Friday, March 25, 2011

Japan's Fukushima 'Inheritance' - The Nuclear Sarcophagus

It used to be, over thousands of years, that those who eventually 'pass on' into the world of the spirit would leave behind forests their children could inherit or agricultural land, a house or rivers full of fish. Today, we leave behind - and the children will inherit - the nuclear sarcophagus.

One currently sits at Chernobyl (although crumbling and falling apart, said to be leaking radiation) and a second 'sarcophagus' will soon sit at the edge of Japan's crumbling coastline staring silently out into the Pacific Ocean.

CounterPunch have an excellent article on the lies being told as Fukushima falls apart - one nuclear rod at a time - "Why the Entire Nuclear Industry is Insane, Then, Now and Forever". If you dare to want to know what is really going on then read the interview with Hirose Takashi.

"Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex. Probably his best known book is Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they're safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?" Let them eat Plutonium

I found the above interview at: The Market Oracle, where they say some are estimating that each spent fuel pool at the Fukushima nuclear complex could have 24,000 times the amount of cesium that was produced by the nuclear bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.

I agree with Hirose Takashi, if these nuclear plants are so safe then why not build them right smack in the middle of the largest cities? If Governments wish to calm people's fears then these plants should be built next to the parliaments and houses of senate... As they are 'safe' and pose no danger. Let the pro-nuclear experts go into the Fukushima plant and prove to the world that radition levels pose no danger.

Getting back to reality, the children born now and their grandchildren will inherit a landscape of entombed nuclear reactors buried under domes of concrete - the nuclear sarcophagus. There is only one tiny problem .. the sarcophagus will crumble and decay at a much faster rate than the radiation. Look around you at any local concrete buildings built thirty years ago.

Over the last five years I have observed many of those thirty year old concrete and steel buildings being dug-out and pasted with cement where the rusting steel infrastructure is showing through the cracks. Over time, this kind of concrete and steel construction does not hold up too well.

Currently, there are fears that the thirty year old Chernobyl sarcophagus will collapse sending radioactive dust out into the atmosphere. A 600 million replacement shelter 'tomb', apparently designed to last 100 years, will be built around the old containment sarcophagus.

Once man-made radioactive waste get out of its 'containment', it seems these people have no way to deal with it other than create hundred year eye-sores. After a hundred years? In 2111, then what? Your grandchildren's children will have to figure that out.

As time passes, human beings wont always be so fortunate to be able to bury nuclear plant melt-downs inside a concrete sarcophagus. Some of them may end up being completely swallowed by the incoming sea, some may be torn apart by earthquakes and others may react to a direct hit from a massive Solar Flare. The Fukushima Daiiachi disaster is a 'warning', the 'next time' we may not be so lucky.