Nuclear crisis continued

The past week has been a difficult one for me. I am surprised to find myself distracted very easily and frequently, making it difficult to concentrate on anything but the news in Japan. I think it is fortunate that we do not have cable TV. Last week I visited a Japanese friend who had her TV on to CNN, and during the short time I was there, horrific images were replayed over and over again. I am glad that I do not need to unnecessarily expose myself, and my daughter, to such violent images.

My primary information source is from the internet. The problem with the internet is that there is too much information available, and we never know what political or sensationalist agenda is behind each piece of information. The good thing about the internet is that we can find all different kinds of news and views. According to numerous internet sources, amounts of radioactive material have been detected in water, milk, and vegetables such as spinach, not only from Fukushima but in Tokyo, 220 km away. However, the Japanese government is informing the public that "the radiation levels exceeded the limits allowed by the government, but the products 'pose no immediate health risk'" (The Guardian, 19 March). According to the CNN, the World Health Organization has also declared that "short-term exposure to food contaminated by radiation from Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant poses no immediate health risk". But really, the question we should be asking ourselves is this: what is meant by "no immediate health risk"? What exactly are the reasoning behind these statements?

As an anthropologist who has documented the human environmental impact of nuclear weapons testing wrote in a commentary: "In this nuclear world, what is the meaning of 'safe'?" To quote a little more from her:

In a nuclear crisis, life becomes a nightmare for those people trying to make sense of the uncertainties. Imaginably, the questions are endless. Radiation is invisible, how do you know when you are in danger? How long will this danger persist? How can you reduce the hazard to yourself and family? What level of exposure is safe? How do you get access to vital information in time to prevent or minimize exposure? What are the potential risks of acute and chronic exposures? What are the related consequential damages of exposure? Whose information do you trust? How do you rebuild a healthy way of life in the aftermath of nuclear disaster? And the list of unknowns goes on. These questions are difficult to answer in the chaos and context of an ongoing disaster, and they become even more complicated by the fact that governments and the nuclear industry maintain tight control of information, operations, scientific research, and the biomedical lessons that shape public-health response. This regulation of information has been the case since the nuclear age began, and understanding this helps to illuminate why there is no clear consensus on what Japan's nuclear disaster means in terms of local and global human health.

Another worrisome development closer to home is this one: that "despite growing opposition sparked by the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan", Indonesia is proceeding with plans to build four nuclear reactors (IRIN, 21 March). This brings us to the question so aptly posed by an op-ed in The Washington Post: "If the competent and technologically brilliant Japanese can’t build a completely safe reactor, who can?"

But the Japanese, just like anyone else, make mistakes. Just this morning I read that people who had escaped in officially designated higher-ground shelters to escape the tsunamis were swept away, because such shelters were designed with 5.5m-high waves in mind, and the actual waves that engulfed the coasts of north-east Japan were up to 7.3m (JMA 2011). It's also reported that just a month prior, government regulators "approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station" and that after the extension was granted, The Tokyo Electric Power Company admitted that "it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment related to the cooling systems, including water pumps and diesel generators, at the power station’s six reactors.

I do not know if humans are capable of building "completely safe" nuclear power plants. So long as humans are capable of making mistakes, I suspect not. I hope we do not have to face another nuclear disaster to find out.