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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/fe-logo-13-feb-09-250-px1.jpg?resize=250%2C133&ssl=1\" "\\"Fe\\"")
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\nAccording to Japan’s prime minister (the equivalent of our president),\u00a0what has happened is\u00a0comparable to the devastation\u00a0of \u00a0World War II. The sophistication of Japan’s technology and infrastructure would, in relatively less catastrophic circumstances, allow the country to\u00a0quickly recover from the devastation of an earthquake. Japanese expertise in seismic safety design is second to none in the world and here in\u00a0the quake-ridden SF Bay Area, we rely on that expertise\u00a0as crucial to our own continued safety.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of the Dec. 26, 2004 quake and tsunami, early (or earlier)\u00a0warning systems\u00a0were put\u00a0in place for Pacific and Indian ocean nations. Japan’s death toll of 10,000 or more could have been a lot worse without the factors of Japan’s continually updated seismic safety technology\u00a0and tsunami warning system, made relevant by what happened in Banda Aceh.<\/p>\n
However, radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s core failure could\u00a0still be\u00a0breathing down\u00a0our necks here in California and throughout the western U.S. Even though experts say the current core meltdown is only partial, that it’s contained and the radioactive particle\u00a0dispersion is low, the repetitiveness of that reassurance makes me —\u00a0after Three Mile Island, Indian\u00a0Power Plant, Chernobyl and Deepwater Horizon —\u00a0highly suspicious. With nuclear incidents, we have not just a crisis from cataclysm, but a crisis\u00a0in trust. With limited information on the news and the measured words of government officials from the last 24 hours, it’s not hard to become a cynic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Distrust in government\u00a0and\u00a0all political disagreements aside,\u00a0the aftermath of a nuclear-related catastrophe such as the one at the Daiichi plant presents an opportunity for governments, specifically the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)\u00a0to respond not just to the management of this disaster, but to the understandable concern and anxiety from the\u00a0broader, global\u00a0public’s perception of it. This\u00a0is not about cover-up, but actually good disaster planning and protection of the public.<\/p>\n
The mitigation of mass panic —\u00a0the keeping of an informed and hopefully,\u00a0calm public — is\u00a0critical\u00a0to safety when and if a disaster such as\u00a0this one occurs.\u00a0The\u00a0public\u00a0can expeditiously be mobilized out of harm’s way. The EPA has a\u00a0phrase for it — risk communication — which is the\u00a0 government’s\u00a0communication of\u00a0potential environmental\u00a0hazards to an affected public.<\/p>\n
If I’m sounding a little panicked and may appear over the top, forgive me. But I live in California, and the possibility of free-floating radioactive material in the atmosphere at an undisclosed RAD level has me concerned for obvious reasons.\u00a0Earthquakes and tsunamis happen. Concrete fails. Plant safety collapses. Operator error occurs. Nuclear power plants, regardless of age, break down eventually, and when they do, big disaster or small, that failure is spectacular. And plutonium lasts forever.<\/p>\n
Worse-case scenarios have already happened just this past weekend. Now unless you can convince me that you have invented a satellite-operated global vacuum cleaner that can\u00a0suck out all loose radioactive particulates from the air, maybe you should start telling me what’s happened so I can begin to prepare for safety, no matter where the event begins. Like a tsunami warning system, only for radioactivity.<\/p>\n
Or better yet, when you plan to build a nuclear power plant in the vicinity of any part of the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, aside from factoring in plant design, how about checking in with not only your surrounding neighborhoods, but also your neighboring countries and continents on the impact of a proposed plant in the event of a similar disaster? In other words, how about asking us?<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s time to start thinking about what the future of peacetime nuclear development is. Shouldn’t it be obvious that countries and regions with heavy seismic activity should think twice before developing nuclear power plants?\u00a0Japan is\u00a0a large\u00a0island nation that sits on four tectonic plates — all heavy with seismic activity. And while we’re at it, how about adding a non-proliferation clause for development of future plants, signed off by international treaty? Or even better still — how about amending the current START Treaty to add nuclear power plants to the list of items all nations must scale back on?<\/p>\n
Yes, I know. I’m not sounding very realistic right now. I admit that I’m scared not just about today, or a week from now, but what could happen to us, our kids and our planet thirty, fifty or one hundred\u00a0years from now. Yes, realistically we have nations to develop, jobs to create, and regions to restore economically. We need jobs for not only economic stability, but in some cases national security. And we in the US have been too horribly negligent, in our own management of power and resources, to the loss and detriment of human lives to point fingers at Japan or Russia right now. Luckily today it seems, at least at the time of this writing, that the Daiichi situation may have stabilized.\u00a0But this is a teaching moment.<\/p>\n
With Daiichi and elsewhere, we are not separated by borders, political affinities, or national identities. We feel the pulse of a core reactor failure in Japan, the Ukraine,\u00a0upstate New York,\u00a0and Southern California no matter how much the nuclear power industry, politics, government and the media tries to define and divide us.\u00a0\u00a0For better or worse, with the events in Daiichi, we are all connected by ocean waters and winds. Too many risks have already been taken. Any one accident is lethal for eons. This is far too small of a world.<\/p>\n
Yours\u00a0& truly,<\/p>\n
Fe Bongolan<\/strong>
\nSan Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not just a crisis from cataclysm, but a crisis\u00a0in trust. . I’m writing this letter to anyone who’ll listen. Its hard not to feel helpless these days.\u00a0Helpless in the face of\u00a0Japan’s suffering\u00a0over\u00a0the last 72\u00a0hours, which\u00a0has been overwhelming: a 9.0 earthquake, a deadly tsunami and now the partial, though now apparently contained,\u00a0meltdown of three of Fukushima … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1721,29,1788,1722,52,1054,1723,35],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}