Fukushima 10,000 Times Above Normal

Now, by March 25 TEPCO and the Japanese government can’t keep the lid on any longer. They are admitting that the containment vessel in unit 3 is ruptured. Radiated water sloshing into workers’ boots is 10,000 times above safety levels. Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, announced that radiation from the mox fuel in reactor 3 — a combination of uranium and plutonium — could be escaping into the atmosphere.

In other words, Japan and the rest of the world indeed face “the worst case”, as we have since March 11. There’s been no let up.

What the nuclear industry and the nuclear agencies have been aiming for is a kind of Mithridatization of the crisis. Mithridates was the king who took poison every day to immunize himself against poisoners. Crisis becomes normalcy. Sure, radiation levels are way above the redline; the dirt around Fukushima and huge slabs of north east Japan is poisoned; the ground around Fukushima is radiated sludge; the seas show significant contamination, not least because the seawater being sprayed on the units itself become poisoned and sinks into the dirt and back into the ocean after its detour to pick up toxicity.

Sure, this is all true, but “there’s no cause for alarm.” Never believe anything till it’s officially denied! The industry’s flacks lie steadily, as they have always done, about impacts on humans and the environment.