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[Kenstar]

Yeah but that would have been spitting into the ocean compared to what could have happened. Losing tens of millions of people in an instant would have been insane on a level none of us would ever see again. Hopefully. I can't even fathom that level of destruction.

Nuclear plants don't turn into nuclear bombs you know, they leak radiation
tens of millions of people wouldn't die in an instant

 

[Majine]

Yeah but that would have been spitting into the ocean compared to what could have happened. Losing tens of millions of people in an instant would have been insane on a level none of us would ever see again. Hopefully. I can't even fathom that level of destruction.

In an instant? What?

 

[Onlinehero]

Modern plants are already massively safer. Ironically, anti-nuclear sentiment has probably led to nuclear power becoming more dangerous, because new plants aren't built and old ones are relied upon far past their expiration date.

Would you call the new ones "risk free"?

 

[shira]

Oh fuck that guy that didn't listen to TEPCO and continued pumping the sea water died

He got cancer and had a stroke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masao_Yoshida_(nuclear_engineer)

"The week of 7 June 2011, TEPCO gave Yoshida a verbal reprimand for defying the order and not reporting it earlier."

Saves 50 million people and stampede chaos, gets shit on by upper management

 

[Aureon]

Wish they talked about what's done differently now and what new precautions are set in place to prevent this from occurring again.

Building new reactors instead of relying on 60+ years old reactors would be really helpful.

This part from the wiki article shows how slimy TEPCO is:



Because apparently being at ground zero for the worst nuclear disaster in decades couldn't possibly have contributed to such rapid onset of cancer. /giantrolleyes

"This part from the wiki article shows how slimy TEPCO is:"

Radiation-related cancer, for both chernobyl and fukushima, has been tyroid cancer only. Additionally, it'd be pretty strange if a radiation dose caused a rapid onset cancer... a year later.

Yeah but that would have been spitting into the ocean compared to what could have happened. Losing tens of millions of people in an instant would have been insane on a level none of us would ever see again. Hopefully. I can't even fathom that level of destruction.

That's not how radiation plants work.
Worst case scenario is China syndrome, which is slow-burning fuel causing radiation in the immediate surrounding area for potentially decades. It's an issue of most reactors built in the 60s or before, which should've really all been decommissioned by now.
There's no conceivable scenario where fukushima is more than a footnote on the tsunami's damage, even with all TEPCO's fuckups to go with it.

Would you call the new ones "risk free"?

Risk free is not a thing, and especially not a thing in power generation.
Would you call coal, oil, dams "Risk free"?
Would you call solar or wind "Risk free"? People fall while installing them, manufacturing & dismissal is poisonous, and blades shattering have killed more people than kwh than nuclear. Nothing is risk free.

 

[Grimpadlock]

Would you call the new ones "risk free"?

Certainly not. But I would take living by a new one over an old one every day of the week.

 

[Cheesecakebobby]

Wow, I wasn't living in Tokyo at the time but I'm imagining what I would do if it happened now... I would probably get on my bike and cycle along the nearest river away from Tokyo until I was far enough away that I could try and hitch a ride, something like that. The roads and trains are packed on a good day.

 

[JoeyJungle]

Between this and the general incompetence of Tepco, it's not hard to see why the situation unfolded the way it did. Really fortunate it wasn't worse.

Can't imagine how evacuating 50 million people would go down, other than "poorly."

It's almost hilarious how poorly they were set up to handle such a disaster. It's really incredible that it wasn't worse than it ended up being.

related, saw this today:
https://twitter.com/HirokoTabuchi/status/705401235256569856?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw==

 

[John Harker]

Oh fuck that guy that didn't listen to TEPCO and continued pumping the sea water died

He got cancer and had a stroke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masao_Yoshida_(nuclear_engineer)

That is incredibly sad

And smells like bullshit the company "found the cancer not to be caused by the incident" to avoid paying liability damages to the family. Ugh. I hope he's remembered fondly there.

 

[Onlinehero]

Risk free is not a thing, and especially not a thing in power generation.
Would you call coal, oil, dams "Risk free"?
Would you call solar or wind "Risk free"? People fall while installing them, manufacturing & dismissal is poisonous, and blades shattering have killed more people than kwh than nuclear. Nothing is risk free.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that certain technologies need to be more risk-free than others, though. Considering the potential cost as described in this scenario, I'm not sure who I'd trust when it comes to evaluating safety, what with TEPCO falsifying reports and whatnot. Even with all precautions it only takes one black swan in a perfect storm, once-in-a-blue-moon.

