Japan Plans to Expose Its People and 2020 Tokyo Olympians to Fukushima
Radiation
Monday, July 17, 2017
By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report
Radiation contaminated debris and soil is stockpiled for disposal near the
Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
on February 25, 2016 in Okuma, Japan. (Photo: Christopher Furlong / Getty
Images)
Former nuclear industry senior vice president Arnie Gundersen, who managed
and coordinated projects at 70 US atomic power plants, is appalled at how
the Japanese government is handling the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
"The inhumanity of the Japanese government toward the Fukushima disaster
refugees is appalling," Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 45 years
of nuclear power engineering experience and the author of a bestselling book
in Japan about the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, told Truthout.
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He explains that both the Japanese government and the atomic power industry
are trying to force almost all of the people who evacuated their homes in
the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster to return "home" before the 2020
Tokyo Olympics.
This March Japan's federal government announced the subsidies that have, up
until now, been provided to Fukushima evacuees who were mandated to leave
their homes are being withdrawn, which will force many of them to return to
their contaminated prefecture out of financial necessity.
And it's not just the Japanese government. The International Olympic
Commission is working overtime to normalize the situation as well, even
though conditions at Fukushima are anything but normal. The commission even
has plans for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to have baseball and softball games
played at Fukushima.
Gundersen believes these developments are happening so that the pro-nuclear
Japanese government can claim the Fukushima disaster is "over." However, he
noted, "The disaster is not 'over' and 'home' no longer is habitable."
His analysis of what is happening is simple.
"Big banks and large electric utilities and energy companies are putting
profit before public health," Gundersen added. "Luckily, my two young
grandsons live in the US; if their parents lived instead in Fukushima
Prefecture [a prefecture is similar to a state in the US], I would tell them
to leave and never go back."
Reports of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which
began when a tsunami generated by Japan's deadly earthquake in 2011 struck
the nuclear plant, have been ongoing.
Seven more people who used to live in Fukushima, Japan were diagnosed with
thyroid cancer, the government announced in June. This brings the number of
cases of thyroid cancer of those living in the prefecture at the time the
disaster began to at least 152.
While the Japanese government continues to deny any correlation between
these cases and the Fukushima disaster, thyroid cancer has long since been
known to be caused by radioactive iodine released during nuclear accidents
like the one at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. A World Health
Organization report released after the disaster started listed cancer as a
possible result of the meltdown, and a 2015 study in the journal
Epidemiology suggested that children exposed to Fukushima radiation were
likely to develop thyroid cancer more frequently.
The 2011 disaster left 310 square miles around the plant uninhabitable, and
the area's 160,000 residents were evacuated. This April, officials began
welcoming some of them back to their homes, but more than half of the
evacuees in a nearby town have already said they would not return to their
homes even if evacuation orders were lifted, according to a 2016 government
survey.
Officials from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company responsible
for cleaning up the disaster, announced this February they were having
difficulty locating nuclear fuel debris inside one of the reactors.
Radiation inside the plant continues to skyrocket to the point of causing
even robots to malfunction.
Cancer cases continue to crop up among children living in towns near
Fukushima.
And it's not as if the danger is decreasing. In fact, it is quite the
contrary. Earlier this year, radiation levels at the Fukushima plant were at
their highest levels since the disaster began.
TEPCO said atmospheric readings of 530 sieverts an hour had been recorded in
one of the reactors. The previous highest reading was 73 sieverts an hour
back in 2012. A single dose of just one Sievert is enough to cause radiation
sickness and nausea. Five sieverts would kill half of those exposed within
one month, and a dose of 10 sieverts would be fatal to those exposed within
weeks.
Dr. Tadahiro Katsuta, an associate professor at Meiji University, Japan, is
an official member of the Nuclear Reactor Safety Examination Committee and
the Nuclear Fuel Safety Examination Committee of the Nuclear Regulation
Authority. Truthout asked him what he was most concerned about regarding the
Japanese government's handling of the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima.
"What I regard as the most dangerous, personally, is the fact that the
Japanese government has chosen the national prestige and protection of
electric power companies over the lives of its own citizens," Katsuta, who
wrote the Fukushima update for the World Nuclear Industry Status Report,
said.
Gundersen thinks it simply makes no sense to hold the Olympics in Japan.
"Holding the 2020 Olympics in Japan is an effort by the current Japanese
government to make these ongoing atomic reactor meltdowns disappear from the
public eye," Gundersen said. "I discovered highly radioactive dust on Tokyo
street corners in 2016."
According to Gundersen and other nuclear experts Truthout spoke with, the
crisis is even worse.
Fukushima and Surrounding Prefectures Radioactively "Contaminated"
"The Japanese government never dedicated enough resources to trying to
contain the radiation released by the meltdowns," Gundersen said.
Gundersen said that during his first trip to Japan in 2012, he stated
publicly that the cleanup of Fukushima would cost more than a quarter of a
trillion dollars, and TEPCO scoffed at his estimate. But now in 2017, TEPCO
has reached and announced the same conclusion, but as a result of its
inaction in 2011 and 2012, the Pacific Ocean and the beautiful mountain
ranges in Fukushima and surrounding prefectures are contaminated.
