Will Fukushima Survivors Be Doubly Victimized With Radiation Sickness and Stigmatization?

By Russ Wellen

Watching ARS: Fukushima, the sequel to Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS): Hiroshima and Nagasaki, play out on the world stage spurred me to view an actual drama about radiation sickness. Black Rain, the 1988 film by Shohei Imamura, begins with, and occasionally flashes back to, the bombing of Hiroshima. It depicts the lives of a group of survivors five years later when they begin to succumb to ARS.

As you may be aware, radiation sickness was a stigma to many in post-war Japan. A primitive response, to be sure, but one which served as a coping mechanism. Film reviewer Roger Ebert provided some insight into how it works shortly after Black Rain was released in the United States (emphasis added).

The immediate impulse of the Japanese in the aftermath of such a cataclysm, Imamura shows in his film, is to re-establish the rhythms and values of traditional life. By returning to old ways, the wound can be healed and even denied. That's the act that metastasizes the illness by guaranteeing its perpetuation as an infection on society.�

Imamura's anger in �Black Rain� is directed not so much at those who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima as at the way his Japanese characters immediately started behaving as if somehow it has been their own fault. [They] seem almost to be apologizing for having been beneath the fallout.

This syndrome is embodied in the inability of an attractive young woman, Yasuko, to hold on to suitors when they learn that she was exposed to the nuclear fallout encapsulated in the grimy raindrops that fell on her shortly after the bomb dropped. It resurfaced in a story originally thought to be an Internet myth. On June 11, at the Australian, Rick Wallace reported:

It was supposed to be a lifetime highlight, but the wedding plans of a bride-to-be from Fukushima have turned into a nightmare thanks to the new post-crisis phenomenon of radiation discrimination. � her plans turned to ashes when her future mother-in-law blurted out: "What if we don't have a healthy child because of the radiation?"

Among other such incidents

The government of the city of Tsukuba, just northeast of Tokyo, was forced to apologise after forcing Fukushima area refugees who had sought shelter to obtain "radiation-free" certificates or undergo screening. The Mayor of Minamisoma, a town of 71,000 that lies 25km from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, said this week � "I was told by a mother with some children that when they went to a different area of Japan, they were warned by other children: 'You are contaminated don't come near me.'

But Wallace reminds us that, for the most part, "Japanese society's cohesion and strength has shone through during this disaster."

Though still a somewhat insular society, especially considering its international status, Japan has become far too modern to regress to the kind of prejudice it demonstrated against the radiation sickness victims of World War II. But visions of racial purity, dormant since World War II, may re-emerge. In addition, radiation sickness may be responded to as HIV often is, with the attendant fears about contact with bodily fluid. One just hopes that the vast majority of Japanese swallow those fears and leave them unvoiced in polite company. And God knows � stereotype alert � the Japanese are polite.

 

Fukushima Has Become the Sequel to "Groundhog Day"

By Russ Wellen

Remember that 1993 film in which the Bill Murray repeats the same day over and over again? The Japanese nuclear crisis has also become d� vu ad nauseum (please excuse mixed romance languages). Fukushima news reports today aren't appreciably different from those shortly after the earthquake and tsunami. On May 18 the New York Times reported (note two words emphasized):

Amid widening alarm in the United States and elsewhere about Japan�s nuclear crisis, military fire trucks began spraying cooling water on spent fuel rods at the country�s stricken nuclear power station late Thursday after earlier efforts to cool the rods failed, Japanese officials said. . . . Earlier Thursday Japanese military forces tried to dump seawater from a helicopter on Reactor No. 3, making four passes and dropping a total of about 8,000 gallons as a plume of white smoke billowed. . . . Video of the effort appeared to show most of the water missing the reactor and the Japanese military later said the measure had little effect on reducing the temperature in the pool where the spent rods are stored. . . . The developments came as the authorities reached for ever more desperate and unconventional methods to cool damaged reactors, deploying helicopters and water cannons in a race to prevent perilous overheating in the spent rods of the No. 3 reactor.

Unconventional, maybe, but no longer new. In fact, it's a reprise of what was attempted when the cooling problem emerged shortly after the earthquake and tsunami. From the BBC on March 17:

Thursday's attempt to use helicopters to dump seawater on to the Fukushima power station is almost certainly unprecedented in more than half a century of nuclear power operations around the world. Long-range video footage indicates why it is not a more widely-used technique: it does not appear to work. Water cannon -- tried, with similar results -- seemed a similarly desperate measure.

Desperate in March, it must be a deeper shade of desperate now, which would seem to be indicated by this, from the May 18 Times article.

The decision to focus on the No. 3 reactor appeared to suggest that Japanese officials believe it is a greater threat, since it is the only one at the site loaded with a mixed fuel known as mox, for mixed oxide, which includes reclaimed plutonium [and which] would produce  a more dangerous radioactive plume than the dispersal of uranium fuel rods at the site.  . . . In the worst case, experts say, workers could be forced to vacate the plant altogether, and the fuel rods in reactors and spent fuel pools would be left to melt down, leading to much larger releases of radioactive materials.

In early April, Australian TV news is even more discouraging.

. . . one expert says the radiation leaks will be ongoing and it could take 50 to 100 years before the nuclear fuel rods have completely cooled and been removed. "As the water leaks out, you keep on pouring water in, so this leak will go on for ever," said Dr John Price, a former member of the Safety Policy Unit at the UK's National Nuclear Corporation. . . . "The final thing is that the reactors will have to be closed and the fuel removed, and that is 50 to 100 years away.

Meanwhile, from the May 18 Times story:

The United States� top nuclear official followed up his bleak appraisal of the grave situation at the plant the day before with a caution that it would �take some time, possibly weeks,� to resolve.

Looks like we can look forward to yet more sequels of Japan's Groundhog Day.

 

In the End, Fukushima a Gift to the Nuclear Energy Industry?

By Russ Wellen

At Pro Publica, in an article titled Even In Worst Case, Japan's Nuclear Disaster Will Have Limited Reach Abrahm Lustgarten

. . . spoke with seven top nuclear engineers and scientists to at least establish some boundaries for the disaster�s potential health and environmental impacts. The rough consensus: The long-term and most severe effects from radiation at the plant, where�four of six reactors are in crisis�and hundreds of tons of spent fuel is a risk, will be largely contained to the area around the plant, affect a relatively limited population and will likely not spread outside Japan.

So what, as Reuters reports, if the

. . . unprecedented multiple crisis will cost the world's third largest economy nearly $200 billion and require Japan's biggest reconstruction push since post-World War II.

Uncovered by insurance because it was an act of God (however Old Testament)? No problem.

The highly specialized German Nuclear Reactor Insurance Association (DKVG) partially insured Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant to the tune of tens of millions of euros. But the Cologne-based insurer won't be paying anything.

"We do have a stake in the risks in Japan, generally speaking. But the property insurance and liability insurance policies exclude damages from earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions," DKVG chief executive Dirk Harbr�told Deutsche Welle.

Never mind that when it comes to building new reactors, the Independent reports that "some estimates suggest extra safety will add at least another 10 per cent."

The case will be made that the Fukushima reactors, despite how old they were, survived both an earthquake and tsunami with attendant explosions, fires, and loss of water to spent fuel rods with minimal (by some standards, anyway) leakage of radiation into the atmosphere. Fukushima could turn into the gift that keeps on giving for nuclear energy advocates.

Except for one small stumbling block: because neither Fukushima's nor any other reactors have been attacked by terrorists, it remains to be seen how one would stand up to subversion from within, assault by ground troops, or a plane loaded with explosives crashing into it.

First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.