(Source) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/abe-s-japan-is-blind-to-scary-nuclear-reality.html
Forget Abenomics. Ignore Shinzo Abe’s efforts to rejuvenate Japan’s diplomatic and military clout. Look past the quest to rewrite the constitution. History will judge this prime minister by one thing alone: what he did, or didn’t do, to end the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
It’s mind-boggling how disengaged Japan’s leaders have been since their “BP moment” -- the March 2011 near-meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Abe’s predecessors Naoto Kan and Yoshihiko Noda virtually ignored the radiation leaks and spent fuel rods sitting 135 miles (217 kilometers) from Tokyo. In December, Abe became the third prime minister to pretend all was well at Fukushima after a devastating earthquake and tsunami that flooded the plant.
(Translation by Mia)
アベノミクスのことは忘れてしまおう。 阿部首相の外交,軍事勢力についての 回復への努力も無視しよう。... 歴史が阿部首相の真価を問うのは、このことのみ：チェルノビル後の最悪の原発事故に対して、彼が何をして、何をしなかったかということ。
安部首相はもとより、福島事故当時の首相管氏、続いて野田氏とメルトダウンしている福島原発からの 放射能の漏れについて無視し続け. また、東京から２１７ｋｍしか離れていない位置にある使用済み燃料の危険さを、軽視しつづける政策には、本当に、びっくりさせられる。 昨年の１２月、首相に就任した阿部氏は、大地震と津波により壊滅的な打撃を受けた福島原発を、何事も問題のないようなふりをしていた。。。。。。。
Reality made an inconvenient reappearance last week. Mounting evidence that radioactive groundwater is gushing into the Pacific Ocean forced Abe to admit that plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc. isn’t up to the task of containing the disaster. Under international pressure, he pledged the government would “make sure there is a swift and multifaceted approach in place” to stop the leak.
Abe’s Seriousness
Pardon me for doubting Abe’s seriousness. It’s not just the sketchiness of the suggested remedy: freezing the ground around Fukushima, a tactic scientists fear will prove inadequate. It’s not the fact that nuclear regulators remain more focused on restarting reactors than on neutralizing the one that’s polluting North Asia. It’s not that no one at Tepco has gone to jail or been shamed. (BP Plc’s former chief executive officer, Tony Hayward, was fired and sued over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.) Tepco is leaking something far worse and lying through its teeth. Yet it hasn’t been nationalized, and its executives remain in their offices.No, my real worry is that official Japan is still stuck on “how” Fukushima become synonymous with Chernobyl, not “why” it happened or “what” it means for the world.
The “how” is the stuff of the gods, according to conventional wisdom. The event Japanese call 3/11 was an act of the heavens that no one could have foreseen. There was no way to plan for it, no way Tepco could have known not to place all of its backup generators in the same place underground, just steps away from the sea in a tsunami-prone nation.
This storyline ignores the “why.” Fukushima was a preventable, man-made disaster stemming from the worst conformist tendencies of Japan Inc. Look, if executives got together globally and created a Hall of Shame for the greedy, corrupt and clueless along them, Tepco would deserve its own wing. All Enron Corp. and Bernie Madoff did was manufacture fake profits. Tepco fudged its safety record and put the lives of tens of millions of people at risk.
But it takes a village to breed such a corrupt and dangerous system. Tepco got away with its negligence for years because of the cozy ties between power companies and the regulators, bureaucrats and researchers that champion the industry -- the “nuclear village.” Backed by its connections, money and control of the media, Tepco has brazenly continued to cook its radiation data for the last two and a half years. It matters little that the government is finally commandeering Tepco’s cleanup: The government is Tepco.
----------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment