Editorial – Two Disasters. Fukushima And BP

Between the Fukushima-Daichi nuclear power planet (sic) disaster in Japan, and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it has to be said that anyone who is eating seafood these days, is taking a very serious risk.

In both cases, corporate owners and respective governments have done everything they can to keep us in the dark about both the immediate and long term effects on human health.

Therefore, it’s up to us to do for ourselves what they will not – educate ourselves and take sensible precautions; to do what we can to avoid health problems that could be sneaking up on those who have been lulled into a false sense of security through lack of good and honest information.

There can be absolutely no doubt that Fukushima clean-up efforts are failing almost as fast as they are being implemented. While the rest of the world may worry about nuclear threats from North Korea, the truth is that radioactive particles are currently destroying life in the Pacific ocean, and the affected area – and the dying sea life – can only get larger in distance and numbers as time goes by.

Already, 80 per cent of the available storage for contaminated cooling water has been used up, and now cracks and leakage are being discovered, which is allowing even more radioactive material to escape into the ground and thereby into the ocean.

AP provides additional details:

A makeshift system of pipes, tanks and power cables meant to carry cooling water into the melted reactors and spent fuel pools inside shattered buildings remains highly vulnerable, Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka acknowledged Wednesday.

***The problems have raised doubts about whether the plant can stay intact through a decommissioning process that could take 40 years, prompting officials to compile risk- reduction measures and revise decommissioning plans.

***Just over the past three weeks, there have been at least eight accidents or problems at the plant, the nuclear watchdog said.

***Experts suspect the radioactive water has been leaking since early in the crisis, citing high contamination in fish caught in waters just off the plant.

***“The nuclear crisis is far from over,” the nationwide Mainichi newspaper said in a recent editorial. “There is a limit to what the patchwork operation can do on a jury-rigged system.”

Read Section 2 Oil Spill Aftermath