Here is the update, from Daily Motion. It is in French; we don’t all speak French but that’s the place there are a lot of nuclear reactors.
In case you cannot follow along, here is the translation, by Dani. It’s not a word for word translation but rather a faithful idea by idea reportage. Thanks Dani.
he tells the date, to clarify that it’s the 15 juin
he’s been in japan for ten years, people have asked him to make a video in french to talk about what’s going on there so he’s finally doing it.
says the nuclear crisis is absolutely not under control in japan.
takes a look at the press today for what’s being reported.
a farmer killed himself saturday. hung himself. he wrote some words in white chalk on a wall. “i would’ve prefered that there were not a power plant in this region.” to the other farmers, “keep the courage against this nuclear crisis, don’t fall like I did.” killed himself 13 june 2011
he asks why would a farmer kill himself over this? says he must have, for three months, had to throw out all the milk from his cows, radioactive milk, onto radioactive land. then he had to kill his cows that were not productive, then hung himself.
if you take any newspaper today in japan, like this one the japan times, you see a photo of nuclear activitsts in italy who celebrate their victory against nuclear power. i would’ve preferred to see this photo of french people against nuclear. unfortunately that’s not the case in france.
next to the photo we have an article saying the govt in fukushima is going to distribute 35,000 dosimetres for kids of fukushima because they are exposed to 2.6 microsiverts per hour.
dosimetre = small machine like a thermometer to measure how much radioactivity enters your body each hour.
the kids in fukushima, the kids are going to school with a dosimetre on their bodies to calculate how much radioactivity they absorb every day. it doesn’t protect them at all. japan is going to be the first country in the world that sends 35,000 kids to school every day with a machine measuring how much radioactivity they eat every day so their parents can know when they get home at night.
the excuses of govts pro nuclear is in a small square at the top of the page. england, france, US, Italy all these countries are the mafia, the mafia of nuclear energy. they say, if we stop nuclear energy in japan the electricity bills are going to go up. oh no! the increase would be 1000 yen per month if we stop, that’s only 9 euros! that’s the price of natural energy. 9 more euros.
me, as a parent, i say this. i’m going to pay the extra 10 euros and they are going to close all of these power plants, unconditionally.
in france they tell you the situation will soon be under control, it’s a lie.
on the second page of the japan times, it says Tepco begins cleaning up radioactive water. great. but what’s written in the article is that we threw 720,000 billion becherel in the ocean. and 720,000 into the atmosphere. that means together it’s 30% of what was released in tchernobyl.
and they say that it will not affect your health. that’s going to affect animal life in the ocean, cancers…already has contaminated the sea bed.
so in france they tell you it’s ok because you’re the first in nuclear energy. they say iran is going to launch an atomic bomb with their dirty nuclear energy plants, they’re the concern, but they don’t yet have an atomic bomb. for 30 years they have fabricated this news in france and the US, of another country to blame, to turn your head. you, in france, you have 55 nuclear reactors, the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world. in france, you have 3,000 atomic bombs.
stop believing a country like iran is capable…
they use the idea of a cold war to permit themselves to build more and more.
they say, oh look over there, they have dirty nuclear energy. oh it’s in japan that it’s exploding, not here. we’re risking nothing.
here we’re going to send kids to school with a dosimetre, a mask, maybe a protective antinuclear suit. you want to live in a bunker with a reserve of potable water, and we get to a point where everyone has a rifle and shoots his neighbor to steal his water?!? because that’s what’s happening here now.
that’s what happens everywhere. if a reactor explodes, you think of your kids, you want to survive. you want to live like this??
the countries who stop nucelar energy in europe right now are the courageous ones. the problem is, in germany, italy, switzerland, etc, the 8 countries who want to stop nuclear energy, think they can stop it because they’re going to buy it in france.
they’re going to impose building more plants on the borders of france.
i’m french, we speak the same language. it’s happening to me now. 200km from here. there’s a pool of plutonium they don’t know how to keep standing. it could spill any moment.
if a plant exploses in france, it’s going to be the same thing. your wine and cheese producers in burgundy, they won’t exist anymore.
wine producers in bordeaux, burgundy. you live well there? i like your wine. you got a nuclear plant near you? think about that.