One of the tactics that Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's administration chose to
deploy at Fukushima to contain radiation was an underground "ice wall."
"As the 'ice wall' was being designed, I spoke out that it was doomed to
fail, and was [an] incredibly expensive diversion," Gundersen said. "There
are techniques that could stop water from entering the basements of the
destroyed reactors so that the radioactivity would not migrate through the
groundwater to the ocean, but the Japanese government continues to resist
pursuing them."
Gundersen argues that Japan could and should build a sarcophagus over all
three destroyed reactors and wait 100 years to dismantle them. This way, the
radioactive exposure will be minimized for Japanese workers, and ongoing
radioactive releases to the environment would be minimized as well.
Gundersen also points out that it is equally important that radioactive
water continues to run out of the mountain streams into the Pacific, so a
thorough cleanup of the mountain ranges should begin right now, but that is
a mammoth undertaking that may never succeed.
In addition to his other roles, Arnie Gundersen serves as the chief engineer
for Fairewinds Energy Education, a Vermont-based nonprofit organization
founded by his wife Maggie. Since founding the organization, Maggie
Gundersen has provided paralegal and expert witness services for Fairewinds.
Like her husband, she's had an inside view of the nuclear industry: She was
an engineering assistant in reload core design for the nuclear vendor
Combustion Engineering, and she was in charge of PR for a proposed nuclear
reactor site in upstate New York.
When Truthout asked her how she felt about the Abe government's response to
Fukushima, she said, "Human health is not a commodity that should be traded
for corporate profits or the goals of politicians and those in power as is
happening in Japan. The Japanese government is refusing to release accurate
health data and is threatening to take away hospital privileges from doctors
who diagnose radiation symptoms."
Maggie Gundersen added that her husband also met with a doctor who lost his
clinic because he was diagnosing people with radiation sickness, instead of
complying with the government's story that their illnesses were due to the
psychological stress of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns.
M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at
the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia in
Canada, and is also a contributing author to the World Nuclear Industry
Status Report for 2016. Like the Gundersens, he is critical of the Abe
administration's mishandling of Fukushima.
"I am not sure we can expect much better from the Abe administration that
has shown so little regard for people's welfare in general and has supported
the nuclear industry in the face of clear and widespread opposition," Ramana
told Truthout. "As with restarting nuclear power plants, one reason for this
decision seems to be to reduce the liability of the nuclear industry, TEPCO
in this case. It is also a way for the Abe administration to shore up
Japan's image, as a desirable destination for the Olympics and more
generally."
Katsuta agreed.
"Prime Minister Abe has neither the knowledge about the issue of Fukushima
accident nor the interest at all," Katsuta said. "The Abe administration has
yet to clearly apologize for its responsibility for promoting the nuclear
energy policy."
Instead, according to Katsuta, the Abe administration has lifted evacuation
orders in an effort to "erase the memories of the accident."
Fukushima Evacuees "Forced" Back Home
In the immediate wake of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns, 160,000 people
fled areas around the plant. The Abe government has been providing housing
subsidies to those who were evacuated, but its recent announcement means
those subsidies will no longer be provided. Many "voluntary evacuees" will
be forced to consider returning despite lingering concerns over radiation.
"This is very unfortunate," Ramana said of the withdrawal of the subsidies.
"The people who were evacuated from Fukushima have already been through a
lot and for some of them to be told that the government, and presumably
TEPCO, does not have any more liability for their plight seems quite
callous."
He explains that, in enacting this callous move, the Japanese government is
claiming that radiation exposure is now within "safe levels" for people to
return home. This claim ignores the fact that levels now are even higher
than before the accident, and also disregards the widespread uncertainties
plaguing the measurement of radiation in the affected areas.
Katsuta expressed similar concerns.
"The lifted evacuation area has not been restored completely, as the
radiation dose is still high, and decontamination of the forest is
excluded," he said. "Besides, the decontamination waste is often stored in
the neighborhood, and there were many families who did not return, and then
the local community collapsed."
Katsuta added that the subsidies only amount to $1,000 per refugee, so
paying them for the next 10 years is "not expensive" in order to safeguard
human lives.
Given her work in PR for the nuclear industry, Maggie Gundersen had an
interesting position on the Abe government's tactics.
When she was working for the atomic power industry, she was "carefully
taught" certain misinformation about atomic power reactors by industry
scientists and engineers. She said she would never have done that work if
she had known the "hidden truth." She and Arnie were both taught that
atomic power was the "peaceful use of the atom" -- she does not support war
and believes that the use of atomic weapons or depleted uranium are horrific
crimes -- and she explains that she never would have worked for or promoted
atomic power knowing what she knows now.
"Arnie and I immediately noticed that TEPCO and the Japanese government were
using the same playbook that was used at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island
(and for that matter, Deepwater Horizon)," Maggie Gundersen explained.
