Monday, October 14, 2013

A tour of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear site


The narrator, Arnie Gundersen who has written a book about Fukushima, makes an interesting point in this video: what will happen if another earthquake occurs? It wouldn't have to be a major one and Japan has many small earthquakes. I was not aware that US companies, GE for example, is responsible for building these nuclear reactors so close to the ocean and Gundersen points out that Japanese engineers recognized this as a mistake when building reactors five and six further inland and at a higher elevation. There is no doubt we are being kept completely in the dark when it comes to the actual environmental pollution and contamination of the sea water, drinking water and human consumption. It is not just our health and the environment that is damaged,  like the recent economic crash,  the massive clean up that will continue for decades if not a century or more, will fall to the public sector. As is normally the case, the job of cleaning up after private industry falls to the taxpayer.

1 comment:

DW said...

Gundersen is not to be trusted. He lied about Reactor spent fuel pond No. 4 saying, raging, it was "on fire". There wasn't any damage as the videos from inside the pool showed. He is nothing but a purveyor of fear. TEPCO does have a lot to answer for but building a nuclear reactor "on the shore" makes all the sense in the world...it's where the cooling water is.

TEPCO's fault in this was placing the aux. diesel generators and their fuel tanks right at the intake structure instead of putting THOSE up on the hill behind the plant (see Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant's fuel tanks on google earth).