If we can't have risk free then maybe Kan has learned a good lesson?

He said the experience had turned him from a supporter of nuclear power into a convinced opponent. “I have changed my views 180 degrees. You have to look at the balance between the risks and the benefits,” he said. “One reactor meltdown could destroy the whole plant and, however unlikely, that is too great a risk.”

 

[Frozenprince]

That is incredibly sad

And smells like bullshit the company "found the cancer not to be caused by the incident" to avoid paying liability damages to the family. Ugh. I hope he's remembered fondly there.

I mean, not to defend TEPCO because they ran a shitshow that got people killed, but that finding is probably legitimate. Radiation caused cancers have never (or if they have they are so rare I'v never heard of one) been esophageal.

 

[TheSeks]

This part from the wiki article shows how slimy TEPCO is:

Because apparently being at ground zero for the worst nuclear disaster in decades couldn't possibly have contributed to such rapid onset of cancer. /giantrolleyes

It's not just TEPCO. The US Government/Senators didn't want to help 9/11 rescue workers that worked the day of/day-after in the tower debris "cloud"/smog dust and has had health issues. It took a bunch of people rallying to get them to take responsibility and help those folks health due to the consequences of them working in a disaster.

I feel like the same thing has to happen for TEPCO employees that were there. Hopefully the other 49 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_50) are better treated.

 

[Upsidedown Fuji]

Man it's only 5 years later and the nuclear village like like it's getting its feet back again. I hope the careless safety culture in Japanese nuclear energy has at the very least improved after 3/11.

I doubt we'll know much about the details of this disaster as they're national secrets now. Nice to hear Kan open up on this but it's not like the melt through was a secret beyond Tepco execs and the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency.

 

[Aureon]

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that certain technologies need to be more risk-free than others, though. Considering the potential cost as described in this scenario, I'm not sure who I'd trust when it comes to evaluating safety, what with TEPCO falsifying reports and whatnot. Even with all precautions it only takes one black swan in a perfect storm, once-in-a-blue-moon.

If we can't have risk free then maybe Kan has learned a good lesson?

Historical evidence has nuclear as the technology with the lower cost of power generation, measured in human life.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

Then again, let's hear it - what's your "Less risky technology"?

 

[Onlinehero]

Historical evidence has nuclear as the technology with the lower cost of power generation, measured in human life.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

Then again, let's hear it - what's your "Less risky technology"?

You're missing the point of the argument. The potential risks with nuclear power as highlighted in the article above you massively outweighs the potential risks of many alternative power sources. Perhaps I should be asking you to provide a scenario where a wind turbine accident could cause the evacuation of 50 million people?

 

[GorillaJu]

Yeah but that would have been spitting into the ocean compared to what could have happened. Losing tens of millions of people in an instant would have been insane on a level none of us would ever see again. Hopefully. I can't even fathom that level of destruction.

That isn't even remotely close to what actually would happen in this situation. So much FUD has been spread around related to this disaster by people who just make wild assumptions.

 

[Aureon]

You're missing the point of the argument. The potential risks with nuclear power as highlighted in the article above you massively outweighs the potential risks of many alternative power sources. Perhaps I should be asking you to provide a scenario where a wind turbine accident could cause the evacuation of 50 million people?

Easy, 50-500 thousand accidents causing major property damage.
Which are more still likely than a single critical nuclear event, at equal power generation.

Also, 50 million people evac wasn't happening. People get jumpscared at the mere mention of radiation, but even the worst case scenario (China syndrome) wouldn't have resulted in a tokyo evac.

Evac zone was actually based on the worst case scenario, which didn't happen anyway.
And even in that, most people who actually know radiation were suggesting 20-30km evac for worst case, and we got 80km because of a long chain of bureaucrats saying "Better safe than sorry"

Fukushima couldn't have gone as badly as Chernobyl, since that design flaw was already far fixed, and happened in outrageously dumb circumstances anyway. But even allowing for those, fukushima's design ruled it out.
And chernobyl's actual area evac is.. 30km. Turns out it's really hard to pollute large areas when pollution scales down with the cube of distance.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Yeah but that would have been spitting into the ocean compared to what could have happened. Losing tens of millions of people in an instant would have been insane on a level none of us would ever see again. Hopefully. I can't even fathom that level of destruction.

