Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[seemslikeadream]

MARCH 17, 2015

Don't Drink the Fukushima Tea
Radiation in Green Tea
by HARVEY WASSERMAN
Four years after the multiple explosions and melt-downs at Fukushima, it seems the scary stories have only just begun to surface.

Given that Japan’s authoritarian regime of Shinzo Abe has cracked down on the information flow from Fukushima with a repressive state secrets act, we cannot know for certain what’s happening at the site.

According to the New York Times, a sample of powdered tea imported from the Japanese prefecture of Chiba, just southeast of Tokyo, contained traces of radioactive cesium 137. Photo credit: Shutterstock

We do know that 300 tons of radioactive water have been pouring into the Pacific every day. And that spent fuel rods are littered around the site. Tokyo Electric power may or may not have brought down all the fuel rods from Unit Four, but many hundreds almost certainly remain suspended in the air over Units One, Two and Three.

We also know that Abe is pushing refugees to move back into the Fukushima region. Thyroid damage rates—including cancer—have skyrocketed among children in the region. Radiation “hot spots” have been found as far away as Tokyo. According to scientific sources, more than 30 times as much radioactive Cesium was released at Fukushima as was created at the bombing of Hiroshima.

Some of those isotopes turned up in at least 15 tuna caught off the coast of California. But soon after Fukushima, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration stopped testing Pacific fish for radiation. The FDA has never fully explained why.

But now a small amount of Fukushima’s radiation has turned up in green tea shipped from Japan to Hong Kong. This is a terrifying development, casting doubt on all food being exported from the region.

According to the New York Times:

“A sample of powdered tea imported from the Japanese prefecture of Chiba, just southeast of Tokyo, contained traces of radioactive cesium 137, the Hong Kong government announced late Thursday evening, but they were far below the legal maximum level.

The discovery was not the first of its kind. The government’s Center for Food Safety found three samples of vegetables from Japan with “unsatisfactory” levels of radioactive contaminants in March 2011, the month that nuclear reactors in Fukushima, northeast of Tokyo, suffered partial meltdowns following a powerful earthquake and tsunami.”

Should every meal you are served now be accompanied with a radiation monitor?

[SonicG]

http://ianthomasash.blogspot.jp/2015/03 ... rship.html

The Japanese distributor of 'A2-B-C' (WEBSITE), my documentary about children living in Fukushima, is cancelling all domestic screenings of the film. They are also canceling the contract to distribute the film in Japan, despite there being more than two years remaining on the agreement.

It is not clear to me how much of this decision is the result of actual censorship and how much is self-censorship. My feeling is that it is self-censorship based on the fear of a potential censorship problem at some point in the future. If this is the case, then it is an example of the terrifying and wide-reaching effect of the Secrecy Law (INFO). This law does not even need to be enforced for its effect to be felt: its mere existence causes people to engage in self-censorship, imposing on themselves the very crackdown that the drafters of the legislation had surely envisioned.

[seemslikeadream]

Radiation from Fukushima reactor detected off Vancouver Island
Fukushima Dai-ichi radiation Vancouver


Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press
Published Monday, April 6, 2015 7:32PM EDT
VICTORIA -- Radiation from the leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor has been detected on the shores of Vancouver Island, four years after a deadly earthquake and tsunami in Japan killed 16,000 people.
University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen said Monday that it's the first time radiation has been found on the shorelines of North America since the quake and tsunami ravaged the Japanese north coast and disabled the nuclear reactor.
Low levels of the radioactive isotope Cesium-134, which scientists say can only come from Fukushima, were found in waters collected on Feb. 19 off a dock at Ucluelet, B.C., about 315 kilometres west of Victoria, said Cullen.
Last November, the first sample containing detectable radioactivity from Fukushima was discovered 150 kilometres off the coast of northern California.
Over the past 15 months, scientists and citizen volunteers have been collecting water samples at more than 60 sites along the Canadian and U.S. west coasts and in Hawaii as they've looked for traces of radioactive isotopes from Japan.
"This is the first sample that's been collected in North America with this contaminated plume of sea water, which we've seen offshore, but it's the first time we've actually seen it at the shoreline," Cullen said.
He said the arrival of radioactive water on North American shores from Japan was expected this year. The distance from Japan to Ucluelet is more than 7,600 kilometres.
"The levels we are seeing are so low that we don't expect there to be impacts on the health of either the marine environment or people living along the coast," Cullen said.
"We're more than a thousand-fold below even the drinking water standard in the coastal waters being sampled at this point. Those levels are much much much lower than what's allowable in our drinking water."
Cullen said in a statement that if a person swam for six hours each day in water with Cesium levels twice as high as those found in Ucluelet, they'd receive a radiation dose that is more than 1,000 times less than that of a single dental X-ray.
Since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered the nuclear disaster, there has been widespread concern about the potential danger posed by radioactivity from Japan crossing the Pacific Ocean.
Cullen leads a marine radioactivity monitoring network formed last August that includes scientists in Canada and the U.S., health experts, non-governmental organizations and citizens who help collect samples along the Pacific coast.
The InFORM Network, or Integrated Fukushima Ocean Radionuclide Monitoring, received $630,000 in federal funds for three years through the Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network.
Research partners in the network include Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Health Canada, the University of Ottawa, the University of British Columbia and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

[MacCruiskeen]

Containing Fukushima Is “Beyond Current Technology”. Worldwide Radiation is the Unspoken Consequence

“The Chief Of The Fukushima Nuclear Power Station Has Admitted That The Technology Needed To Decommission Three Melted-Down Reactors Does Not Exist, And He Has No Idea How It Will Be Developed”

By Washington's Blog
Global Research, April 08, 2015

http://www.globalresearch.ca/containing ... ce/5441434

[Nordic]

That's the sort of thing that you would think would make everybody extremely angry.

"Why would you want a plan in place for that hypothetical time when the technology is going to fail? It's never going to fail! Trust us!"

And here we are. I'll never forget the feeling I had when I saw that containment building blow literally sky high. Because I knew what it meant. It meant this.

If I had the money I'd move to Argentina or Chile or Tasmania. But I dont.

[seemslikeadream]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qX-YU4nq-g

JUNE 15, 2015

The Real Story
What’s Really Going on at Fukushima?
by ROBERT HUNZIKER
Fukushima’s still radiating, self-perpetuating, immeasurable, and limitless, like a horrible incorrigible Doctor Who monster encounter in deep space.

