Latest books on Fukushima

Books (in English) on Fukushima

UPDATE NOV. 2013

Books in French : see Pierre Fetet’s blog de Fukushima

http://www.fukushima-blog.com/article-des-livres-sur-fukushima-105303511.html

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 December 2012

The only Science Fiction novel about the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, written by someone who was there when it happened. Best selling author Vindal Vandakoff, who lives in Japan just one hundred kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear power station, writes a chilling account of what happened on the day of the earthquake and tsunami. Caught in middle of the catastrophe he gives a firsthand description of the events that took place over the weeks after the tsunami struck the Daichi power plant. He follows the plight of several people who survive the tsunami, some of whom then must try and escape the massive amount of radiation that is spewed out by the destroyed nuclear power plant. He goes in detail about the cover-ups and lies the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company propagated to Japanese public brainwashing them into thinking everything is okay and there is nothing to worry about. He exposes the perilous situation that still exists at the power plant, which is still releasing 10,000,000 bq of radiation per hour one and a half years after the accident. He brings to light a world catastrophe that is waiting to happen; the Number Four Reactor building is leaning dangerously to one side and could collapse at any time releasing more than two hundred times more radiation than Chernobyl. This will make Japan uninhabitable and affect every person on the planet. A must read for anyone who is concerned about the future of this planet.

 July 2012

Not long ago, the U.S. Public Health Service revealed that only one point five percent (1.5%) of all Americans were healthy. So it is no wonder Americans rank 31st in the world for life expectancy, suffer the 7th highest cancer rate among all countries, and rank behind no less than 40 countries that have lower infant mortality rates. This begs the question: Why? Prior to 1952, the mortality rate from all sources was dramatically declining. After 1952 this dramatic decline lost its steam. In fact, in some years, startling mortality escalations (especially for the 25 to 44 age group) occurred despite unprecedented advances in U.S. healthcare. So, what happened? Well, to be pithy, in 1952 radioactive fallout was unleashed in earnest. We now know that deficiencies and toxins in our food supply and environment are at fault. The National Cancer Institute has determined that 80% of our cancers arise from the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. Regardless of the toxin or disease, tiny amounts of absorbed radioactive particles greatly amplify their toll on the human body. As far back as the 1960's, no less than three Nobel Prize winners warned us as about the consequences of man-made radiation. But we did not listen. The National Research Council's 2006 BEIR VII Report tells us point blank that there is no safe level of radiation exposure. Instead we keep buying into the hype and promise of cheap, clean, limitless electrical nuclear power. But the reality has always been net higher costs well hidden from the public view. The nuclear power conversation rarely includes the lost quality of life and healthcare costs associated with radioactive exposures inherent to running the technology. Radioactive fallout now abounds in the food chain of the Northern Hemisphere. The health threat is greatest to those living near nuclear power plants as well as those exposed to fallout from nuclear accidents. No one who lives in the path of radioactive fallout is spared the direst transgenerational health consequences. In stark contrast to this picture are the typically lower mortality rates in developed countries that decided to forego nuclear power entirely. In Fukushima Meltdown & Modern Radiation: Protecting Ourselves and Future Generations, Dr. Apsley provides an easy and clear synopsis covering the most critical historical issues arising from man-made radiation crises. In a nut shell, ionizing radiation rapidly melts away our immunity and genetic integrity. Like an insatiable immortal fox forever positioned to pounce toxic radioactive particles linger in the environment for centuries and even millennia. Obviously normal healing mechanisms will not spare the human race from this perennial scourge. Prevention from future exposure is essential, but by itself will not be enough. What we need most are cutting edge techniques that effectively and rapidly regenerate our tissues. From his over 30 years of experience in the field of regenerative medicine, Dr. Apsley lays out precise step-by-step individualized nutritional methods to accomplish regeneration. For example, his method incorporates fast and easy-to-make delicious smoothies. He also includes many other enjoyable menu selections designed to induce regenerative healing. Both Dr. Apsley’s insights on the nature of the radiation threat and his approach to solving the resulting damage are supported with the book’s approximately 460 peer-reviewed citations and approximately 85 authoritative references.

Blending history, science, and gripping storytelling, Strong in the Rain brings the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 and its immediate aftermath to life through the eyes of the men and women who experienced it. Following the narratives of six individuals, the book traces the shape of a disaster and the heroics it prompted, including that of David Chumreonlert, a Texan with Thai roots, trapped in his school's gymnasium with hundreds of students and teachers as it begins to flood, and Taro Watanabe, who thought nothing of returning to the Fukushima plant to fight the nuclear disaster, despite the effects that he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life. This is a beautifully written and moving account of how the Japanese experienced one of the worst earthquakes in history and endured its horrific consequences.

