Excerpt:
Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, a Japanese environmental group, has documented previous safety problems and cover-ups by Tepco at the Fukushima reactor complex:
cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit92/nit92articles/
nit92coverupdata.html
Full Text:
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MRZine Editor’s Notes
Update 1
The evacuation area around the Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant has now been expanded to a 10 km radius from the plant. The Japanese media are reporting that a level of radiation 1,000 times the normal level has been detected at the central control room of its troubled Unit 1 reactor and a level 20 times the normal level near the gates of the plant.
The Fukushima 2 Nuclear Power Plant is also now reportedly in trouble, failing to cool three (Units 1, 2, and 4) out of its four reactors properly. This plant, too, has been declared to be in “nuclear emergency.” Japanese officials are now debating whether to evacuate residents of its surrounding area.
Update 2
One thing about the MSM in Japan: I don’t have access to Japan’s TV and print media and can only look at what’s on the Internet, so I can’t be 100% sure, but it appears to me that the J MSM may be instructed by the government not to bring up the subject of the “worst case scenario” which has been clearly raised in English-language and other international media: the meltdown of some or all of the troubled reactor cores at Fukushima 1 and 2. I searched Google News by both メルトダウン (the transliteration of “meltdown”) and 炉心溶融 (that’s what it’s called in Japanese), and I couldn’t find anything.
Meanwhile, NHK says that 80,000 are now to be evacuated from the areas potentially subject to exposure to radioactive material; that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism has chartered so far only 60 buses for that purpose and will have to arrange for many more; and moreover that there are people in the potentially threatened areas for whom refuges have yet to be found by the government, and the government is just telling them to stay indoors until their refuges are ready!
Death to the Japanese ruling class!
Update 3
NHK reports that the venting of pressure from Fukushima 1’s Unit 1 has been interrupted because the degree of radiation around one of the two container vents, which were being manually opened, is too high. Officials are now “debating what to do”(!). The container is under great pressure. Officials are just now getting around to “considering” frequent shift changes to minimize workers’ exposure or employing devices to remote-control the vent. Officials are still claiming that it’s “safe” if you are more than 10 km away from the plant, according to NHK.
Update 4
Finally the Mainichi mentions the word “meltdown” (炉心溶融) but only to suggest to the reader that the possibility of a meltdown feared in the initial moments of the Fukushima 1 shutdown has now disappeared.
Update 5
12 March 2011, 12:03 (Japan Time): “As of 11:20 AM, a part of the “fuel assembly” of fuel rods is now exposed above water. The maximum exposure as of now is about 90 cm. If the fuel rods remain exposed, they will be damaged, releasing radioactivity” (NHK).
Update 6
12 March 2011, 14:00 (Japan Time): “The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) of the Ministry of Economy and Industry (MITI) has just announced that near Unit 1 of the Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant, a radioactive element called ‘cesium,’ which results from nuclear fission, has been detected, so it believes that a part of the nuclear fuel at the reactor core of Unit 1 has melted down” (NHK).
Update 7
12 March 2011, 13:26 (Japan Time): “[R]egarding the evacuation of residents within the 10 km radius of the Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant, as of 11:30 AM, about 30% of 2,000-2,100 residents of Okuma-machi in Fukushima Province, which is located in the aforementioned danger zone, are yet to be evacuated, based on a report from Okuma-machi. Futaba-machi has also reported that about 20% of the 2,000 residents in danger are yet to be evacuated. There is a possibility that some of them have left on their own, without the knowledge of the municipal officials” (NHK).
Update 8
At last Japanese mass media have begun to speak of the possibility of a Chernobyl-style disaster: “福島原発、炉心溶融の可能性” [Fukushima Nuclear Power: Core Meltdown Possible] (Nikkei, 12 Mach 2011). Too late. I charge the Japanese government, and the mass media which have obeyed it and minimized the extent of the danger till now, with an intent to commit genocide.
For more information, visit <www.nirs.org>.
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