VERNON — Today, I want to start with encouraging news.
About 10 days ago, the Fukushima legislature adopted a resolution to abolish all 10 nuclear reactors in the prefecture.
Yes, 10!
You may be surprised that it took us this long to get to this point. But this is the very first time a hosting local government has made such a decision in Japan.
And this started with a petition submitted by a citizens' group after the accident. It is clear that this resolution has become a reality on account of the unbearable sadness and suffering the people of Fukushima have endured for the last seven months.
If it takes such a catastrophe for us to be able to shut down nuclear power plants, let this be the very last one for all of us.
* * *
Fukushima has been gone from the news front for some time now. This in itself is a problem, isn't it.
Are the reactors under control now?
No!
The power company TEPCO and the government's most recent trick is “cold shut-down.” TEPCO claims that the cooling of the reactors can be stabilized at below 100 degrees Celsius before the end of this year. Yet, the fuel melted through the reactor vessel and containment vessel in No. 1. And in No. 2 and No. 3.
We really don't know where the melted fuel is located at this time.
TEPCO and the government continue to walk on this road of illusion. They continue to play down the disaster.
When the people were buying up iodine tablets in the U.S., the Japanese government failed to distribute them to children. And officials withheld the critical information that could have reduced people's exposure to the extremely high level of radiation at the beginning.
Is radioactive matter still being released from the plant?
Oh, yes. It continues to be an incredible amount.
Is the contaminated water still leaking into the ocean?
Yes. We have allowed the biggest single outflow of man-made radioactive matter into the marine environment. TEPCO just started building an iron wall alongside the ocean to prevent the leak, but it will take two years to complete.
And what has fallen on the ground has changed everybody's life.
The amount of radioactive matter that was released, if we are counting just cesium, is equivalent to 168 times that of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima. Can you imagine a bomb a day for five months?
* * *
So everybody is talking about decontamination these days, as if it is a panacea. The government is planning to spend billions of tax dollars to decontaminate Fukushima. Yet, not much progress has been made after seven months, because nobody has an answer to the question– of where we put contaminated soil and sludge.
Nobody wants it. But it has to go somewhere.
An 80-year-old grandmother is scraping the soil in her yard so that her newborn great-grandchild can stay. But the people are already finding out that radiation levels go right up again, particularly after rain. The water they use for bathing has to flow somewhere, too.
Fukushima City plans to decontaminate all of its 110,000 houses - but in five years.
And how do you decontaminate all the rice fields, woods, forests? It would be a further destruction of the land. Fukushima would not look like home any more - like the beautiful land that it once was.
It takes 100 years for cesium to become one tenth as radioactive.
In recent weeks, more hot spots are popping up in and around Tokyo. And, mind you, the electricity produced in Fukushima was supplying Tokyo.
In the meantime, the government is allowing children to go to school in this highly contaminated environment.
One expert said that this is not what a civilized nation should be doing. Another said, by law, that young people are not allowed to work in this level of contamination, not to mention eat and drink.
Can you hear a scream from a mother? “Please evacuate children first. We can bring them back, but only after it's clean and safe.”
* * *
The debate over what is safe and what is not has caused tension among the people of Fukushima, and it has created divisions. Why do we have to fight over something like this?
A mother had to fight her husband to take the child away and evacuate. The rest of the family was against her.
A teacher had to quit teaching. She was not allowed to talk to her students about the danger of radiation.
A city office worker cannot evacuate his family. It would tell the whole world that it is not safe to stay.
Do you tell the farmers not to send their products to the market? The mothers who are worried about contaminated food used in school lunch hesitate to voice their concern. Their families or friends are farmers.
There are a number of people who are holding onto the safety propaganda deployed by the government, industry, and so-called experts close to them. They simply want to continue to live the life they had. Can we blame them for that?
If we apply the standard for radiation exposure limit of 1 millisievert, almost all of Fukushima must be evacuated. Where would two million people go?
Radiation kills life. We cannot use the word “safe” when it comes to radiation. There are no safe levels of radiation. This is based on the internationally accepted research and reports of the National Academy of Science.
More than 130,000 people had to flee from their homes. Those who lived near the plant will not be able to return. One lady said to a TEPCO representative, “Fifty years of my life has been denied.”
One old man occasionally goes back to his village and measures radiation on his own. It is not going down. He gets discouraged and does not feel like looking for a job in town yet. He cannot do what he loves to do, which is to raise cows.
On the other hand, another man continues to live right outside of the no-entry zone. Some volunteers decontaminated his house twice. But the reading goes up to a dangerous level again. He is in tears. He just cannot leave. His family has lived there, amazingly, for 1,000 years.
The people who left feel guilty, though they know they had to do so to protect their children. Those who stayed feel resentment. They are the ones washing the streets and cleaning ditches.
There are no winners.
Nuclear power is not a peaceful use of radiation.. This is a war!
* * *
Ten reactors were built in Fukushima before we knew it, because the area was poor. The people had a job during the winter. Many did dirty work while exposed to radiation.
But I feel compelled to tell you what one man who evacuated from the no-entry zone said.
“I don't care if I have electricity,” he screamed. “I don't care if I am poor. There is nothing harder than not being able to go back home, where I was born and grew up.”
We made a choice, perhaps unconsciously, to leave massive amounts of nuclear waste to our children, grandchildren, their offspring, and theirs and theirs, for many thousands of years.
Fukushima is forcing us to ask a fundamental question that has to do with the core of our existence: How do we want to live here on earth?
If we continue to kill what gives us life, we are in turn killing ourselves and our children.