This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
However, radiation keeps leaking. "The situation is not stable at all. So, you're looking at basically a ticking time bomb." The slightest disturbance causing more damage could increase the disaster's magnitude manyfold.
He described a full core meltdown this way:
"Think of driving a car, and....all of a sudden (it) lunges out of control. You hit the brakes," but they don't work because "the earthquake wiped out the safety systems."
"Then your radiator starts to heat up and explodes. That's the hydrogen gas explosion. And then, to make it worse, the gas tank is heating up, and all of a sudden your whole car (bursts into) flames. That's (a) full-scale meltdown."
"So what can you do? You drive the car into a river (what TEPCO did by using seawater to cover the) top of the core." But its salt corrodes the radiator. So what then? "You call out the local firemen" and use "Japanese samurai warriors" inside the plant on a suicide mission, trying to keep water over "melted nuclear reactor cores."
That's the current situation. So when TEPCO says things are stable, it's only "in the sense that you're dangling from a cliff hanging by your fingernails. And as the time goes by, each fingernail starts to crack. That's the situation now," extremely dangerous and uncertain.
Moreover, radiation contaminates air, water and soil. "Cows then eat the vegetation, create milk, and then it winds up in the milk. Farmers are now dumping milk right on their farms because it's too radioactive. Foods (also) have to be impounded in the area."
So "let's be blunt about this: would you buy food that says 'Made in Chernobyl?' Japanese people are saying: "Should I buy food that says 'Made in Fukushima?' We're talking about the collapse of the local economy. (Yet) the government tries to lowball all the numbers, downplay the severity of the accident, and that's making it much worse."
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
3
