My name is James Steed. I learned of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, the day it happened, 3/11/11. I immediately dropped all my lesson plans for the rest of that semester, and made all new lessons. From that day on, my Comp II students studied and wrote about nuclear power, Fukushima, renewable resources, etc.. I knew the Fukushima Disaster would turn out to be the most important event in their lives, and I wanted them to understand the issues involved. I believe it is the most important event in all our lives. But it is far from over, and it is getting worse.
By the end of 2011, nine months after the meltdowns began, 14,000 deaths had occurred in the United States that are attributed to radiation from Fukushima. Most of these were children under one year of age. After Chernobyl in 1986, Europe suffered similar increases in infant deaths and deformities.(Search ‘Children of Chernobyl.’ The images will make you want to scream)
America and, ultimately, the whole world is downwind from Fukushima. We know what to expect: After Chernobyl, the occurrence of birth defects increased steadily, and has remained many times higher than it was before. But if Reactor Four falls, we will face radiation contamination at levels far higher than anything we have ever experienced.
On the top floor of Reactor Four, 100 feet above the ground, is a storage pool containing 1500 spent fuel assemblies. The building suffered an explosion that blew off its walls and roof and caused severe structural damage. Right now, Reactor Four is leaning. It is not stable, and cannot withstand another earthquake. Japan, located at the meeting point of four tectonic plates, has small quakes almost daily. If the building falls, or even if only the spent fuel storage pool cracks and loses water, that fuel will ignite in a nuclear fire that cannot be extinguished, releasing far more radiation into the environment—one estimate is the equivalent of eighty five Chernobyls.
This spent fuel storage pool holds all our futures. The pool is open to the elements, and there is damage on one of its sides. Workers have laid a temporary pipe through the rubble to keep pumping water up to it. If that scheme fails, the nuclear fire will cover the entire northern hemisphere, including fish, livestock, and crops, in radiation. But a nuclear fire could render the entire Fukushima facility unapproachable. That would be a worse situation than the original tsunami, potentially leading to meltdowns in all six reactors and nuclear fires in all spent fuel storage. Experts call this possibility an “extinction-level event.”
Time is not on our side. We who live downwind should do what it takes to get that fuel safely into dry storage casks, not on Tokyo Electric Company’s schedule but fast. Our manpower, our engineers and scientists, can make the difference. Tepco cannot come up with the money to do what is needed, or maybe they don’t want to rush into the expense. But this is not about money. More than 14,000 Americans have already died as a result of the Fukushima disaster; our nation’s future should not be in the hands of Tokyo Electric Company.
Fukushima’s power plants were an American design. It is our problem, too. American popularity might improve worldwide if we were to show that we can do something to help the whole world. Join me in petitioning President Obama to lead in the creation of a strong and immediate American effort to help the Japanese get the nuclear fuel safely removed from Reactor Four’s stricken storage pool this year.
For more information on the situation at Fukushima, visit:
http://akiomatsumura.com/
http://fairewinds.com/
enenews.com (Energy News)