In an instant?

Thats... not how this works.

 

[chaosblade]

In an instant?

Thats... not how this works.

It's an incredibly common misconception that nuclear plant failure = atomic bomb.

 

[demon]

You're missing the point of the argument. The potential risks with nuclear power as highlighted in the article above you massively outweighs the potential risks of many alternative power sources. Perhaps I should be asking you to provide a scenario where a wind turbine accident could cause the evacuation of 50 million people?

The article is about Fukushima specifically, which was an old plant built in a terrible spot and was subject to massive incompetence. Educate yourself on the advancements in nuclear energy technology over the past several decades. A modern thorium reactor plant would be worlds apart from something like Fukushima in terms of safety.

 

[Aureon]

Also, the article says that somebody was worried about a 250km evac zone. The only way you're getting potentially human-dangerous radiation 250km from site is a vapor cloud upwind, which you could precipitate artificially rather than attempting to evac goddamn tokyo.
All in all, the article seems the usual cherry-picking FUD that's been floating around for so long, on a chain of overly cautious bureaucrats - because nobody wants to be tried for lethal negligence - and fear-spreading reporters, because shit SELLS, and who cares if i have to misinterpretate data or make up interviews to do so.
I fondly remember the two top "Reputable" publications from my country straight up forging interviews and events. The wall of shame, interestingly, includes very articles from the Telegraph, multiple of which from the very author if the article posted in the OP - Andrew Gilligan.
So, if you think a "journalist" that has been shown to repeatedly lie and spread FUD on this very topic is entitled to your trust after penning not one, but FOUR articles of mostly made up lies, gross exagerations and borderline racist scaremongering... I don't think we can have a decent conversation here.

It's an incredibly common misconception that nuclear plant failure = atomic bomb.

You can thank the criminals at greenpeace for that, mostly.
They're majorly responsible for nuclear&GMOs being the scarecrows they're today.

 

[Coriolanus]

You're missing the point of the argument. The potential risks with nuclear power as highlighted in the article above you massively outweighs the potential risks of many alternative power sources. Perhaps I should be asking you to provide a scenario where a wind turbine accident could cause the evacuation of 50 million people?

You might as well argue that airplanes are more dangerous than cars. Will make about as much sense.

 

[Onlinehero]

Also, 50 million people evac wasn't happening. People get jumpscared at the mere mention of radiation, but even the worst case scenario (China syndrome) wouldn't have resulted in a tokyo evac.

Evac zone was actually based on the worst case scenario, which didn't happen anyway.
And even in that, most people who actually know radiation were suggesting 20-30km evac for worst case, and we got 80km because of a long chain of bureaucrats saying "Better safe than sorry"

Fukushima couldn't have gone as badly as Chernobyl, since that design flaw was already far fixed, and happened in outrageously dumb circumstances anyway. But even allowing for those, fukushima's design ruled it out.

And chernobyl's actual area evac is.. 30km. Turns out it's really hard to pollute large areas when pollution scales down with the cube of distance.

Ah, then I stand corrected. Though I find it peculiar how the incompetence around the handling of this specific incident is used to reassure people about the general safety of nuclear power plants. Regarding evac incompetence their safety measures supposedly caused more deaths than lives saved:

But the paper also notes that nearly 600 deaths were reported as a result of the evacuation process itself, mostly due to fatigue and exposure among the elderly and chronically ill. According to the model, the evacuation prevented at most 245 radiation-related deaths - meaning the evacuation process may have cost more lives than it saved.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/su-src071312.php

Pretty amazing how ill-prepared the people in charge were. Won't happen again though! *knock-on-plutonium*

The article is about Fukushima specifically, which was an old plant built in a terrible spot and was subject to massive incompetence. Educate yourself on the advancements in nuclear energy technology over the past several decades. A modern thorium reactor plant would be worlds apart from something like Fukushima in terms of safety.

How many of those modern plants are active today, compared to the number of "Fukushima"-level plants active in territories where you wouldn't trust an official about the time of day?

