Who is deceiving whom?

March 31, 2013

The Fukushima disaster: Three years on, who’s fooling whom?

Journalists and academics tackle different sides of an a issue that's no laughing matter

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/03/31/issues/the-fukushima-disaster-three-years-on-whos-fooling-whom/#.Uz7KMVfi91s 

On April Fools’ Day, writers offer their views on who has been deceived — and who has been behind the deception — surrounding the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 plant on March 11, 2011, and the ongoing related problems in the prefecture and beyond.

[The first article - by Eric Johnston -  was already published on this blog under

http://fukushima-is-still-news.over-blog.com/article-what-s-wrong-with-this-picture-123171598.html  ]

Water isn’t as viral as the memes

Fukushima and social media can be a toxic mix. Combine one with a poorly doctored photograph and you end up with a 160-foot-long squid, whose washed-up presence on a Santa Monica beach earlier this year quickly went viral.

The creature’s enormous proportions were proof, apparently, that the feared “Fukushima plume” had not only arrived on the other side of the Pacific, but had turned coastal waters into a frothing cauldron of radioactivity.

The truth is less dramatic and — as has been the case with all issues related to Fukushima radiation over the past three years — far more complicated.

One things is certain: In the next couple of months, water containing radioactive cesium from Fukushima will arrive on the west coast of North America, probably starting with Alaska and British Columbia, before making its way south over the coming years.

Exactly when, and at what levels of toxicity, is open to scientific debate, but the consensus is that even peak measurements will be well below levels considered a threat to human health.

Dr. John Smith of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, which has been sampling waters along a line running 2,000 km due west of Vancouver, told the BBC that even the highest concentrations of cesium-137 measured so far were “still well below maximum permissible concentrations in drinking water in Canada . . . so it’s clearly not an environmental or human-health radiological threat.”

No cesium-134 has yet been detected, and cesium-137 is already present in the ocean as a result of the atomic bomb tests of the 1950s and ’60s.

Yet reassurances from Smith and other serious scientists have not stemmed the flow of grim predictions for humanity from the Fukushima “plumesayers.”

They have been aided by a striking graphic that lends the entire Pacific Ocean the appearance of a cesium-enriched psychedelic swamp.

In fact, the graphic is a map created by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing the height of waves created by the March 2011 tsunami.

Other outlandish claims include the warning that swimming off the California coast is akin to suicide by radiation exposure, and that 98 percent of the ocean floor in the same area is covered with dead sea creatures. To the list of victims of the Fukushima plume we can also add balding polar bears, bleeding herring and pathogenically infected starfish.

All of these myths have been expertly debunked, but it is in the nature of the Web that more freakish claims will follow when the plume finally makes it to the west coast of North America.

The Fukushima meltdown has created understandable concerns, in Japan and beyond, about health and the environment. But mutant cephalopods shouldn’t be among them.

Justin McCurry is the Japan and Korea correspondent for the Guardian and Observer newspapers.

Tohoku is bigger than Fukushima

Allow me to state the obvious: The problems involving the reactors in Fukushima are serious. What is less obvious is that the problems facing the Tohoku region extend far beyond Fukushima.

The triple disaster that struck Japan in 2011 affected nine prefectures: Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Chiba, Nagano, Tochigi, Niigata and Ibaraki. Of these nine, six get little or no press coverage. Most likely this is because the scope of the damage was focused upon cities and towns in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. Herein lies the first problem.

Quantifying damage inevitably leaves out key aspects of any disaster. Loss of life and property become numbers. Numbers turn into data. The higher these numbers, the more attention that school, city or region gets. On the scales of right and wrong, data is neither. It’s what happens with this data that leads to hard feelings and misunderstandings.

For those living outside of Fukushima there is little joy in being featured in the same news article as one about nuclear problems.

