Fukushima has been another TEPCO cover-up of a radioactive disaster since before the tsunami hit, and their slow, incomplete notifications have enticed regulators and the government as a whole to go along with it. A price will be paid.
After the Japanese government forced TEPCO to release hundreds of pages of documents relating to the accident in May, Bloomberg reported on May 19 that a radiation alarm went off 1.5 kilometers from the number one reactor on March 11 at 3:29 p.m., minutes before the tsunami reached the plant.
via Meltdown: What Really Happened at Fukushima? – Global – The Atlantic Wire.
[This is an amazing story by Jake Adelstein whose ability to wring truth from stones in Japan is legendary, and David McNeill, of whom I am ignorant, but anybody fit to co-author a piece with Adelstein is okay in my book.]
The tsunami contributed to the disaster, but the earthquake alone had already set in motion a chain of events which would lead, perhaps inevitably, to a full meltdown of unit one. And TEPCO not only knew this rapidly; they knew it at the time, and they had been warned repeatedly of the likelihood of exactly such a disaster caused by an earthquake. All the nonsense about “unforeseeable” disasters of biblical proportions crumbles like so much roasted zircalloy cladding when it turns out that even a much smaller quake, centered closer to the plant, would still have blown the thing up.
It is hard to comprehend the degree of dishonesty required to string the public along for so lo long, on something so important, and when it is patently obvious that the truth will be known sooner rather than later at any rate. It is an amazing fatalism, like a perverted sense of honor metastasized into a death cult, to stand pat on a nonsensical story as it falls apart in a very public way. Have these executives no shame, no sense of duty beyond their paycheck, no spine with which to haul themsalves erect and say what is clearly true? TEPCO, the regulatory agencies, and elements of the government have abandoned any chance they might have had to limit damage from the reactor, and have certainy hazarded not only this government, but this very form of government in Japan.
To my eyes, Japan is in an ass-kicking mood right now, and will get a leader who does just that. This is a matter to be equally feared and desired. Desired because if the current guy isn’t working out, it is certainly acceptable to leave him with a last paycheck and a bootprint, but feared because a leader elected in anger may not be well-vetted for unsavoriness. The trouble with Pandora’s box is that it is full of boxes.