Until now, U.S. safety regulations have been based on ensuring plants are designed to withstand certain specified failures or abnormal events, or 'design-basis-events'-- such as equipment failures, loss of power, and inability to cool the reactor core -- that could impair critical safety functions. However, four decades of analysis and experience have demonstrated that reactor core-damage risks are dominated by 'beyond-design-basis events,' the report says. The Fukushima Daiichi, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl accidents were all initiated by beyond-design-basis events. The committee found that current approaches for regulating nuclear plant safety, which have been based traditionally on deterministic concepts such as the design-basis accident, are clearly inadequate for preventing core-melt accidents and mitigating their consequences. A more complete application of modern risk-assessment principles in licensing and regulation could help address this inadequacy and enhance the overall safety of all nuclear plants, present and future.

(2014)

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=18294

Phew, problem solved!

Again, I'm not arguing that nuclear power isn't safe as all hell. What I am arguing is that we've seen how negligence and downright illicit behavior among the people responsible for safety can have a tremendous impact. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error. It sort of makes you distrust sources giving the "all clear" signal, you know?

I suppose this is scaremongering as well:

scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) — some 200 times more often than estimated in the past. The researchers also determined that, in the event of such a major accident, half of the radioactive caesium-137 would be spread over an area of more than 1,000 kilometres away from the nuclear reactor. Their results show that Western Europe is likely to be contaminated about once in 50 years by more than 40 kilobecquerel of caesium-137 per square meter.

http://www.mpg.de/5809418/reactor_accidents

Though I do take issue with the model they used, since:

The Mainz researchers did not distinguish ages and types of reactors, or whether they are located in regions of enhanced risks, for example by earthquakes. After all, nobody had anticipated the reactor catastrophe in Japan.

But hey, who to trust.

You might as well argue that airplanes are more dangerous than cars. Will make about as much sense.

About as much sense as taking the statistical data we have about nuclear disasters and comparing it to coal plants and pollution. Statistically, one will be a bit more robust than the other.

 

[CadetMahoney]

wasn't there downplaying and damage control around this?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/03/the-giant-lie-about-fukushima/

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

wasn't there downplaying and damage control around this?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/03/the-giant-lie-about-fukushima/

Do you have a article that isn't from an "alternative" news site?

 

[Zaptruder]

The fear is real.

Look, radiation sucks no doubt. But the distance from Fukushima to Tokyo means that people in Tokyo in the worst case scenario would've been dosed at much higher than usual background noise radiation... but nothing that would cause immediate death and suffering - just more significant concern over long term exposure (i.e. probably shouldn't have a city of 30-50 million people exposed to that level of radiation for years to decades on end).

Any short-time scale evacuation would've caused significantly more disruption which would include death and suffering both physical and financial.

And among the root causes for this situation is simply the nuclear fear mongering that has led to the prolonged use of older nuclear power plants (because constructing new nuclear in such a political climate is difficult).

Mean time, the coal power plants constructed in place of Nuclear power plants continue to release much more radiation in the coal ash across a much broader area (admittedly the half life of those radioactive isotopes are significantly shorter than gen 1-3 nuclear waste material - maybe months to years as compared to hundreds to thousands of years).

 

[darkwing-buck]

Oh fuck that guy that didn't listen to TEPCO and continued pumping the sea water died

He got cancer and had a stroke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masao_Yoshida_(nuclear_engineer)

dude was a hero

 

[CadetMahoney]

Do you have a article that isn't from an "alternative" news site?

The article is littered with quotes and their sources, any particular one which is false?

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

The Frontline documentary about this is a pretty good one (though it must be outdated).

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

The article is littered with quotes and their sources, any particular one which is false?

It is impossible to know exactly now. But considering the gargantuan amount of radioactive poisons that have been discharged and what will continue to be released, the impacts will inevitably be great. The claim of there being no consequences to life and the prediction that there won’t be in the future from the Fukushima catastrophe is an outrageous falsehood.

That’s because it is now widely understood that there is no “safe” level of radioactivity. Any amount can kill. The more radioactivity, the greater the impacts. As the National Council on Radiation Protection has declared: “Every increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in the risk of cancer.”