Fukushima will likely go down in history as the biggest cover-up of the 21st Century. Governments and corporations are not leveling with citizens about the risks and dangers; similarly, truth itself, as an ethical standard, is at risk of going to shambles as the glue that holds together the trust and belief in society’s institutions. Ultimately, this is an example of how societies fail.

Tens of thousands of Fukushima residents remain in temporary housing more than four years after the horrific disaster of March 2011. Some areas on the outskirts of Fukushima have officially reopened to former residents, but many of those former residents are reluctant to return home because of widespread distrust of government claims that it is okay and safe.

Part of this reluctance has to do with radiation’s symptoms. It is insidious because it cannot be detected by human senses. People are not biologically equipped to feel its power, or see, or hear, touch or smell it (Caldicott). Not only that, it slowly accumulates over time in a dastardly fashion that serves to hide its effects until it is too late.

Chernobyl’s Destruction Mirrors Fukushima’s Future

As an example of how media fails to deal with disaster blowback, here are some Chernobyl facts that have not received enough widespread news coverage: Over one million (1,000,000) people have already died from Chernobyl’s fallout.

Additionally, the Rechitsa Orphanage in Belarus has been caring for a very large population of deathly sick and deformed children. Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to radiation than adults.

Zhuravichi Children’s Home is another institution, among many, for the Chernobyl-stricken: “The home is hidden deep in the countryside and, even today, the majority of people in Belarus are not aware of the existence of such institutions” (Source: Chernobyl Children’s Project-UK).

One million (1,000,000) is a lot of dead people. But, how many more will die? Approximately seven million (7,000,000) people in the Chernobyl vicinity were hit with one of the most potent exposures to radiation in the history of the Atomic Age.

The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is known as “Death Valley.” It has been increased from 30 to 70 square kilometres. No humans will ever be able to live in the zone again. It is a permanent “dead zone.”

Additionally, over 25,000 died and 70,000 disabled because of exposure to extremely dangerous levels of radiation in order to help contain Chernobyl. Twenty percent of those deaths were suicides, as the slow agonizing “death march of radiation exposure” was too much to endure.

Fukushima- The Real Story

In late 2014, Helen Caldicott, M.D. gave a speech about Fukushima at Seattle Town Hall (9/28/14). Pirate Television recorded her speech; here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qX-YU4nq-g

Dr. Helen Caldicott is co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and she is author/editor of Crisis Without End: The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe, The New Press, September 2014. For over four decades Dr. Caldicott has been the embodiment of the anti-nuclear banner, and as such, many people around the world classify her as a “national treasure”. She’s truthful and honest and knowledgeable.

Fukushima is literally a time bomb in quiescence. Another powerful quake and all hell could break loose. Also, it is not even close to being under control. Rather, it is totally out of control. According to Dr. Caldicott, “It’s still possible that Tokyo may have to be evacuated, depending upon how things go.” Imagine that!

According to Japan Times as of March 11, 2015: “There have been quite a few accidents and problems at the Fukushima plant in the past year, and we need to face the reality that they are causing anxiety and anger among people in Fukushima, as explained by Shunichi Tanaka at the Nuclear Regulation Authority. Furthermore, Mr. Tanaka said, there are numerous risks that could cause various accidents and problems.”

Even more ominously, Seiichi Mizuno, a former member of Japan’s House of Councillors (Upper House of Parliament, 1995-2001) in March 2015 said: “The biggest problem is the melt-through of reactor cores… We have groundwater contamination… The idea that the contaminated water is somehow blocked in the harbor is especially absurd. It is leaking directly into the ocean. There’s evidence of more than 40 known hotspot areas where extremely contaminated water is flowing directly into the ocean… We face huge problems with no prospect of solution.” (Source: Nuclear Hotseat #194: Fukushima 4th Anniversary – Voices from Japan, March 10, 2015, http://www.nuclearhotseat.com/2468/)

At Fukushima, each reactor required one million gallons of water per minute for cooling, but when the tsunami hit, the backup diesel generators were drowned. Units 1, 2, and 3 had meltdowns within days. There were four hydrogen explosions. Thereafter, the melting cores burrowed into the container vessels, maybe into the earth.

According to Dr. Caldicott, “One hundred tons of terribly hot radioactive lava has already gone into the earth or somewhere within the container vessels, which are all cracked and broken.” Nobody really knows for sure where the hot radioactive lava resides. The scary unanswered question: Is it the China Syndrome?

Following the meltdown, the Japanese government did not inform people of the ambient levels of radiation that blew back onto the island. Unfortunately and mistakenly, people fled away from the reactors to the highest radiation levels on the island at the time.

As the disaster happened, enormous levels of radiation hit Tokyo. The highest radiation detected in the Tokyo Metro area was in Saitama with cesium radiation levels detected at 919,000 becquerel (Bq) per square meter, a level almost twice as high as Chernobyl’s “permanent dead zone evacuation limit of 500,000 Bq” (source: Radiation Defense Project). For that reason, Dr. Caldicott strongly advises against travel to Japan and recommends avoiding Japanese food.

Even so, post the Fukushima disaster, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed an agreement with Japan that the U.S. would continue importing Japanese foodstuff. Therefore, Dr. Caldicott suggests people not vote for Hillary Clinton. One reckless dangerous precedent is enough for her.

According to Arnie Gundersen, an energy advisor with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, as reported in The Canadian on August 15, 2011: “The US government has come up with a decision at the highest levels of the State Department, as well as other departments who made a decision to downplay Fukushima. In April, the month after the powerful tsunami and earthquake crippled Japan including its nuclear power plant, Hillary Clinton signed a pact with Japan that she agreed there is no problem with Japanese food supply and we will continue to buy them. So, we are not sampling food coming in from Japan.”

However, in stark contrast to the United States, in Europe Angela Merkel, PhD physics, University of Leipzig and current chancellor of Germany is shutting down all nuclear reactors because of Fukushima.

Maybe an advanced degree in physics makes the difference in how a leader approaches the nuclear power issue. It certainly looks that way when comparing/contrasting the two pantsuit-wearing leaders, Chancellor Merkel and former secretary of state Clinton.

After the Fukushima blow up, ambient levels of radiation in Washington State went up 40,000 times above normal, but according to Dr. Caldicott, the U.S. media does not cover the “ongoing Fukushima mess.” So, who would really know?

Dr. Caldicott ended her speech on Sept. 2014 by saying: “In Fukushima, it is not over. Everyday, four hundred tons of highly radioactive water pours into the Pacific and heads towards the U.S. Because the radiation accumulates in fish, we get that too. The U.S. government is not testing the water, not testing the fish, and not testing the ambient air. Also, people in Japan are eating radiation every day.”

Furthermore, according to Dr. Caldicott: “Rainwater washes over the nuclear cores into the Pacific. There is no way they can get to those cores, men die, robots get fried. Fukushima will never be solved. Meanwhile, people are still living in highly radioactive areas.”

Fukushima will never be solved because “men die” and “robots get fried.” By the sounds of it, Fukushima is a perpetual radiation meltdown scenario that literally sets on the edge of a bottomless doomsday pit, in waiting to be nudged over.

UN All-Clear Report

A UN (UNSCEAR) report on April 2, 2014 on health impacts of the Fukushima accident concluded that any radiation-induced effects would be too small to identify. People were well protected and received “low or very low” radiation doses. UNSCEAR gave an all-clear report.

Rebuttal of the UNSCEAR report by the German affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War d/d July 18, 2014 takes a defiant stance in opposition to the UN report, to wit: “The Fukushima nuclear disaster is far from over. Despite the declaration of ‘cold shutdown’ by the Japanese government in December 2011, the crippled reactors have not yet achieved a stable status and even UNSCEAR admits that emissions of radioisotopes are continuing unabated. 188 TEPCO is struggling with an enormous amount of contaminated water, which continues to leak into the surrounding soil and sea. Large quantities of contaminated cooling water are accumulating at the site. Failures in the makeshift cooling systems are occurring repeatedly. The discharge of radioactive waste will most likely continue for a long time.”

“Both the damaged nuclear reactors and the spent fuel ponds contain vast amounts of radioactivity and are highly vulnerable to further earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and human error. Catastrophic releases of radioactivity could occur at any time and eliminating this risk will take many decades… It is impossible at this point in time to come up with an exact prognosis of the effects that the Fukushima nuclear disaster will have on the population in Japan… the UNSCEAR report represents a systematic underestimation and conjures up an illusion of scientific certainty that obscures the true impact of the nuclear catastrophe on health and the environment.”

To read the full text of the rejoinder to the UN report, go to: https://japansafety.wordpress.com/tag/saitama/

Fukushima’s Radiation and the Future

Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press (AP), June 12, 2015: “Four years after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, the road ahead remains riddled with unknowns… Experts have yet to pinpoint the exact location of the melted fuel inside the three reactors and study it, and still need to develop robots capable of working safely in such highly radioactive conditions. And then there’s the question of what to do with the waste… serious doubts about whether the cleanup can be completed within 40 years.”

“Although the Chernobyl accident was a terrible accident, it only involved one reactor. With Fukushima, we have the minimum [of] 3 reactors that are emitting dangerous radiation. The work involved to deal with this accident will take tens of years, hundreds of years,” Prof. Hiroaki Koide (retired), Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, April 25, 2015. “It could be that some of the fuel could actually have gone through the floor of the containment vessel as well… What I’ve just described is very, very logical for anyone who understands nuclear engineering or nuclear energy,” which dreadfully spells-out: THE CHINA SYNDROME.

According to the Smithsonian, April 30, 2015: “Birds Are in a Tailspin Four Years After Fukushima: Bird species are in sharp decline, and it is getting worse over time… Where it’s much, much hotter, it’s dead silent. You’ll see one or two birds if you’re lucky.” Developmental abnormalities of birds include cataracts, tumors, and asymmetries. Birds are spotted with strange white patches on their feathers.

Maya Moore, a former NHK news anchor, authored a book about the disaster: The Rose Garden of Fukushima (Tankobon, 2014), about the roses of Mr. Katsuhide Okada. Today, the garden has perished: “It’s just poisoned wasteland. The last time Mr. Okada actually went back there, he found baby crows that could not fly, that were blind. Mutations have begun with animals, with birds.”

The Rose Garden of Fukushima features a collection of photos of an actual garden that existed in Fukushima, Japan. Boasting over 7500 bushes of roses and 50-thousand visitors a year, the Garden was rendered null and void in an instant due to the triple disaster — earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown.

The forward to Maya’s book was written by John Roos, former US Ambassador to Japan 2009-13: “The incredible tale of Katz Okada and his Fukushima rose garden was told here by Maya Moore… gives you a small window into what the people of Tohoku faced.”

Roos’ “small window” could very well serve as a metaphor for a huge black hole smack dab in the heart of civilization. Similarly, Fukushima is a veritable destruction machine that consumes everything in its path, and beyond, and its path is likely to grow. For certain, it is not going away.

Thus, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) is deeply involved in an asymmetric battle against enormously powerful unleashed out-of-control forces of E=mc2.

Clearly, TEPCO has its back to the wall. Furthermore, it’s doubtful TEPCO will “break the back of the beast.” In fact, it may be an impossible task.

Maybe, just maybe, Greater Tokyo’s 38 million residents will eventually be evacuated. Who knows for sure?

Only Godzilla knows!

[seemslikeadream]

JUNE 23, 2015

A Hero Amongst the Radiation
Dr. Josh Park’s Courage at Fukushima
by ROBERT HUNZIKER
Disasters have an uncanny way of bringing out the best in humanity. In the aftermath of tragedy, compassion, understanding, compatibility, accommodation, and accord usually lead the way forward. That’s when remarkable people stand out in the face of adversity. Therefore, it is extraordinarily unfortunate that Japan’s government choses to dishonor its own citizenry as well as its lost heroes like Dr. Josh Park in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

In the aftermath of Japan’s worst tragedy since WWII, the government of Japan enacted The Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, Act No. 108 promulgated on December 13, 2013. The law “almost limitlessly widens the range of what can be considered confidential,” Nobuyuki Sugiura, Managing Editor, Tokyo Head Office, Asahi Shimbun will continue to respond to the public’s right to know, The Asahi Shimbun, December 7, 2013.

