Nothing is more important than thorough safety

October 22, 2015

VOX POPULI: Lessons from Chernobyl: Put safety first in cleaning up Fukushima disaster

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/vox/AJ201510220027

Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a daily column that runs on Page 1 of The Asahi Shimbun.

Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, the recipient of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, is the author of "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster."

First published in Russian in 1997, it consists of monologues by her interview subjects.

I decided to read a Japanese translation of this book.

My heart went out to a widow whose account begins, "I was very happy until recently." Her husband, a scaffolder, stood nearly 2 meters tall and weighed 90 kilograms. "Who could kill a man like that?"

But he worked at the crippled Chernobyl plant six months after the nuclear disaster and died as a result of radiation exposure. He was 45. "Who took my husband away from me?"

The stark truth, as recounted by this widow and other eyewitnesses, weighs heavily in my heart.

In the book, Alexievich also "interviews" herself. Her monologue goes: "After Chernobyl, we are living in a different world. The world we had before Chernobyl no longer exists. But people don't want to think about this ... People want to just forget, convincing themselves it's something that happened in the past."

Alexievich concludes, "I am chronicling the future." The fact that she wrote this more than 10 years before the Fukushima nuclear disaster indicates the extraordinary depth of her insight, which is a bit unnerving, too.

At Fukushima, the daunting task of dismantling the crippled nuclear reactors continues. On Oct. 20, a welder who developed leukemia became the first post-disaster worker at the plant to be awarded worker's compensation.

It has been four and a half years since the disaster. We should all ask ourselves this question: Have we already forgotten about the desperate struggle still going on at the site of the nuclear power plant, thinking that it's someone else's responsibility?

The government is set on restarting nuclear reactors, so it wants to let the Fukushima disaster fall into oblivion, the sooner the better.

There can be no simple comparison of Chernobyl to Fukushima, but the last thing I want is for Fukushima cleanup workers and their families to go through the sort of anguish experienced by the widow in Alexievich's book.

Nothing is more important than thorough safety measures and genuine respect for the humanity of every worker.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 22

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.