Won’t Happen in Their Lifetimes

Japan is a country where no one really likes to rock the boat. Everything is alright. Don’t worry. We have it under control. A stagnant economy that has lingered for almost two decades, triggered long before the current recession, and the rather completely inept handling of the Daiichi nuclear plant debacle suggest otherwise.

Every now and again, you get a story in the fading back pages of one newspaper or another… contaminated vegetables have made their way to Tokyo markets or this little item reported the Los Angeles Times on December 7^th: “A Japanese baby food manufacturer has announced the recall of 400,000 cans of infant formula that reportedly contain traces of radioactive cesium connected to the nation's recent nuclear plant meltdown.” Or this one by CNN on December 5^th: “Workers at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility have discovered a leak of 45 metric tons of radioactive water, operator Tokyo Electric Power Company said in a statement Monday… It's unclear whether the contaminated water reached the Pacific Ocean.” I would recommend that if local sushi patrons see their fish glowing, they probably should not eat the dish.

But there is a bigger conundrum that has Japanese authorities deeply divided: can and should the little town (90,000 people at one time) of Futaba (and towns like it), located within the 12 mile evacuation radius from the meltdown, be rebuilt? It is totally abandoned today, homes collapsing as rainwater seeps into quake-damaged buildings, accelerating wood rot and structural demise. A ghost town where the irony of the local invitational archway (pictured above) over the roadway into the little city cannot be appreciated much since there is almost no one around to see it: “Nuclear Energy: a Correct Understanding Brings a Prosperous Lifestyle.”

“The debate over whether to repopulate the area, if trial cleanups prove effective, has become a proxy for a larger battle over the future of Japan. Supporters see rehabilitating the area as a chance to showcase the country’s formidable determination and superior technical skills — proof that Japan is still a great power… For them, the cleanup is a perfect metaphor for Japan’s rebirth… Critics counter that the effort to clean Fukushima Prefecture could end up as perhaps the biggest of Japan’s white-elephant public works projects — and yet another example of post-disaster Japan reverting to the wasteful ways that have crippled economic growth for two decades.” New York Times, December 6^th.

There is little doubt that the government and the utility screwed up their response to the horrific quake, tsunami, resulting nuclear meltdown and the containment aftermath: “So far, the government is following a pattern set since the nuclear accident, dismissing dangers, often prematurely, and laboring to minimize the scope of the catastrophe. Already, the trial cleanups have stalled: the government failed to anticipate communities’ reluctance to store tons of soil to be scraped from contaminated yards and fields… And a radiation specialist who tested the results of an extensive local cleanup in a nearby city found that exposure levels remained above international safety standards for long-term habitation.

“Even a vocal supporter of repatriation suggests that the government has not yet leveled with its people about the seriousness of their predicament… ‘I believe it is possible to save Fukushima,’ said the supporter, Tatsuhiko Kodama, director of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo. ‘But many evacuated residents must accept that it won’t happen in their lifetimes.’” NY Times. How exactly do you move back if you are dead? Would you want your children and grandchildren living in Futaba? After all, Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the cities we dropped nukes on in WWII – are alive and well? But the radiation around the destroyed reactor is many times higher that the scattered contamination of the bomb sites more than six and a half decades ago.

The clean-up and rebuilding will indeed create jobs. And Japan, unlike Russia, is profoundly land-impaired: “The Soviet Union did not attempt such a cleanup after the Chernobyl accident of 1986, the only nuclear disaster larger than that at Fukushima Daiichi. The government instead relocated about 300,000 people, abandoning vast tracts of farmland… Many Japanese officials believe that they do not have that luxury; the evacuation zone covers more than 3 percent of the landmass of this densely populated nation… ‘We are different from Chernobyl,’ said Toshitsuna Watanabe, 64, the mayor of Okuma, one of the towns that was evacuated. ‘We are determined to go back. Japan has the will and the technology to do this.’” NY Times. Arrogance? Insanity? Pride? Pragmatism?

It’s about removing tons and tons of contaminated dirt and storing it… where? At this point such noble plans are more hope than substance, but who knows. I know I sure wouldn’t live anywhere near a town that had been exposed to that much radiation, and who would trust the necessary governmental reassurances when the site is deemed “ready”?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am still hoping, vainly I suspect, that somehow the lessons of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility will not be lost on the United States.