Furthermore, according to the newspaper, Asahi Shimbun: “Every organization has information that it cannot make public. And Japan already had laws to protect such information,” which leads to the question: What’s going on? Did the Fukushima nuclear disaster open up the country to new foreign threats, similar to the raison d’etre for enactment of the Public Security Preservation Law of 1925, which gave the Japanese government carte blanche to outlaw any form of dissent. Thereafter, Japan established the “Thought Police” with branches all over Japan and overseas to monitor activity by alleged socialists and communists (in case you’ve ever wondered where George Orwell got his insane ideas).

After all, the new secrecy law allows bureaucrats and politicians to “designate state secrets to their liking” (Asahi Shimbun). What???

As such, the new secrecy law is 100% subjective, not objective, as the distinction of integrity crumbles apart. Those who leak secrets will face up to 10 years in prison. Does this foreboding message to the citizenry of Japan have anything to do with the Fukushima nuclear disaster? Why is it necessary? Why pass an act that promotes discord, suspicion, mistrust, and lack of confidence in public institutions at the very time when consolation is needed more than ever?

This one enactment by the government of Japan takes the breath out of all of those whom labored so hard to help others in time of dire need. It is a slap in the face, a form of ridicule expressive of totalitarianism at its lowest.

Nevertheless, in stark contrast to the government of Japan taking the low, low, low road in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Dr. Josh Park, who passed away from cancer in 2013, sacrificed his personal health by taking the high road to help the less fortunate in the aftermath of the disaster. His bravery and self-sacrifice symbolizes an eternal memorial at cross-purposes to the government’s acts of intimidation in the face of horrendous tragedy, which, in and of itself, may be the final tragedy.

Regrettably, in the midst of horrendous tragedy the country’s stripped of its élan vital as its soul vanishes into thin air.

Dr. Josh Park

In 2012 Josh Park earned a doctorate in ministry from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in California. He passed away on June 28th, 2013 after a lingering battle with cancer. He was 61.

For nearly twenty years, Dr. Park spent countless hours in parks and in train stations caring for Tokyo’s homeless, always there with snacks, hot coffee, rice balls as he converted his backpack into a stool, sitting and consoling wayward street people.

He started Yoyogi Park Sidewalk Chapel with a local Japanese pastor. He saved lives; he converted lost souls to a better way, a bright shining light, he preached the word of God, and he gave his life to a better cause. He took the high road.

His son sent a compassionate letter on June 20th: “I recently read your article titled “What’s Really Going On At Fukushima.” I just wanted to take the time to thank you for your brave and honest reporting concerning the Tohoku disaster that has relatively been ignored by the mainstream media. It’s shocking to see how blind the global community is concerning this crisis, and journalists like you are so vital in breaking that veil of lies spun by Japan and the nuclear power industry.”

“My late father was one of the first volunteers to help with the cleanup and disaster relief….” As a full time IMB missionary for Japan, he was asked to help. “There was absolutely no mention of radiation hazards, and none of the team members were equipped with the required protective gear… Now my father and his co-leader, another full time missionary… passed away from a rare form of cancer. They were both in their 60s… their love for the Japanese people spurred them to take on the responsibility. They were both cleared medically to help, and neither had cancer before….”

Ever since his loss, a misty image of Dr. Josh Park, the man who always had a hot drink and something to eat for those in the street surely hovers over Yoyogi Park Sidewalk Chapel. Assuredly, if a higher power is actually a part of life’s journey, then a vague, opaque, vaporous image of Dr. Park must be there. It is likely that many of the heartbroken homeless have already seen this ethereal image of Dr. Josh Park whilst standing before Yoyogi Park Sidewalk Chapel and felt something special in their hearts as a tears stream down their cheeks.

Dr. Josh Park touched more lives than anybody will ever know. After all, nobody was readily available to count the number of people he cared for and pulled out of the abyss, rescued from certain suicide, given renewed hope, a guiding light towards self-respect, something to strive for beyond wallowing in sorrow. Yes, his compassionate strength touched tens, hundreds, maybe thousands, nobody will ever know how many for sure because when a man nobly, selflessly, benevolently gives of himself to save even one, it is like a miracle, as if the clouds spread apart exposing a golden, glowing hand, reaching down and blessing the chivalry of those who give of themselves.

Eternally, his personal story is woven into the fabric of the streets, part of the oral history of the street people of Tokyo like Masahi Takahashi, a homeless man who lost his job and lost all self-respect, but today, thanks to Dr. Park, Masahi Takahashi is janitor at the homeless church, a group leader of homeless Bible study in the park. And he mentors young homeless men. He’s rediscovered his courage, his being, self-worth. Because of Dr. Park, he reconstituted self-respect.

Is it possible to find a more worthy accomplishment than helping, assisting, guiding someone to find their true essence, their mission in life, a reason for living? Dr. Josh Park’s mission is a testament, a tribute to this innate goodness within humanity.

Whereas, far too often, society at large, when unwittingly organized to legislate, is shallow, insincere, contrived, hollow, and scared, leading to coercive measures that bully people, intimidate the citizenry, and browbeat society, all of which is symptomatic of weakness, not strength. When tragedy strikes, a nation needs strength of leadership, not cowardly acts to hide behind.

Above all, the Fukushima nuclear disaster brought out the best in individuals whilst exposing the worst of authorities. In striking contrast, Dr. Josh Park was brave, a strong man who was not scared.

[seemslikeadream]

Review: Japanese Photographers Reflect on the Fukushima Catastrophe
By VICKI GOLDBERGJUNE 19, 2015


BOSTON — What’s the purpose, what’s the effect of creating “art” photographs about natural disasters after they happen? News photographs will have already stirred up horror; will this be more of the same? The curators of “In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, pose those questions and more in this provocative exhibition by 17 photographers who reacted to the earthquake, tsunami and breach of the Fukushima nuclear plant in northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, after the news-media coverage.

Some of the photographers are well known, even here; others are up and coming. Although a few of these photographs have appeared in multimedia shows in Japan, the country has not had such a comprehensive show of photographs, perhaps because memory of the atomic bomb is still quite alive — and radiation from Fukushima is too.

Photographers have depicted natural and unnatural disasters since the mid-19th century, and images of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina have been given museum shows. What is uncommon in Boston is the attempt to deal with an invisible threat — radiation — and the majority of surreal, symbolic, or metaphoric responses. The ostensible subject of these pictures is March 11, 2011, but their deeper subject is fear and anxiety.

