11 Mar Fukushima, Five Years On
Today is the 5th anniversary of the triple disaster at Fukushima – the earthquake, tsunami and triple nuclear melt-through caused over 15,000 deaths that day and displaced over 160,000 people. In the aftermath, many thousands more have died or will die of cancer or suicide. Cleanup is estimated to take 40 years, but it could easily be much longer.
Let’s take a moment to remember those who have died, are dying, or have been displaced. Especially girls, who will suffer ten times more cancers than young adult men, simply because of their age and gender at the time of exposure. And let’s remember the tens of thousands of workers who risk their health to “clean up” the mess, and those whose families have been torn apart by the difficult decisions to either live with radiation or work in the irradiated areas.
As long as humans are involved with planning, designing, regulating, inspecting and running nuclear power plants, they will not be “safe”. In the U.S., 30 GE Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors identical in design to those at Fukushima, are still in operation. While the GE model is considered the most vulnerable to catastrophic failure, every operating U.S. reactor poses a risk. Beyond Nuclear launched its Freeze our Fukushimas campaign shortly after the Japan disaster to get the GE reactors shut down.
“Not only is there no Plan B for what to do if and when a Fukushima-style disaster happens in the U.S., there is no Plan A to prevent one either,” said Cindy Folkers, Radiation and Health Specialist at Beyond Nuclear. Public health is woefully under-protected she said.
Let’s conserve energy in our homes and force industry to do so as well. Let’s switch to wind, solar and geothermal power as quickly as possible. And let’s leave uranium and all radioactive materials in the ground.
There is a lot of work to be done and millions of jobs can be created cleaning up the radioactive messes! There are more than 15,000 Abandoned Uranium Mines in 15 Western US States that must be cleaned up!
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