There was once the notion of there being a “threshold dose” of radioactivity below which there would be no harm. That’s because when nuclear technology began and people were exposed to radioactivity, they didn’t promptly fall down dead. But as the years went by, it was realized that lower levels of radioactivity take time to result in cancer and other illnesses—that there is a five-to-40-year “incubation” period

No, there is absolutely still a notion of threshold dose. It's why people who work in radioactive environments have proceeders and protocols to limit exposure over long periods of time. If you were to actually listen to this article then I wouldn't go outside, cause you know the sun is gonna kill you. Or better yet don't go on a plane ever, you will literally melt and get ass cancer because of the radiation. I know because I was just told that there is no safe level of radiation.

Projecting a death toll of more than a million from the radioactivity released from Fukushima is Dr. Chris Busby, scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk who has been a professor at a number of universities. . “Fukushima is still boiling radionuclides all over Japan,” he said. “Chernobyl went up in one go. So Fukushima is worse.”

Indeed, a report by the Institute for Science in Society, based in the U.K., has concluded: “State-of-the-art analysis based on the most inclusive datasets available reveals that radioactive fallout from the Fukushima meltdown is at least as big as Chernobyl and more global in reach.”

A death toll of up to 600,000 is estimated in a study conducted for the Nordic Probabilistic Safety Assessment Group which is run by the nuclear utilities of Finland and Sweden.

Hmmmm, Institute for Science in Society has a state of the art analysis!? Shit lets go check it ou-

Spoiler

please people, stop posting obvious bullshit from obvious bullshit sites. I literally just skimmed it for like 2 minutes, if someone actually wanted to fact check all these "quotes" (IE cherry picked quotes which are then used to prove horribly inaccurate statements) I think they might go over the limit of the GAF comment character limit

 

[CadetMahoney]

The first one is talking about "safe levels", a discussion that can be made outside of the context of the fukushima incident, the second one is definitely wrong and hyperbolic if you're right I personally wouldn't brush off everything based on the other two. Particular the angle of the cover up and damage control which is what I wanted to talk about in general, for example:

"
Japanese government enacted a new State Secrets Act which can restrict—with a penalty of 10 years in jail—reporting on Fukushima.

In a phone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said there were no signs that any radioactive substance leaked into the environment.
"

It's basically that lies/downplaying (from both media and government) always follow major events like Fukushima.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

if any article includes a source from a pseudoscience institution it is immediately thrown into the garbage, there are no salvageable points. Find another site or find the source of the quotes, I've just shown you that using the quotes within the article are pointless because they are so horribly out of context that it doesn't even matter what they say.

And again, that site is exactly what I thought it would be, there is a reason alternative news sites are laughed away when used for an argument.

We can monitor the levels of radiation, we can measure and have been measuring the radiation levels in the ocean, they are not dangerous, just like when the radiation was hitting the west coast of the US, it was less than the normal level of background radiation. It's not hyperbolic, it's just lies.

 

[Zaru]

You can thank the criminals at greenpeace for that, mostly.
They're majorly responsible for nuclear&GMOs being the scarecrows they're today.

Oh I think the numerous 30+ year old reactors that are constantly having issues which get downplayed by officials manage that just fine by themselves

 

[PdotMichael]

Oh I think the numerous 30+ year old reactors that are constantly having issues which get downplayed by officials manage that just fine by themselves

That's the main problem with nuclear energy.

It's only cheap (for the companies) if you can run your nuclear reactors until the very end and further. Building new nuclear power plants is such an expensive clusterfuck that it only works if you subsidize them and solidarize the cost.
There are more than enough studies all over the world which prove that nuclear energy isn't viable without subsidies.

 

[Linkstrikesback]

Turns out it's really hard to pollute large areas when pollution scales down with the cube of distance.

It would probably scaled with the square of distance (I'm assuming the mathematics would be similar to difussion equations), but I still get your point.
(I'm here to be pedantic and not really contribute,woo)

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

That's the main problem with nuclear energy.

It's only cheap (for the companies) if you can run your nuclear reactors until the very end and further. Building new nuclear power plants is such an expensive clusterfuck that it only works if you subsidize them and solidarize the cost.
There are more than enough studies all over the world which prove that nuclear energy isn't viable without subsidies.

Yea, building new reactors is a clusterfuck and are constantly over time and over cost.

At this point it's just easier to build solar and wind. Solar is already cheaper than gas in places in the US and it's only going to be cheaper, same with wind. Once storage becomes cheap (and it is becoming cheaper every year, give it 5-7 years) the main issue holding renewables back from a major breakthrough will be out of the way.

