Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Peter Saunders
Institute of Science in Society
“We lost Japan,” said Rie Inomata, who works as an interpreter [1].
“I feel guilty and sorry for the children. They did not choose nuclear power plants, they did not choose to be born; but it is them that have to suffer in the future.”
“By not protesting against nuclear power I allowed this accident to happen. If we go in the same direction, I don’t see any future.”
“If we [are to] make a difference, we must decide now, it is now or never.”
Potential future of Fukushima children written in Chernobyl
The potential future for the Fukushima children victims is written starkly in the government birth and death registries of the heavily contaminated regions in the Chernobyl fallout; dedicated doctors, scientists, and ordinary citizens are bearing witness to the humanitarian disaster still unfolding.
There have been at least close to a million excess deaths, with general mortality rates doubled or tripled [2] (Chernobyl Deaths Top a Million Based on Real Evidence, SiS 55). A diversity of illnesses continue to claim lives including those of children: birth abnormalities, cancers, cardiovascular malfunction, premature aging, defects affecting practically every organ system, often multiple illnesses in the same individual, all associated with exposure to radioactivity in the body either inhaled or ingested in contaminated food. The number of children in Belarus has fallen by more than 27% since 2000, despite increasing birth rates. The horrific health impacts of the nuclear accident are still emerging more than 26 years later because the land is still contaminated, and the genetic/epigenetic legacy is just as long lasting.
Many of the deaths and sicknesses could have been avoided had governments not done their best to suppress the evidence from the start, even to the point of persecuting doctors and scientists – who put their lives and careers at risk in trying to save the children -including cutting off major funding for a simple treatment that would have reduced the children’s radioactive burden [3, 4] (Apple Pectin for Radioprotection, The Pectin Controversy, SiS 55).
Fukushima fallout as big as Chernobyl
Chernobyl was generally recognized as the biggest nuclear accident in history. Within days of the first explosion, Fukushima was reclassified by the International Atomic Energy Agency to the highest grade 7 – with “widespread health and environmental effects” – the same as Chernobyl [5] (Fukushima Nuclear Crisis, SiS 50).
But as in Chernobyl, the government has withheld vital information from people, the international regulators are downplaying the health impacts, and to this day, the total radioactivity released from the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is still unknown [6] (Truth about Fukushima, SiS 55).fukushima
The most authoritative estimates based on measurements carried out by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty monitoring stations around the globe indicate that the total radioactivity released from the Fukushima accident is at least as great as from Chernobyl; some 15 times the official estimate, and much more global in reach [7] (Fukushima Fallout Rivals Chernobyl, SiS 55). The radioactivity in the waste water discharged into the Pacific Ocean is already the single largest release into the ocean in history.
The Japanese government’s own measurements show widespread contamination, with levels of radioactivity outside the official evacuation zone so high that within a matter of weeks, people would have been exposed to 10-200 times the legal limit dose for a whole year [6]. Evacuation especially of children from those areas is a matter of the utmost urgency. Yet the Japanese government is still refusing to do that.
Nuclear reactors to restart despite lag in crisis plan
On 16 June 2o12, Japanese premier Noda ordered the restart of two nuclear reactors amid widespread protest, and new crisis plans drafted after the Fukushima disaster are still to be implemented by any local community living near the nuclear power reactors. The Ohi nuclear reactors to be restarted are a case in point.
If a Fukushima-style meltdown were to happen, the only route for escape or sending help is [8] “a winding, cliff-hugging road often closed by snow in winter or clogged by beachgoers in summer.” Radioactivity from the meltdown could contaminate Lake Biwa, the country’s biggest freshwater source serving 14 million people. The reactors sit on Wakasa Bay, a region home to 13 commercial reactors. Some of the crucial measures designed to protect residents in the new crisis plans are not ready, such as a raised seawall in 2013 and an onsite command centre by March 2o16. And filter vents that could reduce radiation leaks to the environment won’t be ready for three more years.
The Fukui provincial government has only started survey in June 2012 for a multibillion dollar project to repair the sole route to the Ohi nuclear plant and to add a new alternative evacuation road.
Governor Yukuko Kada of neighbouring Shiga province accuses the central government of still ignoring the residents, and says it has still refused to provide radiation simulation data she has asked for in order to compile an evacuation map and to study the impact on Lake Biwa, as another Fukushima-class crisis could “instantly make the lake water undrinkable.”
Public opposition to resuming operations remains high because of the Fukushima disaster and a lingering distrust of the nuclear industry as well as the pro-nuclear regulators and governments.
But the public have good reason on their side.
