RINF
Bernard Weiner
Governments cite “national security” concerns and “official secrets” as their justification for withholding information from the public. Corporations rationalize their secrecy behind concerns about “patent infringement,” shielding their trademarked “proprietary” secrets from competitors. But most of the time, such obfuscation is really derived from the time-honored villains of systemic corruption and what is politely known as CYA in military and bureaucratic slang.
Which brings us to Fukushima.
From the very beginning of this catastrophic emergency — the earthquake/tsunami off the Japanese coast in March of 2011, when nuclear reactors at a power plant were flooded and then exploded and began their meltdowns — the public in Japan and around the world have not been told the full story of what’s been happening at the Dai-ichi nuclear-power plant in Fukushima province.
The utility that runs the plant, Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company), is notoriously close-mouthed about its operation. To this day, aided by a recently passed “government secrets” act in Japan, we have no confirmable idea of the extent of the damage: how much radiation is really leaking out into the Pacific Ocean and where the currents are taking it, the density and direction of the radioactive plumes carried by the wind, the radioactive effects up and down the marine food-chain. Not only is there precious little data-reporting released to the public — journalists who violate the “state secrets” law can be thrown into prison for 10 years — but what little information that does appear, both in Japan and in the U.S., seems to be hidden inside a different language, with a vocabulary(“bequerelles,” “millisieverts,” “millirems,” the difference between “radiation,” “radioactive” and “radiation dose,” and so on) that is utterly confusing to most non-nuclear scientists.
Each side of the argument tends to go hyperbolic when presenting its version of the Fukushima
catastrophe. Tepco officials regularly suggest that all is proceeding
well at Dai-ichi, and that the radiation effects are mostly localized
and things should go back to normal in the foreseeable future. But other
scientists and journalists have concluded that the situation is
critical, getting worse and is increasingly dangerous to humanity.
Read more
Bernard Weiner
Governments cite “national security” concerns and “official secrets” as their justification for withholding information from the public. Corporations rationalize their secrecy behind concerns about “patent infringement,” shielding their trademarked “proprietary” secrets from competitors. But most of the time, such obfuscation is really derived from the time-honored villains of systemic corruption and what is politely known as CYA in military and bureaucratic slang.
Which brings us to Fukushima.
From the very beginning of this catastrophic emergency — the earthquake/tsunami off the Japanese coast in March of 2011, when nuclear reactors at a power plant were flooded and then exploded and began their meltdowns — the public in Japan and around the world have not been told the full story of what’s been happening at the Dai-ichi nuclear-power plant in Fukushima province.
The utility that runs the plant, Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company), is notoriously close-mouthed about its operation. To this day, aided by a recently passed “government secrets” act in Japan, we have no confirmable idea of the extent of the damage: how much radiation is really leaking out into the Pacific Ocean and where the currents are taking it, the density and direction of the radioactive plumes carried by the wind, the radioactive effects up and down the marine food-chain. Not only is there precious little data-reporting released to the public — journalists who violate the “state secrets” law can be thrown into prison for 10 years — but what little information that does appear, both in Japan and in the U.S., seems to be hidden inside a different language, with a vocabulary(“bequerelles,” “millisieverts,” “millirems,” the difference between “radiation,” “radioactive” and “radiation dose,” and so on) that is utterly confusing to most non-nuclear scientists.
Read more
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