Industrialized Cyclist Notepad


Fukushima News Downplayed Health Concerns and Still Does

Oh yeah, that Fukushima thing. I remember that.

Four years after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the disaster no longer dominates U.S. news headlines, though the disabled plant continues to pour three hundred tons of radioactive water into the ocean each day. Homes, schools and businesses in the Japanese prefecture are uninhabitable, and will likely be so forever. Yet the U.S. media has dropped the story while public risks remain.A new analysis by American University sociology professor Celine Marie Pascale finds that U.S. news media coverage of the disaster largely minimized health risks to the general population.

Pascale analyzed more than 2,000 news articles from four major U.S. outlets following the disasters occurrence March 11, 2011 through the second anniversary on March 11, 2013. Only 6 percent of the coverage—129 articles—focused on health risks to the public in Japan or elsewhere. Human risks were framed, instead, in terms of workers in the disabled nuclear plant.

via Fukushima News.

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Tanks for the Memories

Seems pretty clear at this point. In the future all of our time, energy and material resources will go toward making tanks to store an ever-increasing amount of radioactive wastewater that we have dumped in desperation onto melted reactor cores and ‘spent’ nuclear fuel, and which has leaked out of some other tank or tanks. Unfortunately, though we can look forward to full employment, and lots of good times with our colleagues down at the tank factory, the Tank Game is un-winnable.

Did Kafka write this passage:

Tokyo Electric Power Co. previously said two of seven huge underground tanks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had been leaking since Saturday if not earlier.

The latest leak involves a tank that was being used to take water from one of the two that were leaking, TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono said. …

TEPCO has halted the transfer of water to the third tank, diverting it to a fourth tank that remains intact. Two of the seven tanks are currently unused.

Ono said TEPCO has decided to stop using the two most damaged of the three leaking tanks as soon as they are emptied, but will use the other because of a tank shortage.

via More radioactive water leaking from storage tanks at Japanese nuclear plant damaged by tsunami – The Washington Post.



Typhoon Guchol
June 17, 2012, 18:48
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click to enlarge

via Typhoon Guchol : 5 Day Forecast Map | Weather Underground.



Hiroaki Koide: Promoters of nuclear power should eat contaminated food

Why should little kids have to eat it? An interesting moral dilemma.

クリーンな食べ物はない。

There is no clean food.

残念ながら福島の事故は起きてしまい、全地球に汚染を広げてしまっている。そのため、クリーンとか安全という食べ物というものはありません。

Sadly, the Fukushima accident happened, and has spread contamination throughout the world. So there is no food that is clean or safe.

ただし、猛烈に汚れている食べ物から比較的安全な食べ物まで、連続的に分布している。それをどのように受け入れるかが問題。

But there is a continuous variety of food from extremely contaminated food to relatively safe food. The issue is how to accept [allocate] such food.

猛烈な汚染食品は原子力を進めていた方々に食べてもらう。東電幹部、原子力を進めてきた政治家や、学者に食べてもらう。そういう仕組みを作りたい。

Extremely contaminated food should be eaten by people who have promoted nuclear power. TEPCO top management, and politicians and scholars who have promoted nuclear power. I would like to build such a system.

後は、原子力をここまで許してきてしまった大人たちに、汚染された食べ物を食べてもらって、子どもたちに汚染されていないものを食べさせてあげる。

The rest of the contaminated food should be eaten by adults, who have allowed nuclear power to this extent, so that the non-contaminated food goes to children.

via EX-SKF:

Hiroaki Koide: "Adults in Japan Should Eat Contaminated Food" to Atone for the Sins of Having Allowed Nuke Power | EXSKF.



1.5 million tons

…of tsunami debris, headed toward Canada.

Among the first arrivals is one ill-advised purchase by unnamed Japanese bachelor from Miyagi Prefecture.

“The door was ripped off it and I could see a motorcycle tire sticking out,” he said. “So I went closer and looked inside and saw a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.”

The bike was rusty, particularly on the wheels and handlebars, but the logo on the fuel tank was unmistakable.

“First I thought, this has got to be the craziest thing anyone has ever found,” he said.

“Then I looked a little closer and the licence had Japanese writing on it. The wall of the trailer had Japanese print on the tags. And the first thing that popped into my head was this is likely from the Tsunami in Japan.”

via http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/04/29/bc-tsunami-debris-harley.html CBC News.