July 2013

On 11 March 2011, Japan was rocked by the most violent earthquake in her history and one of the largest ever recorded. The quake itself was just the start of a chain of disastrous events, creating a massive tsunami that slammed the shores of north eastern Japan. Close to 20,000 people were killed or disappeared under waves that reached more than 40 metres high as they smashed their way several kilometres inland.

Yet the greatest damage was caused when the tsunami surged over the seawall of Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station, resulting in a multiple core meltdown that released vast quantities of radioactivity into the atmosphere and ocean. At one stage it even threatened the evacuation and irradiation of Tokyo itself, which would have spelt the end of Japan as we know it.

See also :

http://fukushima-is-still-news.over-blog.com/article-fukushima-by-mark-willacy-119287836.html

October 4, 2011

Japan's Tipping Point is a small book on a huge topic. In the post-Fukushima era, Japan is the "canary in the coal mine" for the rest of the world. Can Japan radically shift its energy policy, become greener, more self-sufficient, and avoid catastrophic impacts on the climate? Mark Pendergrast arrived in Japan exactly two months after the Fukushima meltdown. This book is his eye-opening account of his trip and his alarming conclusions.

Japan is at a crucial tipping point. A developed country that must import all of its fossil fuel, it can no longer rely on nuclear power, following the massive earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011. Critically acclaimed nonfiction writer Mark Pendergrast went to Japan to investigate Japan's renewable energy, Eco-Model Cities, food policy, recycling, and energy conservation, expecting to find innovative, cutting edge programs.

He discovered that he had been naive. The Japanese boast of their eco-services for eco-products in eco-cities. Yet they rely primarily on imported fossil fuel and nuclear power, live in energy-wasteful homes, and import 60% of their food. That may be changing in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Maybe. But as Pendergrast documents, Japan lags far behind Europe, the United States, and even (in some respects) China in terms of renewable energy efforts. And Japan is mired in bureaucracy, political in-fighting, indecision, puffery, public apathy, and cultural attitudes that make rapid change difficult.

Yet Japan is also one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with friendly, resilient people who can, when motivated, pull together to accomplish incredible things.

As an island nation, Japan offers a microcosmic look at the problems facing the rest of the globe. And as Japan tips, so may the world.

Mark Pendergrast, the author of books such as For God, Country and Coca-Cola, Uncommon Grounds, and Inside the Outbreaks, entertains as he enlightens. As he wrote in Japan's Tipping Point: "The rest of this account might seem a strange combination of critical analysis, travelogue, absurdist non-fiction, and call to action. It might be called 'Mark’s Adventures in Japanland: Or, Apocalyptic Visions in a Noodle Shop.'"

June 28, 2011

Featuring the world’s leading Japan watchers. From haunting scenes in the hot zone to the nuclear, political, and economic future of a battered land. Proceeds to benefit the Japan Society's tsunami relief fund.

"For the 20 years before this great earthquake disaster, our nation has seemed, in many ways, to be at an impasse. As we overcome the crisis created by this disaster, we must also overcome the preceding crisis, what could be called Japan’s structural crisis." — Naoto Kan

On March 11, 2011, Japan’s northern coast was shaken by the biggest earthquake ever to strike the island in recorded history. With a gigantic tsunami and the nuclear meltdown that followed, 3/11 was the worst disaster to hit the developed world for a hundred years. Confronted with tough questions about its dependence on nuclear power, about the competence of its leaders both in the private and public sectors, about the economy’s ability to rebound from a shock, the country has been plunged into crisis. After centuries of earthquakes, tsunamis, war, and a long list of other disasters, natural and unnatural, the Japanese people are accustomed to building back stronger -- but how do they recover from such a devastating blow, and what will that new future look like?

This unique Foreign Policy ebook, the first to respond to the quake in such depth, assembles an exclusive collection of top writers and scholars working in Japan today to answer these questions. Edited by Temple University’s Jeff Kingston, it showcases some of Japan’s leading writers and thinkers, from prominent journalists like Financial Times Asia-Pacific editor David Pilling to former Economist editor Bill Emmott to best-selling author Robert Whiting.

Buy it now and support the Japan Society, which will send proceeds directly to tsunami relief efforts on Japan’s northern coast.