Photo

“Ofunato, Miyagi Prefecture” (2014) by Kitajima Keizo, photograph, pigment-based inkjet print. Credit Kitajima Keizo, via Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The introductory wall text says these nearly 100 photographs “ensure that what happened on 3/11 will not be forgotten” — Takashi Arai considers his daguerreotypes of the damage “micro-monuments” — but the remembrance is probably ensured without any of these. More relevant is that these photographers reckon with the conceptual issues raised by creating art from such disaster, according to the organizers, Anne E. Havinga, senior curator of photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, and Anne Nishimura Morse, senior curator for Japanese art. This exhibition, on view through July 12, bristles with issues. Though many images are beautiful in some way, aesthetics is not the primary concern.

The first thing you see on entering is a poignant tribute to photography’s role as preserver of memory and history: a large arrangement of amateur family photographs made before the disaster and rescued from the debris — children, couples, events, landscapes — all badly damaged, many nearly obliterated, like the people and places in them. Are people doubly lost when even their image has died?

Photo

Yasusuke Ota’s “Deserted Town” from the series The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima (2011), photograph, pigment-based inkjet print. Credit Yasusuke Ota, via Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In a video taken that day by Japanese television, displayed farther into the exhibition, the tsunami devours everything and roars off with what looks like the wreckage of an entire village writhing in its clutches. The photographs of the tsunami’s damage in “In the Wake” impose a certain order on chaos, if only by dint of expert composition and fine printing, which at least subliminally attest to art’s power to put a rational face on irrational occurrences. Photographers being individuals, their reactions are various. Kozo Miyoshi’s black-and-white photos of pulverized villages (and one intact graveyard) are purposefully objective, as if the inescapable facts loomed so large they made emotions superfluous — but such scenes arouse emotions anyway.

Before the tsunami, Naoya Hatakeyama photographed the village where his mother lived, strictly personal photographs never meant to be shown. After the disaster killed his mother and destroyed the village, the photographs, including one of a rainbow over his mother’s house, acquired a new meaning and went on view.

Photo

Takashi Arai’s “April 26, 2011, Onahama, Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture,” from the series Mirrors in Our Nights, daguerreotype. Credit Takashi Arai/Photo Gallery International, via Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Lieko Shiga, the village photographer of Kitakama, narrowly escaped the wave that was racing to swallow the entire place. Her staged and manipulated photographs, most of them made before disaster struck, suggest apocalypse and introduce the possibility that metaphor and fantasy, even if made without reference to a specific event, can evoke the portent and emotion of that event. In one image, an elderly couple holds a bare tree trunk and its frantically waving roots upside down. The trunk appears to pierce the man’s body, and tree and couple have both turned an ominous red.

And how do you photograph something invisible? Metaphor with a surrealistic slant. The 82-year-old Kikuji Kawada, photographed the nuclear plant in near-utter darkness and dangled before it an enormous moon in partial eclipse, the shadow bloody red. Nobuyoshi Araki made vertical slashes on a picture of people walking with umbrellas; these cuts mimic black rain, the Japanese term for Hiroshima’s radiation-fallout rain. Shimpei Takeda’s puzzling, abstract photographs answer the question more explicitly. Images that look like black skies with huge clusters of stars and galaxies were in fact made from contaminated soil samples. The soil was exposed to light-sensitive paper for a month; radiation wrote its cosmic signature on the paper.

Photo

Tomoko Yoneda’s “Hiroshima Peace Day” from the series Cumulus (2011), photograph, chromogenic print. Credit Tomoko Yoneda, via Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
This method of photographing the invisible was discovered by two physicists in the same year, 1896; both won Nobel Prizes. Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally discovered X-rays that year, and Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in uranium salts. The Museum of Fine Arts catalog notes that some artists and scientists have used gloves, mushrooms, and children’s shoes irradiated on March 11 to reproduce their own images.

Mr. Takeda’s images raise a question pertinent to other photographs in the exhibition: do photographs speak a universal language or do they need words? At the museum, many cry for ordinary language, which wall texts and the thorough, intelligent catalog helpfully provide. A label explains that the perplexed ostrich improbably wandering the empty street of a deserted town in Yasusuke Ota’s photograph was a pet of the company that owned the nuclear plant and the picture part of a series to raise money for abandoned animals.

Photo

“Rasen Kaigan (Spiral Shore) 46” from the series Rasen Kaigan (Spiral Shore) by Lieko Shiga, from 2011, photograph, chromogenic print. Credit Lieko Shiga, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Two photographers demonstrate how post-destruction images can affirm photography’s ties to political and economic circumstances. On display is Mr. Kawada’s 1965 ominous little photobook “Chizu (The Map),” which juxtaposed images of the ravaged Atomic Bomb Dome in Nagasaki with TV images of the good life during Japan’s emergence as an economic power in the 1960s. Ishu Han blurred a widely known image of the destroyed Fukushima tower by covering it with a grid of one-yen coins in recognition of the country’s economic dependence on nuclear power.

Higher spiritual powers were once thought to be responsible for natural disasters. Now nature’s indifference, political blindness and greed have top billing. At Fukushima radiation extended the threat for many years to come. The Japanese photographers on exhibit in Boston cram a mammoth anxiety inside a small frame, reconfirming the mind’s desire, and sometime ability, to wrest some kind of sense, some kind of meaning, even from a cataclysm.

We were already looking. These photographs ask us to think.

[seemslikeadream]

JUNE 29, 2015

Straight Disaster
Is Fukushima Getting Worse?
by ROBERT HUNZIKER
The Fukushima multiple nuclear disasters continue spewing out hot stuff like there’s no tomorrow. By all appearances, it is getting worse, out-of-control nuclear meltdowns.

On June 19th Tepco reported the highest-ever readings of strontium-90 outside of the Fukushima plant ports. The readings were 1,000,000 Bq/m3 of strontium-90 at two locations near water intakes for Reactors 3 and 4. Tepco has not been able to explain the spike up in readings. The prior highest readings were 700,000 Bq/m3. (Source here).

