Private industry caused the Japanese disaster, Japanese workers are paying for it

Investors aren’t rushing to get in to the nuclear industry I read somewhere last week. Like toxic assts that speculators dump on the taxpayer, as far as investors of capital go, nuclear industry investments are too radioactive. That doesn’t mean that in relatively normal times there is money to be made for the private companies that own the nuclear industry.

In fact its not a bad deal as the money generally comes from the public coffers. When things go wrong, as they have in Japan, the costs can be astronomical. Estimates vary for the cost of the clean up as no one really knows yet how much damage there is socially and environmentally or if there is more to come. The water in Tokyo has been found to be too high in radioactive content to be given to infant and officials have warned people not to do so. The strain on bottled water consumption is mounting and water shortages are appearing to be an issue.

Airborne radiation in Tokyo was four times the normal level yesterday the Wall Street Journal reports but as always, we are informed that the figures fall well within government limits. The problem is that the Japanese government and the private corporation that owns the plants have been found to be wanting on the openness and honesty front. Any capitalist government’s figures or regulatory warnings will always be conservative in order not to hinder profit taking.

Just like the insurance companies here in the US that in one way or another avoid paying out in natural disasters, their Japanese counterparts are equally as careful. Whatever the cost in terms of money to clean up in the aftermath of this catastrophe (and in my opinion “clean up” does not really clean up this type of disaster) it will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.

But the insurance and nuclear plant industry ensured its political representatives in government protected it against such disasters. Because they leave the public at risk doesn’t mean they don’t protect their pocket books. They don’t live near nuclear plants and they don’t even have to live in Japan if they don’t have to; the rich are truly global citizens in that sense and have no allegiance or link to any nation except money. They made sure that in the event of a disaster like the present one, the Japanese workers and middle class would not only pay with their health, and even lives but they would pay financially.

It’s not an accident that Japan’s 1961 Act on Compensation for Nuclear Damage makes it clear that the owners of nuclear plants won’t be held responsible if the damage is caused by “a grave natural disaster of an exceptional character”. I am sure the present disaster will fit that category so the owners of the reactors aren’t responsible and the Japanese insurance industry does not cover earthquake or tsunami related claims.

The Japanese catastrophe is entirely a by-product of an economic system of production. It is a product of capitalism. As I mentioned before; what worker, if given the choice, would agree to build nuclear reactors on an earthquake fault in a zone called the “Ring of Fire” due to the frequency and intensity of the quakes, and next to the ocean where they can welcome the post quake tsunamis which, by the way are no exceptions which is why tsunami is a Japanese word.

Environmental degradation harms all life

And here in the US, half of the nuclear reactors in the country are within 50 miles of urban centers with populations of 500,000 or more and 20 million people live within 50 miles of the Indian Point complex in New York State which is 35 miles from downtown Manhattan.

Even if it is possible to build safe nuclear energy and I don’t believe it is, we cannot trust them to be built safely when those making the decisions are representatives of the ruling class, the capitalist class. The basis for setting any sort of production in motion in the capitalist economic system is profit.
Japanese workers or the middle class never decided to build those reactors, representatives of the capitallist did; but they won't live next to them.

Solar and other safer forms of  energy can be explored.  The capitalist class might consider that when they’ve figured out how to put a meter on the sun.

Hopefully we’ll be rid of them before that time comes.