I think we’re talking major nuclear shitstorm here:
Reporting from Tokyo— Japan’s government Friday urged residents within 18 miles of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant to leave their homes, as new information suggested that the core of reactor No. 3 may have been breached.
If only the plant operators hadn’t covered up the cracks in the emergency generators to save money! We see how well that worked out:
Three workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been exposed to high levels of radiation after reportedly stepping into contaminated water as they battled to make the stricken No 3 reactor safe.
Two of the workers were taken to a special radiation unit at a hospital in Chiba city, east of Tokyo, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said.
The workers, who are all in their 20s and 30s, were exposed to between 170 millisieverts (mSv) and 180 mSv of radiation.
This is above the usual legal limit of 100 mSv per year for nuclear power workers in Japan, but below a new limit of 250 mSv, introduced last week to enable them to spend more time inside the crippled facility.
The men were affected while laying cable in the turbine building of the No 3 reactor, said Fumio Matsuda, an agency spokesman, adding that two had exposed skin on their feet to radioactive elements.
Their accident cast doubt on the wisdom of raising the threshold for radiation exposure for the hundreds of technicians, firefighters and soldiers taking part in the Fukushima operation.
As if the Gulf hasn’t been through enough:
Fresh Louisiana crude washed into the beaches and dock areas near Grand Isle over the weekend, creating a sickening sight for the residents of this oil battered region. The reddish brown crude and oily sheen lapped onto the sandy and rocky shores, while some people flocked to Grand Isle’s famous white beaches for spring break unaware of the oily assault nearby.
Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle said the oil had hit Elmers island and Lafourch beaches near the main beach area of Grand Isle. He said the oil appeared to be about two miles offshore over the weekend but then started coming ashore to the west of the island. “It reminded me of the first time we saw oil last summer, a brown reddish sheen.”
The Coast Guard says it is mobilizing workers to lay fresh boom in environmentally sensitive areas and arranging for additional cleanup crews to help as oil comes ashore.
Thom Hartmann:
Well, I’ll try not to second-guess their motives, although it’s tempting. But the yakuza are involved in some pretty horrific stuff, too:
The worst of times sometimes brings out the best in people, even in Japan’s “losers” a.k.a. the Japanese mafia, the yakuza. Hours after the first shock waves hit, two of the largest crime groups went into action, opening their offices to those stranded in Tokyo, and shipping food, water, and blankets to the devastated areas in two-ton trucks and whatever vehicles they could get moving. The day after the earthquake the Inagawa-kai (the third largest organized crime group in Japan which was founded in 1948) sent twenty-five four-ton trucks filled with paper diapers, instant ramen, batteries, flashlights, drinks, and the essentials of daily life to the Tohoku region.
An executive in Sumiyoshi-kai, the second-largest crime group, even offered refuge to members of the foreign community—something unheard of in a still slightly xenophobic nation, especially amongst the right-wing yakuza. The Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest crime group, under the leadership of Tadashi Irie, has also opened its offices across the country to the public and been sending truckloads of supplies, but very quietly and without any fanfare.
The Inagawa-kai has been the most active because it has strong roots in the areas hit. It has several “blocks” or regional groups. Between midnight on March 12th and the early morning of March 13th, the Inagawa-kai Tokyo block carried 50 tons of supplies to Hitachinaka City Hall (Hitachinaka City, Ibaraki Prefecture) and dropped them off, careful not to mention their yakuza affiliation so that the donations weren’t rejected.
This was the beginning of their humanitarian efforts. Supplies included cup ramen, bean sprouts, paper diapers, tea and drinking water. The drive from Tokyo took them twelve hours. They went through back roads to get there. The Kanagawa Block of the Inagawa-kai, has sent 70 trucks to the Ibaraki and Fukushima areas to drop off supplies in areas with high radiations levels. They didn’t keep track of how many tons of supplies they moved. The Inagawa-kai as a whole has moved over 100 tons of supplies to the Tohoku region. They have been going into radiated areas without any protection or potassium iodide.
The Yamaguchi-gumi member I spoke with said simply, “Please don’t say any more than we are doing our best to help. Right now, no one wants to be associated with us and we’d hate to have our donations rejected out of hand.”
It’s interesting that so many Americans think the Japanese are somehow more ethical and noble than businessmen anywhere else. It’s just not true. Human nature is human nature, and greed is a universal problem. So is the inability to admit mistakes.
In fact, they’re just like us!
Tepco evinces an ethical meltdown, which is to say, a toxic lack of credibility caused by a series of unethical actions long enough to be viewed as a pattern indicative of a sordid personality-type.
Secondarily, the company illustrates the dangers to Japan in the incestuous nature of Japanese business and government relations, otherwise known as amakudari, wherein regulators retire to better-paid jobs in the very industries they once policed. This system operates in private advantage at the expense of the Japanese people, whose fortitude and self-restraint in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami provide the world with an enduring model. Any residual resentment among descendants of the allies in World War II against the Japanese people must surely have melted away in the early spring of 2011 along with the last remaining dirty snow from the arduous albeit non-nuclear winter. In other words, the Japanese have the respect and admiration of the world, even if we are critical of the Japanese officials in business and government who have repeatedly forsaken the public good for their own private advantage. According to what Susum Hirakawa, a professor of psychology at Taisho University, told The New York Times on March 17, 2011, the Japanese people were just as skeptical: “The mistrust of the government and Tepco was already there before the crisis, and people are even angrier now because of the inaccurate information they’re getting.” In other words, an ethical meltdown had occurred–its toxic radiation infecting the polite, patient people just when the situation at the Daiichi plant was most dire.
Continue reading “Ethical meltdown in Japan”
