Japan's nuclear disaster slowly unfolding

Japan is the only country in the world ever to have experienced atomic attack – twice – in August 1945, two aerial bombing raids, one at Hiroshima and one at Nagasaki, that were intended to force Japan into unconditional surrender in World War Two.

Japan is now the second country in the world to have a disaster in its own nuclear power plants. The first, at Chernobyl on 26 April 1986, was not only a major disaster in which men made heroic efforts to entomb the structure in concrete to limit the catastrophe, with the full knowledge that they would die an agonizing death weeks later from radiation poisoning. Chernobyl was one of the precipitating factors that brought about the end of the Soviet Union (the fall of the Berlin Wall was three years later, in 1989) — after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was obliged to throw off a policy of state secrecy and release information about the scope of the danger to life on earth, which to his credit he ultimately did, though there was a period of confusion and delay.

Now, in the wake of an earthquake and devastating tsunami wave just over one month ago (on 11 March) — and several subsequent strong aftershocks — the full scale of the damage to its four nuclear power generators at Fukushima is becoming clear.

Yesterday, the AP reported from Tokyo, “Japan raised the severity level of the crisis at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing cumulative radiation leaks contaminating the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater … The new ranking signifies a ‘major accident’ with ‘wider consequences’ than the previous level, including widespread health effects, according to the Vienna-based IAEA. However, Japanese officials have played down any health effects of radioactive releases so far from the Fukushima plant. They said the leaks amount to only a tenth of the radiation emitted in the Chernobyl disaster, while acknowledging they eventually could exceed Chernobyl’s emissions if the crisis continues … The revision was based on cross-checking and assessments of data on leaks of radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-137, NISA [Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency] spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said. ‘We have refrained from making announcements until we have reliable data’, Nishiyama said. ‘The announcement is being made now because it became possible to look at and check the accumulated data assessed in two different ways’, he said, referring to measurements from NISA and Japan’s Nuclear Security Council. Nishiyama noted that unlike in Chernobyl there have been no explosions of reactor cores at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, although there were hydrogen explosions … The plant was damaged in a massive tsunami March 11 that knocked out cooling systems and backup diesel generators, leading to explosions at three reactors and a fire at a fourth that was undergoing regular maintenance and was empty of fuel. The magnitude-9.0 earthquake that caused the tsunami immediately stopped the three reactors, but overheated cores and a lack of cooling functions led to further damage. Engineers have pumped water into the damaged reactors to cool them down, but leaks have resulted in the pooling of tons of contaminated, radioactive water that has prevented workers from conducting further repairs”. This report was published in the Washington Post here.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted in an article that “Commentators increasingly bemoan a lack of transparency, and complain that the data the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the Japanese government are providing is insufficient, unsystematic, and even inaccurate. Spokespeople for the utility and the government, in turn, justify their reservations about releasing information with reminders of the need to verify the accuracy of the data, and to avoid panic. More information is certainly desirable, and transparency is even better, but we should not expect that more, or even better, data will make all ambiguities disappear”.

The article, by Sonja D. Schmid, continued: “So what do the cryptic statements about the ongoing situation made by solemn men in blue overalls really mean? First there were the nuclear scientists and engineers, who explained the reactor design to us. It didn’t take long before we learned that dozens of the same boiling-water-type reactors operate in the United States, and that there had been concerns about specific features of this design since the 1970s. Then came the policy analysts who invoked the expertise of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the looming threat of global climate change to predict that the accident would merely be a bump in the road to our nuclear future. We already knew that the IAEA didn’t really have any authority over nuclear safety, but it took about two weeks until we learned that the ‘nuclear renaissance’ was losing its glow as several nations in Asia and Europe decelerated their nuclear ambitions. Next emerged the medical experts, who seemed to be sincerely concerned about not just the deposition of long-lived radioactive isotopes in the environment, but also the very real consequences of fear. Seriously, was global television the only way to communicate to hundreds of thousands of Japanese trapped within 50 miles of Fukushima that they likely were not safe, despite the assurances of their government? We might have expected that, two or three weeks into this disaster, the next voices we would hear might finally provide some synthesis and analysis, however preliminary, of all these different perspectives. Although there are pockets (such as this website) where this is in fact beginning to happen, the world’s attention has shifted back to other themes”.

But, she noted, “Bombarded with a cacophony of expertise, we still do not understand where we really stand — and neither does Tepco, the Japanese government, or the IAEA (but nobody worries about them breaking out in a panic once they have ‘all the information’). A situation involving multiple, simultaneous core meltdowns is unprecedented and almost by definition unpredictable. In addition to technical explanations and effective management, Fukushima calls for broad social engagement, not expert demarcation. Disciplinary expertise alone cannot provide what we will need most in the weeks and months to come: human imagination, intellectual creativity, and yes, heroic courage”. This article is published here.