|
|
|
| April 5, 2011 |
|
 |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Nuclear Power Plant Catastrophe |
|
|
|
|
|
The accident at the Fukusima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant has been unfolding and going to more devastating conditions. The situation today can never be perceived as something that has happened beyond ‘the prediction’. Mankind cannot co-exist with nuclear power. In addition, reactors have been built on the archipelago which earthquakes hit so often. The fact is outrageous. What we see in front of us eloquently tells the truth. To abandon nuclear energy is the next task to commit.
CONCEALMENT, LIES AND UNDERESTIMATION OF ACCIDENT
Desperate on-site work for rehabilitation is going on at the plant in Fukushima Prefecture. Workers, firefighters and servicemen from the Self Defense Forces work at the risk of their lives. Levels of their exposure to radioactivity have probably reached the allowable limit. Radioactive substances have been incessantly released into the air, ground and seawater.
Nevertheless, the Premier’s Office, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) as well as academicians and experts and some commercial media repeat, referring to the density of radioactivity, that ‘it will not impact on the human health immediately’, and refuse to show prospects in the coming months or years.
What annoys us is that these people do not touch at all on differences between the external exposure to radioactivity, such as CT scan and X-ray application, and the internal one when radioactive substances enter inside the human body.
Safe Level of Radioactivity – It Never Exists
Whether exposure to it is external or internal, or it is of low-level, radioactivity damages genes and chromosomes. Therefore, a safe, allowable level of radioactivity does not exist.
In the medicine radiation therapy is applied under strict control and exposure is instantaneous. It is undergone as an option to cure disease and irradiation is a necessary and indispensable means. Exposure to radioactivity in the nuclear plant accident is, completely different from the medical use, hazardous and must be evaded.
Radioactive substances enter the human body through contaminated air, tap water and agricultural and marine produces and keep damaging tissues until radioactivity is lost, though each substance has its characteristics.
The government, Tepco and experts reiterate every day and every minute that the radioactive level does not risk the human body immediately. But this kind of announcement makes us doubt: maybe they tell a lie, or they underestimate the accident.
Don’t conceal, don’t tell a lie and don’t minimize the event – these are rules to be maintained at the time of accident. The government and Tepco as well as experts on nuclear technology must follow the norms when coping with the difficulties.
Adherence to Nuclear Power Generation
The next step is to make a drastic change in the government policies for nuclear development and to give up this type of energy. The events at the Fukusima plant tell us dangers and absurdness of dependence on electricity generated by the nuclear reactors constructed on the quake-prone archipelago.
However, the electric companies and the major financial groups still cling to promoting nuclear power generation. The government is reluctant to review the policies.
President Yamashita Takashi, Chubu Electric Power Co., told in the press meeting on March 28, referring to the planned Kaminoseki Power Plant, that it was necessary to build the station from the points of energy security and prevention of global warming. He insisted fuilfilling the project. President Yagi Makoto, Kansai Electric Power Co., replied in the same conference of the day that his company would resume operation at the three reactors under regular inspection at the moment and start power generation with plutonium-applied MOX fuel at the No.4 reactor at Takahama Plant.
Chairman Yonekura Hiromasa, the Nippon Keidanren (=Japan Business Federation), declared in the press meeting on March 16 that it was not necessary to review the policies on nuclear development. The industry people are far from responsible for the event.
|
|
|
|
|
|