 Fall 2013

It’s been over thirty years since a reactor in the United States melted down. Some believe this indicates that all safety problems have been addressed and no challenges remain. That’s not “mission accomplished,” it’s just plain luck. The Japanese thought the same thing until their luck ran out.
—FROM FUKUSHIMA

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake large enough to knock the earth from its axis sent a massive tsunami speeding toward the Japanese coast and the aging and vulnerable Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Over the following weeks, the world watched in horror as a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe: fail-safes failed, cooling systems shut down, nuclear rods melted.

In the first definitive account of the Fukushima disaster, two leading experts from the Union of Concerned Scientists, David Lochbaum and Edwin Lyman, team up with journalist Susan Q. Stranahan, the lead reporter of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the Three Mile Island accident, to tell this harrowing story. Fukushima combines a fast-paced, riveting account of the tsunami and the nuclear emergency it created with an explanation of the science and technology behind the meltdown as it unfolded in real time. Bolstered by photographs, explanatory diagrams, and a comprehensive glossary, the narrative also extends to other severe nuclear accidents to address both the terrifying question of whether it could happen elsewhere and how such a crisis can be averted in the future.

David Lochbaum is the head of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Nuclear Safety Project and author of Nuclear Waste Disposal Crisis. He lives in Chattanooga.Edwin Lyman is a senior scientist in the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He lives in Washington, D.C. Susan Q. Stranahan is the author of Susquehanna: River of Dreams. She lives in Maine. The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. 

The Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011 led Japan, and many other countries, to change their energy policies. Following Germany's example, some adopted nuclear phase-out plans, focusing instead on renewable energy. Even heavily nuclear-reliant France began to consider a phase-out, and some developing countries in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific area rethought their nuclear plans. David Elliott reviews the disaster and its global impacts, looking in detail at public and governmental reactions as the scale of the disaster became clear, and at the social, environmental, economic, technological and political implications in Japan and worldwide. He asks whether growing opposition to nuclear power around the world spells the end of the global nuclear renaissance.

 

March 8, 2012

Nuclear Disasters and Lessons Learned... A Mother's Response

Facts are facts. There have been at least three major nuclear power disasters to date: Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and now Fukushima Daiichi in 2011... and there are many more smaller nuclear accidents and near misses every year. Do we wait for another catastrophic event, or do we act now?

Nuclear fallout is a harmful and mysterious tragedy that we can't see, taste, hear, smell or feel. Rather than recoil in fear from Fukushima Daiichi, it really only serves to empower us into further action. This book is a mother's account of dealing with radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the worst in world history. This book speaks to the urgent need for food monitoring, conservation and renewable energy, as radiation from nuclear power is now migrating into our homes and kitchens.

In 'Silence Deafening, Fukushima Fallout … A Mother’s Response,' Ms Roberson writes, “The silence after the earthquake, nuclear meltdown and tsunamis AF (after Fukushima) was truly deafening and unlike anything I had experienced before. Surreal, ‘Twilight Zone’ comparisons were hard to avoid. Knowing what I knew, and then seeing those facts be so thoroughly disregarded by the media and elected officials had begun to take on a sort of nightmare quality.”

Ms. Roberson pulls from her experiences in environmental activism, nutrition and motherhood to alert us to the dangers of radioactive fallout in U.S. topsoil, ground water, produce and dairy resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. She asserts, “The one thing such experience brings that is startlingly clear to me: radioactive fallout from nuclear power and food do not mix, and children are especially at risk.” She makes a strong case for protecting California agriculture, currently the 5th largest producer in the world, not only in halting plans for the next generation of nuclear reactors but going one step further in calling for immediate transitioning from nuclear power to renewable energy before another nuclear disaster happens.

Review: Silence Deafening, Fukushima Fallout... A Mother's Response

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-grossman/silence-deafening-fukushima-fallout_b_1856817.html

Amid the cover-up of the Fukushima nuclear power disaster, the title of Kimberly Roberson's book rings so unfortunately true: Silence Deafening, Fukushima Fallout... A Mother's Response.

It's relatively brief at 69 pages but gets to the heart of the catastrophe: the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant complex in 2010, the months and months of discharges of radioactivity -- and the silence of media and public officials.

"The silence after the earthquake, nuclear meltdowns and tsunamis AF [After Fukushima] was truly deafening and unlike anything I had experienced before. Surreal Twilight Zone comparisons were hard to avoid," she writes. "Knowing what I knew, and then seeing those facts to be so thoroughly disregarded by the media and elected officials has begun to take on a sort of nightmare quality."

