Regrettably A Concrete Schedule Is Not Available
Two of the Fukushima nuclear plant's six reactors are now considered to be relatively safe. As for the other four, they remain volatile, with the ominous spectre of smoke and steam being seen emitted. And Tokyo Electric Power Co., one of the largest such power companies in the world, appears hapless and hopeless.They and their technicians appear to be making decisions on the fly. For all the theories that have been put forward, no one really knows of a certainty was has happened and what to anticipate in the very near future. The power company's technicians on the scene, risking their very lives represent the ultimate in heroic sacrifice.
The power company represents the ultimate in bureaucratic ineptitude.
The advance planning for reaction and action in the unlikely instance of the nuclear reactors coming under some kind of threat never, ever visualized the kind of catastrophic incidence that have assailed the Fukushima plant.
The plant, built close to the sea, close to a known serious fault line in the Earth's crust, represents human stupidity and hubris at its apogee. The generators were placed not deep in the earth, nor on top of the reactors, but on the ground where they proved vulnerable. And so the die was cast.
The reactors and their protective coverings were built to withstand the destructive potential of a sizeable earthquake, but nothing resembling the exponentially huge quake that eventuated on March 11, causing that enormously destructive tsunami that followed, causing the death and disappearance of tens of thousands Japanese.
The suspense that Japan is now experiencing, not knowing how the reactors will finally respond, is enormously fearsome.
"This is far beyond what one nation can handle - it needs to be bumped up to the UN Security Council. In my humble opinion, this is more important than the Libya no-fly zone", opinioned Najmedin Meshkati, an expert in nuclear matters at the University of Southern California.
He feels that it may take weeks to stabilize the situation, and that the UN should step in. The mind boggles - and do what, exactly?
"Regrettably, we don't have a concrete schedule at the moment to enable us to say in how many months or years [the crisis will be over]", claimed Sakae Muto, vice-president of Tokyo Electric Power.
The evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant has been growing. The potable water supply in Tokyo has been contaminated. Water and vegetables have been contaminated in a wide arc radiating out from the plant. Japanese export of produce has been halted; other nations no longer will accept contaminated Japanese produce.
People have been displaced from their homes, threatened by the spread of the contamination, and by the fears that it will continue to grow in intensity and geography. Particles have been found in Iceland; traces of radioactive iodine in rainwater samples in Massachusetts and British Columbia and Washington State.
The trace amounts found far from Japan are expected to dissipate readily enough. It is the ongoing crisis in Japan that is of grave concern with the spread of radiation, from tap water to agricultural fields, widening the evacuation zone and imperilling peoples' futures. And another aftershock in the 6.5 range felt in Tokyo.
The Gods must be furious with this world.
Labels: Japan, Natural Disasters, Nature, Technology
posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 28, 2011
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