When stories about Tohoku focus on Fukushima, those living in communities not affected by radiation feel readers will assume they, too, are in the same boat. This is also true for victims in Fukushima for whom radiation is not why they lost their homes. Reducing all of the Tohoku disaster to “the nuclear problem” diminishes loss and pain. For those outside of Japan less familiar with geography, this lumping-the-disaster-region-into-one-bucket style of reporting leads to the misconception that all of Tohoku is now dangerous. We now have the second problem: The perception projected outward insinuates Tohoku equals Fukushima. If Fukushima is “bad” then Tohoku is “bad.” This is neither fair nor accurate.

Stories of the impending meltdown of reactor No. 3 hitting blogs and news outlets last December illustrate what many in Tohoku do not appreciate. Never mind the inaccuracies. One author said, “wash obsessively” to avoid the impending nuclear contamination and suggested readers stock up on Tyvek suits. This Chicken Little-style of reporting is not only irresponsible, it’s malicious. Here is the third problem: Radiation is scary, making it a juicy story that is easy to dramatize.

Tohoku is bigger than Fukushima. While the problems caused by the nuclear crisis indeed require focus and attention, so do the crises faced by those outside of Fukushima.

Amya L. Miller is Director of Global Public Relations for the city of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture.

Problems can’t be paid forward

The Fukushima disaster had a precarious impact on the developing world in that people there had to rely on indirect sources for information.

News about the earthquake and its aftermath came via Western channels. Since the developing world has hardly any media presence in Japan, a large part of humankind was informed about the events through Western eyes — which were not always reliable.

As a result, countries depending on such news sources were initially fooled over the reality of the nuclear disaster as they were told about the horror approaching Tokyo. Some were panicked to the scale that their governments informed diplomats stationed in Tokyo to lock the doors of embassy facilities and flee the radiation-tainted country. Of course, once the “doomsday scenario” was debunked, the diplomats quietly returned to duty.

Three years later, many of the lessons from that time seem to have been forgotten. However, the disaster did shake up public opinion — in Tokyo and elsewhere — about the danger and uncertainty of nuclear-power generation in an unprecedented way. This awakening forced the government to take the bold step of shutting down existing nuclear reactors and, more importantly, announce that Japan will not build new nuclear power stations in the future. This signaled a radical shift in Japan’s energy policy, but the current administration has been vague on whether it would uphold it.

However, it’s clear that some in the Japanese government consider nuclear power generation to be an unsafe option, even for an energy-hungry country like Japan. Many people, here and abroad, welcomed moves toward exposing the follies of nuclear-power generation. However, those who had hoped for an all-out abandonment of it probably overlooked business interests related to nuclear energy.

Japan has a vibrant nuclear power sector that has invested billions of yen producing essential components for power generation, including reactors. Companies that invested in that sector now face huge financial risk if Japan chooses to shun nuclear power, so they need an assurance that their work was not for nothing. Thus the government now plays the role of a nuclear salesman hitting up a huge tract of developing countries that are showing a growing appetite for energy.

Japan is aggressively selling the technology that many of its own citizens consider dangerous. Tokyo has already bid successfully in selling nuclear-power-generation capabilities to Turkey and Vietnam; and is trying hard to enter the fast-growing market of India. The hunger to reach an ever-growing target for economic growth has blinded policy makers in many of those countries. Now they’d go to any extent to generate power, an accident triggered by a natural disaster is no obstacle. As long as a lucrative offer from a government is on the table, why bother about the lessons of Fukushima?

Monzurul Huq is is Tokyo bureau chief for Prothom Alo, Bangladesh’s leading daily.

We may get fooled again

I was outside the country when 3/11 happened, returning a few months later to a Kansai that seemed largely unaffected by the nuclear crisis unfolding in the north. The local news was full of items that seemed surreal given the circumstances; plans to extend the Osaka monorail to a loop configuration by 2050, people in Kyoto whining about not getting a station on the mag-lev bullet train until 2045 and excited press releases about the pending commencement of service on the Hokuriku Shinkansen which, starting in 2015, will offer high-speed connections between a string of rural municipalities with shrinking populations.

