Suspicions that the Japanese authorities were not being totally open about the effects of last week’s earthquake on the Fukushima nuclear power station (see my blog of March 14) appear to have been well grounded.
It has now been revealed that we are experiencing the world’s worst nuclear accident apart from Chernobyl, and officials admit that what they had originally said was only a local problem, really has ‘wider consequences’. Unsafe radiation levels have already been found in milk and spinach, though they claim this still represents no risk to human health.
Japan’s government concedes that it ‘could have moved a little quicker’ in providing accurate information. Well, let us hope we are now being told the whole truth. All six reactors have problems of some kind, and the alert level has been raised one notch. Today workers at the plant are hoping to restore some of the automatic cooling systems.
Altogether, just over 7,300 people are known to have died in the earthquake, with 11,000 more still missing.
*The earthquake has prompted a newspaper columnist to think about my book – A Disastrous History of the World.
http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/columnists/8909805.Disasters_always_waiting_to_happen/
If you want to help people in Japan, here’s a good way:-
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=100000056583886
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