Rising up against nuclear risks in Japan

An unprecedented and historic protest by as many as 180,000 people took place at the Japanese Prime Minister's residence last Friday (photo, left), while thousands protested at Kansai Electric Power Company HQ in Osaka, and many hundreds more rallied at the Ohi nuclear power plant itself, as the first atomic reactors have been restarted in Japan since the beginning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe. 

The restarts at Units 3 & 4 have been approved despite lingering concern about seismic risks directly beneath the Ohi nuclear power plant itself, and despite the conclusions of an independent Japanese Parliament (Diet) investigation just released which confirm the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns likely began even before the tsunami struck on March 11, 2011, due to damage caused by the 9.0 earthquake alone.

While fears persist that another big earthquake at Fukushima Daiichi could drain the cooling water from the Unit 4 high-level radioactive waste storage pool (as the reactor building itself is "tilting," with two of its walls "bulging"), simple breakdowns of the cooling system have recently raised the specter of a catastrophic radioactive inferno due to a "boil down" of the cooling water supply.