulation–the other side can be blamed, Japan can become a victim, deflecting attention every 6 August away from Japan the perpetrator, particularly in Korea-China.\u00a0 But Fukushima with aftermath is mainly of Japan’s own making.<\/p>\n It started with Eisenhower’s speech in 1953 about Atoms for Peace, and the massive program launched in 1955 with the same name.\u00a0 Japan’s “conversion” to nuclearism in 1964 created an avalanche of critics, some of them very well informed, warning of the risks.<\/p>\n So, what were the benefits, to Japan, and-or to the USA?<\/p>\n One benefit is social<\/em>: because of the secrecies surrounding nuclear affairs and the danger that they may fall into the wrong hands nuclearism is not only based on tight State-Capital-Intelligentsia cooperation, but elevates that iron triangle to a trinity like Crown-Lords-Clergy before them, legitimizing their exemption from democratic control as carriers of ultimate power.\u00a0 This fits Japanese elites particularly well given recent history.<\/p>\n One benefit is US-Japan “economic cooperation<\/em>“–quote-unquote because those benefits are not equal given the risk–with General Electric-Westinghouse as major constructors of the reactors (like four of the six in Fukushima Dai-ichi).\u00a0 After the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 they lost the US market, but Fukushima was built in the period 1974-78.\u00a0 General Electric offers to rebuild Fukushima.<\/p>\n