So it seems to have been business as usual down here ever since the disaster. The surreal state of planning transportation infrastructure for a future in which many people wonder if there will be enough money to pay their pensions let alone fund high-tech people movers was already there. It has just been enhanced by the absence of debate over where the electricity to power them will come from or any public consideration of the possibility that these long-term infrastructure fantasies might be rendered moot if the Fukushima plant slips out of control again.

To see any impact of 3/11 beyond the predictable feel-good stories fed to/by the press, one has to talk to contacts in the community. That is where you meet and hear about people who have quietly moved to Kansai from Tokyo, or at least put their families here and commute to the “Big Mikan.”

After Fukushima, Kansai residents are likely more aware of the nearby Fukui nuclear cluster. It seems far away yet would be easy commuting distance if there was a bullet train connecting it to anything. But there isn’t: according to Google maps it is safely isolated at the tip of the Tsuruga Peninsula, connected to the mainland by a single coastal road. While there has been more focus on disaster awareness and, of course, spending on concrete to “harden” Kansai for the next disaster, I can’t recall seeing or hearing anything about what to do or where to go if Fukui melts down. Surely the government must have a plan. Though I suppose when faced with the competing demands of shinkansen, Abenomics and people wanting air conditioning in the summer, some blue-ribbon committee might decide “it will never happen here” is a good enough plan for now.

“We won’t be fooled again” is a nice mantra. But it may not mean very much to people who just want to believe that everything is back to normal.

Colin P. A. Jones is a professor at Doshisha Law School in Kyoto.

The fish story that should be told

Last year, foreign reporters in Japan were approached by a producer making a series of documentaries for NHK about the Tohoku recovery. I proposed looking at the plight of fishermen along the Fukushima coast linked to the issue of contaminated water at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

Most of the fishermen have been out of work since March 2011, a tragedy anywhere but particularly in a country so synonymous with the sea. They can be found in ports like Soma most days, whiling away their time mending nets or turning over the engines of their boats.

The producer liked the idea but thought she’d never get it past her bosses. “They want uplifting stories,” she said. “Nothing too depressing.” The program went ahead late last year with a story about abandoned pets.

It’s not that hard to understand why animals are better TV than despairing fishermen. Caring for feral dogs is, within the context of the Fukushima disaster, a small problem and the solution

uncomplicated: find a little bit of money and some loving owners. In contrast, the nuclear cleanup is just so vast.

The contaminated water problem is a case in point. Engineers have performed miracles keeping the fuel in the plant’s three most damaged reactors cool. But nearly 440,000 tons of toxic water is now stored in on-site tanks as a byproduct.

“It’s the issue that keeps me awake at night,” Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission who advises Tokyo Electric Power Co. told us last month.

The scientific consensus is building that the only place for that water to go is into the Pacific, once it has been decontaminated to acceptable levels. But science is bound to clash loudly with politics. Engineers won round one of this battle last month. Tepco has lobbied the fishermen for two years to allow the flushing of “uncontaminated groundwater.” The alternative was that the toxic water would leak. So last month the fishermen, finally, reluctantly agreed.

The water problem is only one that must be solved — and paid for — before the fuel can be extracted — probably at the end of the decade. Billions of yen will then have to be found over the next 20 years to decommission the plant. Billions more are being scattered around Fukushima in a flawed attempt to lower radiation levels. Workers are in short supply. Refugees must be persuaded to return home if the region is to revive.

The TV producer’s timidity may have been an anomaly but it’s not like the industry doesn’t have anything to prove. Television here shied away from probing the flaws of the nation’s nuclear power strategy before March 11, 2011, pulled its punches during the Fukushima disaster and did its best to ignore the protests it triggered. Surely fishermen should be at the center of the story about recovery — downbeat or not.

David McNeill writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education and other international publications. His co-edited book about the 3/11 disaster, “Strong in the Rain,” was released in 2012.

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