Title: Cleanup From Fukushima Daiichi: Technological Disaster Or Crisis In Governance?
Source: Fairewinds Energy Education
Author: Art Keller
Date: June 13, 2013
[...] Shortly after arrival on their first trip to Japan, the group headed for Shirikawa, a city 45 miles west and a few miles south of the Daiichi nuclear plant. [Sam Engelhard, an industrial hygenist and certified radiation protection technologist,] was shocked as soon as he unpacked his radiation sensor gear and turned it on. Here they were almost 50 miles from the accident site and in the opposite direction of the prevailing winds, and the crew’s radiation alarms immediately started going off.
“The radiation levels we were seeing were 1,000 times background, higher in spots,” Engelhard said. “If we had been working on a site this contaminated in the US, we would have been fully suited up in radiation protection suits, gloves, and respirators. Yet people were walking around and going about their business, with no idea of how contaminated everything around them was.” [...]
[Kevin Wang of Califonia-based company PowerPlus] believes the Fukushima radiological contamination far more widespread that most Japanese understand. “One thing I heard so often during my trips to Japan that it became a mantra, was that ‘Fukushima is a Japanese problem and we have to fix it ourselves.’ So far, I haven’t seen any evidence that the government is taking the right steps to fix things. Instead, the wounded pride of government officials, and a lack of understanding at the urgency of the problem, prevented Japan from taking the steps they needed to.” [...]
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