Friday, July 26, 2019

Is Fukushima Safe for Olympics?


The Nation asks whether Fukushima is safe for the Olympics:
Zirin, Dave & Boykoff, Jules (2019, July ). Is Fukushima Safe for the Olympics? The Nation, https://www.thenation.com/article/is-fukushima-safe-for-the-olympic-games/
A recent visit suggests that the repercussions of the 2011 nuclear disaster aren't over....  Despite this bleak scene, Kowata somehow brims with fighting energy. “The local people have come to me and told me to tell the world what is actually happening,” she said. “That’s where I get my strength. There are people getting sick. There are people who are dying from stress. The world needs to know.”

A compelling answer to this pressing question was offered by Koide Hiroaki:
Koide Hiroaki The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics https://apjjf.org/-Norma-Field--Koide-Hiroaki/5256/article.pdf
According to the report submitted by the Japanese government to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this accident released 1.5x101 6 becquerels (Bq) of cesium 137 into the atmosphere—the equivalent of 168 Hiroshima bombs. One Hiroshima bomb’s worth of radioactivity is already terrifying, but we have the Japanese government acknowledging that the Fukushima disaster released 168 times the radioactivity of that explosion into the atmosphere.

And the Fukushima disaster ain't over yet, as the plant produces copious contaminated water and its radioactive pollutants are dispersed into the aquifer, the port, the Pacific Ocean, and the atmosphere.

Nuclear is not the solution to the world's pressing energy and climate problems.

Fukushima Daiichi July 25, 2019 4:04



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3 comments:

  1. "Nuclear is not the solution to the world's pressing energy and climate problems." I could not agree more. But in the minds of many it is preferable to "the even more deadly fossil fuels". Sure it is bad science, but fake science is also in these days. Was this an unintended or an intended consequence of things like the New Green Deal? In any case nuclear power is back in good standing now and due for another premier performacne.

    I am not a fan of the windmills. Solar is okay but limited. So what do we do? Bad old CO2 is haunting the world. And good grief every volcanic eruption just throws more of that noxious gas into the atmosphere.

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  2. My sense from the beginning of the disaster was that only a half hearted effort would be made to mitigate . . . Japan is passing through a period of interior exhaustion. The young are not reproducing. I can not imagine the polite Japenese protesting or rioting over Fukushima.

    "Is Fukushima Safe for Olympics?" After the Olympics we can check annually and see if any get sick . . . in twenty years we may have a definitive answer. Athletes are supposedly strong in body and should survive, but the watchers may not do so well. Journalists may also have problems.

    I do not think we will get any negative news about the Olympics now, during or after. Why rock the boat?

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  3. Ever wonder why Hitler, Nazi Germany and the Concentration Camps receive all the condemnation, while Stalin, the Soviet Union and the Gulags get scant criticism? Maybe Communism is viewed as an idealistic venture that ran into potholes along the way but was bursting with good intention?

    Or, perhaps darkly because FDR was sure that the Communists and Stalin were good guys essentially just like us? Then back in the 1930's so many intellectuals and artists with elite educations were closet
    Communists. whereas Joe MeCarthy was sort of a working class guy, leader of an uneducated mob? Tell some of your colleagues that really Joe MeCarthy was right! Shameful.

    Alexander Solzhenitsyn was never really warmly embraced by the West. How many of your friends have read his books or even know who he was. Everyone knows Mein Kampf--at least the title. What about One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich? Silence. And so it goes . . . ignorance is the up elevator.

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