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Bad to Worse in Japan - by Stephen Lendman
It bears repeating. Government, industry, and major media reports downplay and deny Japan's unprecedented nuclear disaster, potentially able to kill millions now living and in future generations painfully.
Nuclear power is a real life Andromeda Strain. If uncontrollably unleashed, it's potentially able to destroy life worldwide under a worse case scenario.
In his latest article, nuclear expert Harvey Wasserman said "the most devastating thing about (Fukushima) is not what's happening there now. It's that until all the world's reactors are shut, even worse is virtually certain to happen again. All too soon." Fukushima, in fact, may be the nuclear nightmare he suggests.
Globally, 450 reactors operate, including 104 aging American ones, many with bad safety records caused by cost-cutting and shoddy maintenance. Poorly regulated, they're ticking time bombs, accidents waiting to happen, many plagued by near-meltdown misses.
According to Beyond Nuclear's Linda Gunter, American utilities have gambled since the dawn of the nuclear age, NRC regulators letting them get away with cutting corners, taking risks, and being lucky hundreds of times. However, it can't forever avoid a Fukushima-like disaster. From 1986 - 2006, Greenpeace estimates 200 near-misses. Any loss of power for any reason could cause one - an earthquake, tsunami, ice storm, or any number of accidents that can and do happen, including human error.
Even operating normally, reactors discharge enough radiation daily to contaminate food, water, air and earth. Further, if a large city like New York, Chicago or Los Angeles lies downwind of a meltdown, it would become uninhabitable forever.
Moreover, contrary to government and industry misinformation, nuclear power is neither efficient, reliable, cheap, clean or safe. Annually, it discharges significant amounts of greenhouse gases and hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and elements.
They're also atom bomb factories, a 1,000 megawatt plant producing 500 pounds of plutonium annually. Ten pounds can destroy greater New York. Moreover, the link between radiation and disease is irrefutable, dependent only on the amount of cumulative exposure over time. As Helen Caldicott explains:
"If a regulatory gene is biochemically altered by radiation exposure, the cell will begin to incubate cancer, during a 'latent period of carcinogenesis,' lasting from two to sixty years."
As a result, a single gene mutation can and often is fatal. No amount of radiation is safe, cumulative exposure causing 80% of known cancers.
As long as the technology exists, humanity is playing an insane game of nuclear roulette it can't win. It's only a matter of where and when one or more devastating meltdowns will occur. At Fukushima, it's virtually certain now happening, full-scale damage control concealing it. The only unknown is how bad, whether multiple reactors are affected, and whether anything's able stop it.
According to an unnamed industry expert, Japanese engineers confirmed a serious leak in the floor and/or sides of Unit 4's spent fuel pool, making it impossible to keep its rods under water. As fast as it's sprayed in, extreme heat evaporates it. A Los Angeles Times report said a "breach in the pool would leave engineers with a problem that has no precedent or ready-made solution." According to Union of Concerned Scientists physicist Edwin Lyman:
"My intuition is that this is a terrible situation and it is only going to get worse. There may not be any way to deal with it." Most at risk are children and pregnant women.
EU energy head Gunther Oettinger's assessment bears repeating that "We are somewhere between a disaster and a major disaster." It's wrong to "exclude the worst. There is talk of an apocalypse, and I think the word is particularly well chosen."
Nuclear expert John Large called Fukushima's response "shambolic," saying advance preparations for disaster weren't made, adding:
