Concern is growing internationally not only at the apparently worsening situation at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors — where hundreds of tons of radioactive water pour into the sea daily — but at the Japanese government’s lack of focus in dealing with the on-going catastrophe.
Internationally, there is an increasingly more urgent call for Japan to invite and accept help from independent experts to deal with the leaking radioactive waste storage tanks at the site, and the complex challenge to divert the flow of ground water around, rather than through, the contaminated complex. (Fukushima workers pictured above).
Environmental groups in Japan have launched a petition directed to Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, Toshimitsu Motegi, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry and Shunichi Tanaka, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) demanding that they concentrate on the marine calamity and cease all activities related to restarting nuclear power plants in Japan or selling the technology abroad. Please sign this petition today!
In recognizing that the technical challenges at the Fukushima Daiichi site are immense, the environmental groups, supported by many colleagues and activist groups around the world, are asking the Japanese government to “bring together the combined wisdom of independent experts with no vested interests from within Japan and internationally (i.e. domestic and international independent expertise)."
Meanwhile, while 95% of the Japanese public believe that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi is out of control, Prime Minister Abe focused his recent energies on a final, and successful, push to secure the 2020 Olympic Games for Tokyo. He used the selection of Tokyo as host city for the Games to state that "that there has not been, is not now and will not be any health problems whatsoever," from the disaster, a position that is unsupportable in medical science.
Buried in the same news cycle was the decision by the Japanese courts not to prosecute TEPCO executives for their handling of the Fukushima disaster. Residents of Fukushima had filed a criminal complaint, and are insensed at this decision.
In the US, 31 Fukushima-style reactors remain running — the antiquated and dangerous General Electric Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors (BWRs). This notorious design was flagged in 1972 as too flawed to build, but the warnings were ignored. During Congressional testimony in 1976, three senior GE engineers who had publicly resigned, testified the design was “so dangerous that it now threatens the very existence of life on this planet.”
Shortly after the Fuksuhima Daiichi disaster began, Beyond Nuclear initiated its Freeze our Fukushimas campaign to call for the shutdown of all this country’s GE Mark I and II BWRs. While Japan now contemplates how it will permanently freeze a wall 90 feet (30 meters) deep into the earth around the Fukushima wreckage to contain radioactivity migrating into water and the ocean, the focus must also be on permanently freezing the operation of all GE Mark I and Mark II reactors.
Beyond Nuclear continues its work in support of communities threatened by the GE reactors. Join the actions for closure of dangerous GE reactors with the next live webcast on September 30, 2013 where the public meets the NRC. Contact Paul Gunter at paul@beyondnuclear.org to learn more and visit the Freeze our Fukushimas page on our website. You can also download our Freeze our Fukushimas campaign pamphlet that also lists all the Mark I and II reactor sites in the U.S.
For the first time in 14 months, not a single nuclear reactor is operating in Japan. For anti-nuclear activists, it is the development they have been clamoring for.
September 16, 2013