france, you should absolutely join other countries in europe who want to stop nuclear energy. it’s france that produces the most nuclear energy in the world. france. they say it’s iran, for example, or other countries that produce dirty nuclear energy… your nuclear energy there is the same we have in here japan. the mox fuel in the nuclear reactor number 3 comes from france. the kids in japan are going to be contaminated by the french mox fuel. i don’t say it’s the fault of france, but it’s the same radioactivity, the same
france today is starting to bombard tripoli, the capital of libya. in several years, when these people want revenge, you think they’re going to launch an airplane into the eiffel tower? no, they’ll know where to hit. on the weak points of the country. a country with 55 reactors is weak. here in japan we are 50 years in advance of france and look what happens. a pool of plutonium is going to kill everyone here. and there are still 53 reactors.
nuclear reactors are the weak points of a country.
you’ll lose nothing in stopping nuclear energy. it’s the nuclear mafia that’s going to lose. you’ll stay alive.
french, we need you. it’s now. don’t wait until this calms. you’re going to forget about it. the worldwide revolution against nuclear energy started when fukushima exploded. the point of no return. we have only two choices. we all die … or we stop.
wake up les francais…
Somehow indiginous peoples have found a way to live in harmony with nature. I don’t think all humans are destined to blow up the natural world.
I think our cultures are flawed, the ways we think are flawed. But humans have as much capacity to be benevolent stewards of nature as they have for destruction.
Amanda,
I knew the huge time spans nuclear energy demands for the waste; my older brother (how prophetic he was and how sad that he died without anyone but me ever hearing his words) told me about it way back in the late 70’s. He explained that each type of nuclear radiation has what is known as a half-life; this is the time it takes for the radiation to be only half as strong. Many of the kinds of radiation that nuclear power plants cause have half-lives of over a THOUSAND YEARS. That means the radiation cannot be at even half the level (and half may still not be a safe level) for thousands of years. When he told me that, I shut down about the whole thing because I was 18 and I knew I had no power to stop what is really the advance toward the destruction of all living things on this planet. No wonder he was depressed back then; he was only 20 when he realized what we were doing to ourselves and our planet. Like me, he could see far, far ahead and the view he saw was terrible.
I cannot wrap my mind around this because I have children and I don’t know how their lives will go on if radiation keeps spewing out; radiation that may not be at safe levels for long after they and their great-great-great- etc grandchildren are gone.
Human greed will indeed kill us off. The stupid part is, even the greedy folks don’t see how stupid it is to amass wealth via nuclear energy that will not buy them safety from the very thing that gave them the wealth in the first place. Their own children will be affected and they would have to live horrible lives in shelters (even a great shelter is not ever going to be perfectly safe and it certainly won’t have the quality of life they desire). How can people be so blind? Because they CHOOSE to be; because they never grew up or learned delayed gratification or being happy with what they have.
We can turn the clock back and save ourselves but it will tale all the collective strength of the ants (us) to overpower the grasshoppers (the greedy nuclear energy corporation shareholders and CEOs).
Eric and Danielle, thank you – eloquent even in translation. Many thanks also to the gentle and courageous man delivering the message.
thank you dani, for the translation! it is pretty sobering; even for some of us who “know” some of what he describes, the reminder has a real impact. god…. those japanese kids….
and it reminds me — i saw a fascinating (in a terrible sort of way; that is, it describes how little we truly understand about our nuclear situation) documentary in May about the problem of nuclear storage and Denmark’s “solution” to it. i meant to write about it then, but got sidetracked. maybe i still will.
it’s called “into eternity” and looks at some of the challenges faced in creating a facility to house nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years. and that it will only house a tiny fraction of the waste we have, crazy-deep in the most stable bedrock they have there.
not least of these challenges is the fact the we as a culture/species have no ability to conceive how life on this planet — the state of humans, culture, ecology, language, etc — may be different in 100,000 years. think about the differences between life now and life only 2,000 years ago or 4,000 years ago. language itself is not even remotely the same now as it was then; so how can we be sure we can warn people 50,000 years from now to stay away from the nuclear waste? it’s a question the filmmaker brings up; his interviewees attempt admirably to answer, but admit their/our limitations in the end.
anyway, here is a link to the movie’s site: http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/
and an npr review: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/02/133399514/into-eternity-nuclears-future-with-or-without-us
i highly recommend it — it is in english with subtitles just in case, and is quiet and solemn and graceful. it had never occurred to me just how incapable we are of even conceptualizing the time span nuclear waste/fuel demands us to consider.