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2011/09/10

Wish list for foreign media coverage six months after 2011/03/11

  • Children in Fukushima City are still being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. It's an outrage that the WHO and Japan's allies haven't publicly denounced the Japanese government for this reckless gamble.
  • Fukushima was not as bad as Chernobyl in some respects, but it still has the potential to be much worse. Chernobyl released more radionuclides, but Fukushima still has multiple reactor cores and tons of spent fuel exposed to the air. It's cooled with water, but the water goes away as steam into the air or water into the ground and sea. Chernobyl was a single reactor core that was sealed off and done with after a month. 
  • In Fukushima, the stability of the reactor 4 building has been questioned and could collapse in an aftershock. If that happens, spent fuel will be out of containment and melting in the open air, and we'll have to catch the first flight out and never come back. It will be a global catastrophe.
  • Workers on the site are being badly abused. In Chernobyl, they used 600,000 soldiers who were not treated well, either, but they all got medals and health benefits for life. In Fukushima, they are rounding up day laborers and the unemployed. There is so far no talk about giving them special recognition or special health benefits. A lot of the money is being skimmed off because it's gone out through layers of sub-contractors. 
  • A very curious thing is that on site the workers say they can't communicate with the site bosses because they all speak French or English. Why is it a big secret that the cleanup has been taken over by Americans and French?

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