Fukushima Dreifach-Katastrophe März 2011

Fukushima: An Assessment of the Quake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown 

Mar. 25, 2013
Gavan McCormack

3:11 – The What
It is just over two years since Japan’s quake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. It was Japan’s 3rd nuclear catastrophe, at level 7 highest on the scale and on a par with Chernobyl, although, unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was self-inflicted. The triple event left 20,000 dead, 315,000 refugees, and a devastated swathe of productive farm and fish country and its towns and villages that will take decades, at least, to recover.

Today, the Government of Japan tends to refer to the “Great East Japan Earthquake,” preferring to focus on the quake and tsunami rather than the meltdown, as if it were some inexplicable act of god. It talks of its policies for economic revival, reconstruction and crisis management, but little of the nuclear crisis.[1]

The triple catastrophe is often referred to as “soteigai” (unimaginable) but we now know was not the case. The Diet committee that investigated the accident pointed out last year that the disaster was structural, man-made, brought about by the failings of the power company and of the national government. Even before Fukushima, the nuclear industry was known for data falsification and fabrication, the duping of safety inspectors, the belittling of risk and the failure to report criticality incidents and emergency shut-downs. Directly and indirectly, politicians, bureaucrats, industrialists, lawyers, media groups, academics also collaborated, constituting in sum the so-called “nuclear village.” “Japan’s nuclear industry became, as one critic put it, “a black hole of criminal malfeasance, incompetence, and corruption”[2]