Eve’s Thoughts | October 12, 2013
Petitioning the American government and the United Nations to take over the Fukushima clean-up would be morally wrong and a political folly.
The argument goes that since TEPCO and the Japanese government have shown themselves incompetent and untrustworthy in their information policies regarding the Fukushima disaster, now the international community and especially the United States government should step in and take over.
However, looking at the US’s own track record in giving comprehensive and accurate information about its nuclear accidents and the failure of its nuclear industry to even implement the most basic safety precautions would actually be letting the fox guard the hen house. It wasn’t just the Three Mile Island disaster. In reality 56 of the 99 globally recorded reactor accidents occurred in the United States. And charging a US dominated UN organization with the task would not be any better. This would be similar to what happened with the fake swine-flu scare, where the Big-Pharma dominated WHO licensed Pharma corporations which before had been caught red-handed at contaminating ordinary flu-vaccines with live bird-flu viruses to produce anti-swine-flu vaccines.
Demanding an American take-over of the clean-up efforts at Fukushima would also imply that the Japanese, after a catastrophe like this happening to one of their nuclear installations, are incapable of cleaning up the mess themselves; that everything is fine and dandy with western — and especially American — nuclear facilities, since Americans and other westerners via the western dominated UN must step in to rescue the Japanese.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In the Al Jazeera documentary “Danger Zone: Ageing US Nuclear Reactors” the decrepit state of many American nuclear reactors and the corrupt relationship of the industry with its supposedly regulating government agency is shown in terrifying detail. Vital infrastructure at nuclear sites is often in a state of corrosion or are even falling apart. And still these reactors are getting their licenses renewed. Like in Japan, many reactors were built in earthquake-prone areas and to the same design as the Fukushima reactors and to standards that do not allow them to withstand major earthquakes beyond 7.2 on the Richter scale.
The money that has to be expended to repair and renew the infrastructure would make the reactors financially no longer viable. This means that the industry would have to shut down a large part of its reactors and the US government regulating agency therefore looks the other way rather than having to risk a shut-down.
This insane attitude endangers the American people and the rest of humanity just as much as a possible further melt-down at Fukushima.
While the Japanese government might have lots of reasons for not informing their own population of the severe danger they are in at the moment, especially the people of Tokyo, it has all the reasons in the world for the best and most carefully deliberated actions to clean up the fuel-pool at the Fukushima reactor 4.
The people who will be most effected by a further melt-down are the people of northern Japan, including the political and economic elites themselves. Once the nuclear clouds reach the rest of the northern hemisphere their impact will be far more diluted.
Japan is a highly developed country, has a population of 127 million people with many highly educated technicians, engineers and scientists in the nuclear field. The Japanese government already has consulted with foreign nuclear experts and without doubt they will do so in the future. There is no reason to believe that an American dominated international group of experts could do a better or more competent job than a Japanese dominated one. The Japanese people have the most to lose and would therefore be the most intent to avert a further nuclear catastrophe.
Japanese workers are already risking their lives every single day in the clean-up efforts motivated not by money but by wanting to protect their families and their fellow citizens. Those who will start the dangerous work in November will be no less motivated.
While the energy corporation TEPCO might be too cash-strapped to carry the enormous costs of the operation, the argument that the Japanese government could not carry them either does not hold any water at all.
While America is the greatest debtor nation on the planet, Japan is next to China as the second greatest creditor nation. It holds about 6% of the American debts in its central bank. Cashing in on those debts and using this money would certainly cover whatever astronomic costs might be incurred by the clean-up.
There is no necessity whatsoever to violate Japanese sovereignty over the Fukushima clean-up attempts.
To do so would create a dangerous precedent that would allow American and UN interference in a quasi take-over of every country that has suffered natural or man-made disasters.
It also would be a dangerous re-writing of international law and one more increase of power for the un-elected corporate elites which rule America and have enormous influence on most of the UN organizations.
Yes, we should have more transparency of information. Different from what the governments of our nations think, the general population has indeed a right to the truth and is quite capable of processing truthful information in a productive manner. One thing that would emerge out of it would be more pressure on governments all over the world to shut down or at least phase out their nations’ nuclear reactors and replace this dangerous form of energy-production with a better, less poisonous and destructive one.
Related article
- Japan Shuts Down Its Last Running Nuclear Reactor (inhabitat.com)