Strontium-90 is a byproduct of nuclear reactors or during the explosion of nuclear weapons, e.g., it is considered the most dangerous component of radioactive fallout from a nuclear weapon (Source: HyperPhysics, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University). It is a cancer-causing substance because it damages genetic material (DNA) in cells. Strontium-90 is not found in nature. It’s a byproduct of the nuclear world of today, e.g., strontium-90 was only recently discovered, as of August 2014, for the first time ever, by the Vermont Health Department in ground water at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station (Source here). Coincidentally, Vermont Yankee, as of December 29, 2014, is being shut down.

When a fission chain reaction of uranium-235 or plutonium-239 is active in a nuclear power station containment vessel, it produces a vast array of deadly radioactive isotopes. Strontium-90 is but one of those. So, somewhere in Fukushima Dai-ichih a lot of atoms are splitting like crazy (meanwhile Einstein e=mc2 turns over in his grave) and ergo, a lot of strontium-90 pops out and hangs around for decades upon decades. This is not a small problem.

Which may be why Einstein famously said, “Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water.”

For example, a large amount of strontium-90 erupted into the atmosphere from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion (1986), spread over the old Soviet Republics and parts of Europe. Thereby, strontium-90, along with other radioactive isotopes, kills and maims people, a lot of people, to this day, more on this later.

Farming in Fukushima

Because of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, farmers in the greater area have had a tough go of it. For example, on June 6, 2013 Japanese farmers met with Tepco and government officials, including the official in charge of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Source here).

The 13-minute video of the farmers’ meeting with officials shows farmers testifying about contaminated food that, “We won’t eat ourselves, but we sell it… I know there is radiation in what we grow. I feel guilty about growing and selling them to consumers.”

Well, sure enough, officials from New Taipei City’s Department of Health (Taipei, Taiwan), and other law-enforcement authorities, seized mislabeled products from Japan. It seems that “more than 283 Japanese food products imported from the radiation-stricken areas near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster were found to be relabeled as having come from other areas of Japan and sold to local customers,” Stephanie Chao, 283 Mislabeled Japanese Food Products Originated Near Fukushima, The China Post, March 25, 2015.

Meanwhile, within a couple of months of the illicit underhanded devious mislabeling incident, Taiwan Enforces Stricter Controls on Japanese Food Imports, J.R. Wu in Taipei and Ami Miyazaki in Tokyo, Reuters, May 15, 2015, as Taiwan draws a line in the sand for Japanese foodstuff.

Not only that but on the heels of Taiwan’s discovery of the mislabeling gimmick, and only three months later, Japan Asks China to Ease Food Import Restrictions Introduced After Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, South China Morning Post, June 25, 2015. Previously, China banned food imports from ten prefectures in Japan, including Miyagi, Nagano, and Fukushima. Now, this past week, Japanese authorities are asking China to remove the restrictions.

Japan would be wise to suggest China first consult with the United States because confidently, audaciously, imperturbably Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly signed a secret pact with Japan within one month of the meltdown for the U.S. to continue importing Japanese foodstuff, no questions asked, Deborah Dupre, Radiating Americans: Fukushima rain, Clinton’s Secret Food Pact, Examiner.com, August 14, 2011.

Meantime, Chancellor Merkel (PhD, physics) ordered a shutdown of nuclear power plants throughout Germany, hmm.

Fukushima and Our Radioactive Ocean according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Video- March 2015: “When Fukushima exploded, radioactive gases and particles escaped into the atmosphere. Most fell nearby on land and in the ocean. A smaller amount remained in the air, and within days, circled the globe… in the ocean close to Fukushima, levels of cesium-137 and 134, two of the most abundant radioactive materials released, peaked at more than 50,000,000 times above background levels.”

Nevertheless, according to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute: “Scientists who have modeled the plume predict that radioactivity along the West Coast of North America will increase, but will remain at levels that are not a threat to humans or marine life.”

To date, based upon actual testing of water and marine life in the Pacific Ocean by Woods Hole, radioactive levels along the North American West Coast remain low, not a threat to humans, not a threat to marine life, so far.

Fukushima and its Ocean Impact, according to Dr. Ken Buesseler, Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, March 11, 2015, cesium uptake in the marine food web is diluted, for example, when Bluefin tuna swim across the Pacific, they lose, via excretion, about one-half of the cesium intake that is ingested in Japanese waters.

Expectantly, there are no commercial fisheries open in the Fukushima-affected areas of Japan. On a continual monitoring basis, no fishing is allowed in contaminated areas off the coastlines.

When contamination levels of fish in Japan are compared to fish along the coast of North America, the levels of radiation are relatively low in Canada and in the U.S. As a result, according to studies by Woods Hole, eating fish from the U.S. Pacific region is okay.

Not only that, but rather than categorical acceptance of U.S. government statements about safety from radiation in ocean currents, Dr. Buesseler established a citizen’s network called “How Radioactive is Our Ocean?” where individuals contribute by voluntarily taking samples. Every sample from the West Coast had cesium-137, but the numbers are low and at levels harmless to humans, thus far.

But, on a cautionary note, Dr. Buesseler is the first one to admit the situation requires constant monitoring.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s findings are not sufficient to dismiss health concerns for many reasons, among of which Fukushima is white hot with radioactivity, tenuously hanging by a thread, extremely vulnerable to another earthquake or even an internally generated disruption, who knows? It is totally out of control!

The California Coastal Commission issued a report that agrees with the low levels of Fukushima-derived radionuclides detected in air, drinking water, food, seawater, and marine life in California; however, “it should be noted that the long-term effects of low-level radiation in the environment remain incompletely understood….” Report on the Fukushima Dai-ichih Nuclear Disaster and Radioactivity along the California Coast, California Coastal Commission, April 30, 2014.

“The risk of long-term exposure to low-level radiation is unclear. Studies of radiotherapy patients and others indicate that there is a significant increase in cancer risk if lifetime exposure exceeds 100,000 microsieverts, according to the World Health Organization. A person exposed daily to radiation at the high end of the levels now seen at Miyakoji [a village in Fukushima Prefecture] would reach that lifetime exposure level in fewer than 23 years,” Patrick J. Kiger, Fukushima Return: At Nuclear Site, How Safe is Safe? National Geographic, April 2, 2014.

Current Status of Fukushima Nuclear Site, according to Dr. Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who travels to Japan to measure radiation levels: The site continues to leak radioactive materials. In fact, release of strontium-90 has grown by a factor of 100 when compared to 2011 levels. In other words, the situation is worsening. One hundred times anything is very big, especially when it is radiation.