"It may take decades for the true magnitude of Fukushima Daiichi to be comprehended, just as the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown of 1986 are still being realized," she continues. "This is the story of my attempt to learn the truth, and then to do something about it in my own small way."

The book, published by VisionTalk, is very personal and written from a mother's perspective. Roberson is also well-educated about the horrors of nuclear technology.

She relates how, working for Greenpeace in Washington, D.C. in 1986, she opened a "letter from the farmer near the Chernobyl nuclear disaster who had mailed us pictures of grossly deformed farm animals. Those images would later appear in magazines like TIME and Newsweek and helped to open the world's eyes to the largest nuclear disaster to date."

She writes about a main consequence of pollution from radioactivity and other sources -- cancer -- and how "it's reached epidemic proportions."

As to the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, she tells of the English version of the landmark book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, published by the New York Academy of Sciences 25 years after the accident -- with the horrible consequences manifesting. The book, written by a team of European scientists led by Dr. Alexey Yablokov of Russia, concludes that based on available medical data, nearly one million people around the world died as a result of fall-out from Chernobyl.

"At Chernobyl," Roberson writes, "there was one reactor affected" while "at Fukushima there are four, and workers are still struggling to contain radiation there as of this writing nearly one year after the disaster began March 11."

The book is studded with breaks for quotes such as that from Gandhi: "First they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win." Winning over nuclear power is still far off, however. Roberson writes how in Spring 2011, "Apart from the occasional Internet bombshell... the deafening media silence around Fukushima raged on."

She, however, has been taking action -- which she writes about. There is a petition campaign and, with the findings of radioactivity in her home state of Calilfornia, the creation of the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network.

"While young children, the elderly and immune deficient are at particular risk, the Fukushima Daiichi will affect us all globally for generations to come just as at Chernobyl," Roberson writes. "One thing we do know is that we are at a crossroads with nuclear power."

Roberson's book helps in choosing a direction: away from this lethal technology.

 September 26, 2012

On a calm afternoon in March 2011, a force-nine earthquake jolted the Pacific Ocean seabed east of Japan. Forty minutes later, a tsunami 21 metres high crashed onto the coast of Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate prefectures. Towns collapsed, villages were destroyed, and 16,000 people were swept away. The earthquake and tsunami also resulted in another terrifying calamity — explosions and meltdowns at a nuclear plant near the city of Fukushima.

Fallout from Fukushima tells the story of Japan’s worst nuclear disaster, and the attempts to suppress, downplay, and obscure its consequences. Former diplomat Richard Broinowski travelled into the irradiated zone to speak to those affected and to find out why authorities delayed warning the public about the severity of the radiation. Combining interviews, research, and analysis, he reveals the extent of the disaster’s consequences: the ruinous compensation claims faced by electricity supplier TEPCO; the complete shutdown of Japan’s nuclear reactors; and the psychological impact on those who, unable to return to their farms and villages, may become permanent nuclear refugees.

In this illuminating and persuasive account, Broinowski puts this nuclear tragedy in context, tracing the path back through Tokyo, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl. Examining what the disaster will mean for the international nuclear industry, he explores why some countries are abandoning nuclear power, while others — including Australia, through its export of uranium — continue to put their faith in this dangerous technology.

March 1, 2012

Devil's Tango is a one-woman whirlwind tour of the nuclear industry, seen through the lens of the industrial and planetary crisis unfolding at Fukushima Daiichi. As much personal journal as investigative journalism, the author's journal entries trace her own and the country's evolution of consciousness during the first year following the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi. Pineda keeps track day-by-day of worsening developments at Fukushima Daiichi, and records the daily evolution of her perceptions. Often poetic in tone, philosophic in scope, her reflections are peppered with dramatic monologues, day-to-day reportage, philosophical speculations, meditations, deep song (canto hondo) and occasional flights of fancy, a monoplay, a grand guignol. There is no other book quite like it. John Nichols calls it an "astonishing anatomy of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster," "... a revelation, and a searing denunciation of the worldwide nuclear energy industry."

See first list established on May 19, 2012:

http://fukushima-is-still-news.over-blog.com/article-books-on-fukushima-105457772.html

Books on Fukushima

I “pinched” this idea of making a list of books on Fukushima from Pierre Fetet’s blog.

Those interested in reading books in French can check the following page :

http://fukushima.over-blog.fr/article-des-livres-sur-fukushima-105303511.html