 

[forknknife]

Awesome! All we need now is for all pro-nuclear politicians to go through the same experience and we'll be all good to go!

 

[Zaptruder]

Yea, building new reactors is a clusterfuck and are constantly over time and over cost.

At this point it's just easier to build solar and wind. Solar is already cheaper than gas in places in the US and it's only going to be cheaper, same with wind. Once storage becomes cheap (and it is becoming cheaper every year, give it 5-7 years) the main issue holding renewables back from a major breakthrough will be out of the way.

Pretty much. Unfortunately well meaning but ultimately extremely ignorant environmentalists have been responsible for basically removing nuclear from our table as the primary deliverer of green energy - allowing 5-6 additional decades of exponential growth in fossil fuels.

We can probably thank them in part for the worst effects of climate change.

 

[PdotMichael]

Just leave the nuclear lobbyists alone!

Just look at Japan and see how well it worked.

 

[TheOfficeMut]

Everyone go to PBS.org and watch the NOVA special on Fukushima, if you haven't already.

 

[samn]

I'm not convinced that this was even a possible scenario. I remember at the time people saying oo this could happen but whenever I drilled down into the evidence or the people arguing it they all came across as wackos who didn't understand the basic facts.

 

[DrFurbs]

So what's the current status of this power plant in terms of viability and safety and cleanup?

 

[Raist]

You're missing the point of the argument. The potential risks with nuclear power as highlighted in the article above you massively outweighs the potential risks of many alternative power sources. Perhaps I should be asking you to provide a scenario where a wind turbine accident could cause the evacuation of 50 million people?

The potential risks of being in a plane while its engines suddenly stop working are much higher than the same thing with a car.
And then there's statistics.

 

[Snaku]

I wonder if Shin Gojira will have any commentary on this disaster. The original film was pretty heavily referencing the Lucky Dragon No 5 tragedy in the first third of the film.

 

[massoluk]

Total disaster was averted when seawater was pumped into the reactors, but the plant manager, Masao Yoshida, later said he considered committing hara-kiri, ritual suicide, in despair at the situation.

God damn

He disobeyed direct orders from the parent company TEPCO when pumping in the seawater which is what averted the disaster. The guy should pretty much be a national hero considering the circumstances.

Wow, what an unsung hero. This man deserved much much more recognition.

 

[Ty4on]

The potential risks of being in a plane while its engines suddenly stop working are much higher than the same thing with a car.
And then there's statistics.

That's why there are two or more. I don't think both engines have every failed on a commercial flight from independent sources i.e. it was a singular cause taking down both/all engines (fuel exhaustion, volcanic ash...).

 

[ElectricThunder]

Every Fukushima thread always seems to come up with additional info and insight on how terribly it was handled/continues to be handled, yet like clockwork so too do folks pile in dismissively exactly the same as back in the heyday of the BP thread(s) and all others that indicate profound failures of big business concerns enmeshed with governmental actions. Hmm...

Good that Kan is speaking out---somehow, magically, I just can't find myself at all optimistic about Abe managing anything similar considering...well...yeah, he's just the sort of authoritarian folks lap up~

Agreed that this man should be a national hero, have a holiday---the works. Given that there haven't exactly been a ton of nigh-cataclysmic events of any stripe of late, you'd think they'd already be on that, but perhaps they'd rather save face with the implicit villain implication of TEPCO needed to regale the man's tale proper to all...

I guess like every other thread I'll go ahead and recommend the Nuclear Nation doc(s probably as I still need to see Part 2 and the supplemental part at some point), though given the current state of the laws I don't know if there's to be a Part 3 or beyond even with the angle they explore that does more to highlight why, in this society we have beget by how development went, the human/societal costs are just too insidious:

http://nuclearnation.jp/en/part1/

 

[Sulik2]

The sad part is Fukushima is still in a pretty dangerous situation its no where close to being long term sealed.

 

[SolidusDave]

Hmmmm, Institute for Science in Society has a state of the art analysis!? Shit lets go check it ou-

literally ISIS lol

 

[so1337]

Radiation-related cancer, for both chernobyl and fukushima, has been tyroid cancer only. Additionally, it'd be pretty strange if a radiation dose caused a rapid onset cancer... a year later.

Maybe so, but you can't exactly blame me for not taking Tepco's word for it.