Is Fukushima An America Syndrome?

Still image from a May 22 drone flyover

by Johanna Faust

dedicated to Corporanon

and the abolishment of Corporate Personhood Worldwide

In the following excerpt, the emphasis is my own -- bold for the relevant passages, and red for the statements that indicate a questionable rhetorical stance, one which I will subsequently attempt to unpack.

Just a look at the bit quoted by Google shows that something has gone horribly wrong.

In fact, a look at the first hundred hits -- well, as far as I know, since you may have a different first hundred hits, I took the liberty of another screenshot, to your right.   I won't mess with this one;  Click to view -- click again to enlarge.  Or just Let Me Google That For You.

Looks like a China Syndrome to me.

But not to Time. What evidence it does present is by no means presented as conclusive: Time, as main stream a media as there is, considers -- and thus, by the subliminal logic of propaganda, the informed individual -- you -- should consider its title question one that remains decidedly open.  

There is, in reality, a wealth of indication that a melt-through has occured.  A wealth.

There is, for instance, that article in the Guardian -- 

Japan may have lost race to save nuclear reactor , Guardian.co.uk, March 29th.

Or why not lets go ask Tokyo Electric?

Press Release (May 15,2011) The Reactor Core Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 1 ...As a result, we estimate that "regarding the Unit 1, nuclear fuel pellets have melted, falling to the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at a relatively early stage after the tsunami reached the station." Read more

Time almost immediately calls the evidence into question, an underhanded move, since with very modest effort a case could have, should have, would easily have been made.  Much is omitted:

Was Fukushima a China Syndrome? by EBEN HARRELL  Monday, May 16, 2011 at 2:00 pm ... a molten nuclear reactor core could could fission its way through its containment vessel, melt through the basement ...down into the earth ...enter the soil and water table and cause huge contamination in the crops and drinking water.... And [this] might just have happened at Fukushima. Last week... Tepco... made an alarming discovery: virtually all the fuel in the core had melted down.... [and was] either at the bottom of the pressure vessel, or in the basement below or possibly even outside the containment building. Engineers don't know for sure....  [snip] Many experts say a full-blown China syndrome is unlikely...  [snip] But assuming a worst case scenario hasn't occurred...

And what is not omitted, is glossed over.  All is in doubt.  Nothing is sure.  Sanity returned only with the comments.  The first of them, (either it was the very first comment, or perhaps it was the most popular), put it best: 

The China Syndrome, a term for the worst of all possible nuclear scenarios.  Perhaps, (to paraphrase both David Lochbaum, and my dear friend Corporanon, two engineers who arrived at this quip independently of one another) it ought to be renamed the America syndrome.  This has a certain aptness to it, as it would seem America has exported its corporate opportunism and greed most efficiently.  Or did we inherit it?

I used to not believe in hell, when I was younger. Before I studied this world.  Before I started following the news.

Certainly with respect to nuclear power the ancestral lines owe much to American, uh, ingenuity: An obscene lack of regard for life, for honor, for the future, has become the standard against which the operating procedures of the Nuclear Industry are measured the world over.  It would be a mistake, however, to assume this would not have come about no matter the society initially its harbinger, and in any case it would be irrelevant.

Also irrelevant is the answer to the tempting question of whether corporate cruelty and indifference is truly opportunistic.  Despite the fact that the answer is clearly 'no.'  Despite the fact that all the profits ever earned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, ALL OF THEM AND MORE, will not equal the liability incurred by the 3/11/11 'accident' at their Fukushima-Daiichi facility.  When all the costs are included and totaled for the entire length of time that they will be incurred -- all of them -- it appears, at least to me, obvious that nuclear power is not a business in which one 'breaks even.'  I could not comprehend how it could ever have been thought profitable. And yet the 'bottom line' of corporate profit is understood to be the driving force.  

On this consideration alone, the account does not balance -- worse, arrears mean pestilence, famine, death, for many many more people than received benefit of the power generated.  For much, much longer. 

Who would willingly trade their livelihood,  abandon their house forever but plan to be gone only a few days, poison their food, their air, their water, themselves and their children for many generations  -- for twelve thousand dollars?  That is how much TepCo is paying evacuees.  Twelve thousand dollars.

Nuclear fuel generates power for about six years.  

It must be paid attention to, and remains deadly in minute quantities, to all life, for thousands of years thereafter.

Spent nuclear fuel will require human attention constantly for longer than recorded human history.  Without this attention, deadly accidents are thoroughly and entirely predictable. Without this attention, they are to be EXPECTED.  Without a constant, skilled, and careful attention, accidents that poison the environment, that cannot be meaningfully addressed, remediated, or perhaps even permanently contained,  are GUARANTEED.  

We know this, and yet one hears corporate executives whining like irresponsible children, that no one could have predicted, that no one could have expected, that there was no way they could have known.  

One could prove otherwise.  One could prove their logic flawed.  One could prove their profits already spent, their bankruptcy assured, with the money infinitesimally insufficient to even begin to 'pay' their debt  --

One would be wasting one's effort.

I used to not believe in hell, when I was younger.  Such sins as these become mighty convincing.  And they are not, strictly speaking, arguments at all.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11052004-e.html

Related:

Ask anyone who thinks it didn't get out to see for themselves: 

tinyurl.com/itgotout

View drone flyby here.  View slowed down details here.

Both are part of an earlier post:

About That Slag Melting Through The Rubble At Fukushima

Download  video featuring molten fuel.  

Download zipped file of stills here.

Read more of the Time Article.

A China Syndrome by another name

would spread as far, would melt as deep

would sicken, poison, kill the same

despite the rules you'd have it keep.

別の名前で中国症候群

限り風の中で 広がる として

限り 溶かすのとして地球

をもたらすだろう、毒と死のちょうど同じ食べ物

ルールやロジック男を記憶に注意を払うしないだろう

(original verse with apologies for the translation in ignorance)

Be seeing you.