Strontium-90 is acutely dangerous, and as it happens, highly radioactive water continuing to spew out of the Fukushima Dai-ichih facilities is seemingly an endless, relentless problem. The mere fact that strontium-90 has increased by a factor of 100 since the disaster occurred is cause for decisive sober reflection. Furthermore, nobody on the face of the planet knows what is happening within the nuclear containment vessels, but apparently, it’s not good. More likely, it’s real bad.

According to Dr. Helen Caldicott: “There is no way they can get to those cores, men die, robots get fried. Fukushima will never be solved. Meanwhile, people are still living in highly radioactive areas,” (Helen Caldicott, Speech at Seattle Town Hall, Sept. 28, 2014.)

Comparison analysis of Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011): The world’s three most recent nuclear disasters are dissimilar in many respects. However, all three are subject to the same adage: “an accident is something that is not planned.” Thus, by definition, in the final analysis, the risk factor with nuclear power is indeterminate. Fukushima is proof.

Three Mile Island’s containment vessel, in large measure, fulfilled its purpose by containing most of the radiation so there was minimal radiation released. As such, Three Mile Island is the least harmful of the three incidents.

By way of contrast, Chernobyl did not have an adequate containment vessel and as a result, the explosion sent a gigantic plume of radioactive material blasting into the atmosphere, contaminating a 70 square kilometer (approximately 30 sq. mi.) region, a “dead zone” that is permanently uninhabitable, forever unlivable.

To this day, tens of thousands of people affected by Chernobyl continue to suffer, and die, begging the question of whether Fukushima could be worse. After all, the incubation period for radiation in the body is 5-to-40 years (Caldicott). As for example, it took 5 years for Chernobyl children to develop cancer (Caldicott), and Fukushima occurred in 2011.

“Fukushima is not Chernobyl, but it is potentially worse. It is a multiple reactor catastrophe happening within 150 miles of a metropolis of 30 million people,” claims John Vidal. Whereas, Chernobyl was only one reactor in an area of 7 million people.

John Vidal, environmental editor, The Guardian newspaper (UK), traveled to Chernobyl: “Five years ago I visited the still highly contaminated areas of Ukraine and the Belarus border where much of the radioactive plume from Chernobyl descended on 26 April 1986. I challenge chief scientist John Beddington and environmentalists like George Monbiot or any of the pundits now downplaying the risks of radiation to talk to the doctors, the scientists, the mothers, children and villagers who have been left with the consequences of a major nuclear accident. It was grim. We went from hospital to hospital and from one contaminated village to another. We found deformed and genetically mutated babies in the wards; pitifully sick children in the homes; adolescents with stunted growth and dwarf torsos; fetuses without thighs or fingers and villagers who told us every member of their family was sick. This was 20 years after the accident, but we heard of many unusual clusters of people with rare bone cancers… Villagers testified that ‘the Chernobyl necklace’ – thyroid cancer – was so common as to be unremarkable,” John Vidal, Nuclear’s Green Cheerleaders Forget Chernobyl at Our Peril, The Guardian, April 1, 2011.

There’s more: “Konstantin Tatuyan, one of the ‘liquidators’ who had helped clean up the plant [Chernobyl], told us that nearly all his colleagues had died or had cancers of one sort or another, but that no one had ever asked him for evidence. There was burning resentment at the way the UN, the industry and ill-informed pundits had played down the catastrophe,” Ibid.

And still more yet: According to “Alexy Yablokov, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and adviser to President Gorbachev at the time of Chernobyl: ‘When you hear no immediate danger [from nuclear radiation] then you should run away as far and as fast as you can’… At the end of 2006, Yablokov and two colleagues, factoring in the worldwide drop in births and increase in cancers seen after the accident, estimated in a study published in the annals of the New York Academy of Sciences that 985,000 people had so far died and the environment had been devastated. Their findings were met with almost complete silence by the World Health Organisation and the industry,” Ibid.

The environment is devastated and almost one million dead. Is nuclear power worth the risks? Chancellor Merkel doesn’t seem to think so.

Of the three major nuclear disasters, Fukushima has its own uniqueness. The seriousness of the problem is immense, far-reaching, and daunting as its containment vessels are leaking radioactivity every day, every hour, every minute. How to stop it is not known, which is likely the definition of a nuclear meltdown!

The primary containment vessels at Fukushima may have prevented a Chernobyl-type massive release of radioactivity into the atmosphere in one enormous explosion. Even though, Fukushima did have four hydrogen explosions in the secondary containment structures, and as previously mentioned, according to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, “When Fukushima exploded… levels of cesium-137 and 134, two of the most abundant radioactive materials released, peaked at more than 50,000,000 times above background levels.”

But, more significant, troublesome, and menacing the primary containment vessels themselves are an afflictive problem of unknown dimension, unknown timing, unknown levels of destruction, as the nuclear meltdown left 100 tons of white-hot radioactive lava somewhere, but where?

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” William Shakespeare The Tempest.

Postscript: “Quietly into Disaster” is an alluring, exquisite, handsome full-length film that examines the consequences of nuclear fission, Produced by: Holger Strohm, Directed by Marcin El. http://holgerstrohm.com/?q=node/136

[zangtang]

burning its way towards the earthe core, presumabubbly.

[DrEvil]

A small correction to two of the articles posted above: Angela Merkel has a doctorate in physical chemistry, not physics.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Courtesy of Sounder:

Gov’t Official: Chilling report from Pacific Ocean… “Silence on the seas” — “Quite literally, there isn’t any fish” — Japan Professor: Fukushima posing reproduction risk to marine life, ongoing concern over bio-accumulation of radioactive material (VIDEOS)

Published: July 21st, 2015 at 9:16 pm ET

Senator Penelope Wright, Parliament of Australia, Mar 5, 2015 (emphasis added): “Like many others, I read an article in 2013 by Ivan Macfadyen called ‘The ocean is broken‘. It was published in The Sydney Morning Herald… He is an experienced sailor, so he had the ability to compare his experience then with… other trips. It was chilling. It was heartbreaking really. He had noticed changes in the last years. Basically, he was confronted by the silence that he heard, the silence on the seas, and he realised that this was attributable to the fact that they saw very, very few birds. They also caught very few fish… two fish.”

