Fukushima Emergency what can we do? publishes today a revealing and scary first person account (interview with a Fukushima Daichi worker) of how the emergency is being totally mismanaged by capitalist forces more interested in hiding the problems than actually solving (or at least patching them).
Some excerpts:
... a lot of facilities were built in a rush. After the accident, facilities were being built in such a speedy fashion that it did not matter if they had to last for only one year or so....... “cutting the budget, reducing the cost, and using lower price materials” for constructions and facilities in the management of the nuclear power plant accident is the order of the day....... It is stinginess not only with money but with time, too. Orders such as “It is the fiscal year-end. So hurry up and complete the construction work!” are common. Sometime you hear things such as “It is the fiscal year-end, there is no more funding available”. Why should the “fiscal year-end” take priority over any other matter in an unsettled situation of a Level 7 nuclear disaster?...... It is getting really difficult to secure manpower for the accident management. ......Original workers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant are more and more exceeding their dose limit of radiation exposure. The workers from other nuclear power plants are returning to their former plants. Workers who come to Fukushima from other parts of the country to make money are decreasing and difficult to recruit....... No long-term plan for the decommissioning of the plant is put into execution. What is being done is rather the execution of a haphazard plan just to hoodwink the public attention. Issues out of the public eye are just left out....... the problem of the underground water storage tank is trivial, because the mother of all problems is neither the radioactive pollution nor the cooling system, but the nuclear reactor buildings and reactors themselves. How are reactors #1 to #4 going to be demolished and disposed of? The current situation is that nobody can even get inside. ......About reactor #2, nobody knows exactly what is going on inside or what happened just after the earthquake. The explosion of reactors #1 and #3 could be simulated to a certain degree. From various parameters, we could predict the initial response and what was going to happen next.But we are clueless about reactor #2. Why was such large amount of radioactive substances emitted without explosion? What is happening with the fuel rods? ......... Let’s assume that the situation worsens to the point that it becomes impossible to pour water in order to cool off the reactor. For reactors #1, #3 and #4, a specialized squad prepared to bear the risks of radiation exposure can always enter the building and do the work required.
But in the case of reactor #2, radioactive emissions inside most buildings are extremely high that a prepared squad is likely to perish before it accomplishes its mission....
Interview originally published in Japanese at Magazine 9.
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