"Governments immediately minimize the amount of radiation being released, or
in the case of Deepwater Horizon, the amount of oil."
She added that in each of these cases, the mainstream press dutifully
reported shortly after the crisis that there was nothing to fear, even
though there was no evidence to support these assertions. The governments'
objectives were to minimize fear and chaos, and most media simply echoed
officials' claims. The responses to the Fukushima disaster are following the
same pattern.
"Is the Abe regime glossing over the seriousness of the Fukushima meltdowns
and ongoing radioactivity? Absolutely," she said. "What is happening in
Japan to the known and unknown victims is a human rights violation and an
environmental justice debacle."
2020 Tokyo Olympics to Be Held Amidst "Hot Particles"
Katsuta said that the Fukushima evacuees are "extremely worried" that their
plight will be overshadowed by the Olympics. He believes the Japanese
government is using the Olympics to demonstrate to the world that Japan is
now a "safe" country and that the Fukushima disaster "has been solved."
"In Japan, the people are really forgetting the Fukushima accident as … the
news of the Olympics increases," he said.
Arnie Gundersen doesn't think it makes sense to have some of the Olympic
venues (soccer, baseball and possibly surfing) in Fukushima Prefecture
itself.
"Radioactively 'hot particles' are everywhere in Fukushima Prefecture and in
some of the adjacent prefectures as well," he said. "These 'hot particles'
present a long-term health risk to the citizens who live there and the
athletes who will visit."
Ramana, too, believes that the events held closer to Fukushima "may be
adding to the radiation dose of the competitors and the spectators."
Fukushima Disaster "Will Continue for More Than 100 Years"
Maggie Gundersen pointed out that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
consistently claims it has learned lessons from Fukushima, but she doesn't
think the commission -- or the Japanese government, or corporations --
learned any lessons at all.
"Energy production is all about money," she said. "After the meltdowns, many
banks in Japan invested in keeping the atomic power reactors on hold until
the disaster could sort itself out. Those banks and the government
supporting its access to the use of the atom have a vested interest in
starting the old reactors up."
Katsuta has a dire outlook for the future of Fukushima, and said there are
already numerous evacuees who have given up hope of returning because they
are aware of the crisis being unsolvable by the current means of TEPCO and
the Abe administration.
"Even if decontamination and decommissioning work progresses, the problem
will not be solved," he said. "We have not yet decided how to dispose of
decontamination waste and decommissioning waste."
Ramana believes Fukushima should be a reminder of the inherent hazards
associated with nuclear power, and how those hazards become worse when
entities that control these technologies put profits over human wellbeing.
Arnie Gundersen had even stronger words.
"The disaster at Fukushima Daiichi will continue for more than 100 years,"
he explained. "Other atomic power reactor disasters are bound to occur.
Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi should have taught everyone around the world
that nuclear power is a technology that can destroy the fabric of a society
overnight."
According to him, the remains of the reactor containments at Units 1, 2 and
3 are highly susceptible to damage from another severe earthquake, and any
earthquake of 7.0 or higher at the Fukushima site could provoke further
severe radiation releases.
Shortly after the meltdowns, Maggie and Arnie Gundersen both spoke about
Japan being at a "tipping point": It could respond to the disaster by
leading the world in renewable energy while choosing to protect people and
the pristine rural environment through sustainable energy economies.
But obviously it didn't work out that way.
"The world saw Japan as technologically savvy, but instead of moving ahead
and creating a new worldwide economy, it continues with an old tired 20th
century paradigm of energy production," Maggie Gundersen said. "Look at the
huge success and progress of solar and wind in other countries like Germany,
Nicaragua and Denmark. Why not go energy independent, creating a strong
economy, producing many more jobs and protecting the environment?"
Arnie Gundersen has plans to return to Japan later this year on a
crowdsourced trip with scientific colleagues in order to teach Japanese
citizen scientists how to take additional radioactive samples. Fairewinds
Energy Education is currently fundraising to make this possible.
In the meantime, dramatic examples of the ongoing dangers of nuclear power
in Japan abound.
In June, radioactive materials were found in the urine of five workers
exposed to radiation in an accident at a nuclear research facility in
Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture. In that incident, one of the workers had a large
amount of plutonium in his lungs.
Recent polls in Japan show that the Japanese public has lost faith in
nuclear safety regulation, and a majority of them favor phasing out nuclear
power altogether.
Meanwhile in the US, President Donald Trump has put nuclear energy first on
the country's energy agenda and has announced a comprehensive study of the
US nuclear energy industry. Trump's energy secretary Rick Perry said, "We
want to make nuclear cool again."
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Dahr Jamail
Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist:
Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books,
2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist
in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more
than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last
10 years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative
Journalism, among other awards.
His third book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who
Is Responsible, co-written with William Rivers Pitt, is available now on
Amazon.
Dahr Jamail is the author of the book, The End of Ice, forthcoming from The
New Press. He lives and works in Washington State.
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