Interview with Ivan Macfadyen, Talk Radio Europe, May 24, 2015 (at 14:30 in): “The reality was… if I would have had no spare dry food on the boat — relying on fish this time around — we would have starved to death — because, quite literally, there isn’t any fish. There’s vast tracks where they’re just all gone. Where you could fish reliably, they’re just not there… I used to fish here on exactly the same course, at exactly the same time of year… the same ocean, on the same course, into the same place — and I could catch fish everyday, and for some reason now 10 years later they’re all gone.”

Though not discussed in the above interview, Macfadyen has attributed his statement “The ocean is broken” to the impact of Fukushima:

Host: What about sea birds and all of that?
Macfadyen: As you get closer up to Japan they’re all gone, they’re not there anymore… Everything’s all gone, it’s just like sailing in a dead sea… there’s nothing…
Host: After Japan you headed [to] America, did you see any impact from…Fukushima?
Macfadyen: It’s dead. That’s where I coined the phrase, ‘The ocean’s broken’ – because, for thousands of miles, there’s nothing. No birds, no fish, no sharks, no dolphins, no turtles… they’re not there… all those beautiful creatures, they’re just all gone… We’d seen a whale, round about probably 1,000 miles [off] Japan, just lying on the surface with like a big tumor… just behind its head… it looked like it was going to die… it didn’t try to get away, it didn’t flap its tail, it didn’t do anything… It had such a profound effect on me… Just talking about it makes me feel like I want to cry.

Prof. Yukari Takamura, Nagoya Univ., Aug 25, 2014: On March 11 2011 [there was] an extremely severe nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant… According to the report of the French government… it is estimated that 27.1 thousand terabecquerels of radioactive cesium-137 had leaked into the ocean by July 2011, causing significant marine pollution. Even in July 2013, TEPCO announced that contaminated ground water in the area of Fukushima Daiichi NPP had been leaked into the plant port. There is ongoing concern that some of the radioactive material may be bio-accumulating in fish and marine animals… [A]n enormous amount of radioactive substances were emitted into the environment… Some research demonstrates the existence of a potential ecological risk… particularly for reproduction. The knowledge about a long-term radiological risk to the ecosystem is still very limited… environmental monitoring and increased knowledge is a key that will allow us to evaluate the ecological impact… The 1996 Protocol to Amend the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage… covers some damage to the environment by including recovery for the costs of measures of reinstatement of impaired environment, as well as for loss of income derived from an economic interest in any use or enjoyment of the environment.

[hanshan]

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highlight added


http://tinyurl.com/nv3j5dj

Officials: “Trillions of becquerels of radioactive material still flowing into sea” at Fukushima — Map shows nuclear waste coming up from bottom of ocean far offshore — Japan TV Journalist: “Contaminated seawater will circulate around globe… disaster like a huge cloth expanding everyday” (VIDEO)

Published: August 11th, 2015 at 2:19 pm ET
By ENENews


Interview with NHK journalist Morley Robertson, by the Center for Remembering 3.11, published Jun 30, 2012 (emphasis added): I begin with the radiation leakage. Radiation leakage exerts a long term effect on the environment. It contaminates our food chain, the groundwater and the ocean. And the contaminated seawater will circulate around the globe. We never know how much this will impact on the environment… We’ll never able to study such issues with empirical certainty… [Due to nuclear testing] we have already accumulated “hidden losses” of radiation damage… how much is the [Fukushima] cesium in relation to that?… I believe we should enjoy delicious food rather than worrying about the food. I enjoyed the town’s delicacy… I didn’t mind about how the beef was produced or where it came from. As long as it is tasty, it is no problem for me. With regard to radiation, I have become more optimistic. My hypothesis is that it’s no use worrying about radiation. For people in Fukushima, they have a lot to worry about their future, like damaged reputation… One reason why we have relied on nuclear plants is because we didn’t know about the facts… We need to face the facts… Rad-waste from the nuclear cycle is said to be unsolvable even after 2.5 million years.

Part II of Robertson’s Interview, published Jun 30, 2012: In 1974, then PM Tanaka declared, “Let ‘s go nuclear!”… we were issued credit cards to buy electric goods to consume the extra electricity… It is OK to say that everything was just a lie… and 3/11 happened. So we must study everything. It is no longer about what to do with Onagawa nuclear power plant, Miyagi or Tohoku. This is about what to do with Japan. This has been revealed by our vulnerability to the accident… So when we talk about “disaster“, it’s like a huge wrapping cloth expanding everyday.

NHK: Morley is a journalist… working in the fields of television, radio, and lecture meetings… he studied at the University of Tokyo and Harvard University.
Robertson’s Wikipedia entry (translated from Japanese by Microsoft): In 1968, because of father’s job moved to… Hiroshima [to work] on Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission [and] undertook study of atomic bomb patients.

TEPCO, updated Mar 10, 2015: Fukushima Daiichi Contaminated Water Issue FAQ — Q1 Please explain the impact of the leaked radioactive materials on the sea. [Answer:] TEPCO announced that underground water including radioactive materials had leaked into the port… It has been implied that trillions of becquerels of radioactive materials are still flowing into the sea; however, the concentration of radioactive materials in the sea is at a level that meets the Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality, except for some areas…

TEPCO, Apr 28, 2015: Comprehensive risk review was implemented, considering all the possible risks that might have an impact outside the Fukushima Daiichi NPS site… The paths through which water could leak outside the site: …

Sources of risk — Trenches… Pits… Tanks… Accumulated water inside reactor buildings… Contamination inside the port
Leakage routes — Ground surface… Drainage channels… Underground (groundwater）

Destination of the contaminated material… The Sea: Unit 1-4 water intake channel… Inside the port… Outside the port
Watch Robertson’s interview here (click ‘CC’ for English)


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[cptmarginal]

In 1974, then PM Tanaka declared, “Let ‘s go nuclear!”

With all that is happening now, the background of the LDP and TEPCO is scandalous in the extreme. In my opinion. So organized crime construction companies may be responsible for destroying our global ecosystems? I suppose it's somewhat like what happened with Halliburton and the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sounder]

So organized crime construction companies may be responsible for destroying our global ecosystems?

That spells it out pretty good, and 'seemingly' untouchable.