Japan tsunami + 5

On this day…..five years ago, one of the most powerful earthquakes in history unleashed a tsunami that killed 18,000 people in Japan, and drove nearly half a million from their homes as it caused the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Five years later, 180,000 have still not been able to return home, more than half of them from Fukushima, where nearly 800,000 tons of contaminated water are still stored in tanks at the stricken nuclear plant. It is not clear when, how, or if the water will be disposed of.

After the tsunami, all of Japan’s nuclear plants were shut down, and only a few have been restarted, often in the face of protests from local people. Just this week, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the country could not do without nuclear power in the long-term, but also this week, two of the plants that had restarted were forced to shut again.

The government has invested billions in reconstruction, but much more is needed. A volunteer fireman who lost 51 colleagues said: ‘Infrastructure is recovering, hearts are not.’ (see also my posts of 19 March 2011, 11 March 2013, 11 March 2014.)

After a disaster: return or move away?

After the Great Fire of London in 1666, there were plans to sweep away London's courts and alleys and replace them with something grander and neater, but many of them survived (and still do). A lot of Londoners wanted to rebuild the city much as it had been before the fire.

After the Tokyo earthquake of 1923, it was a similar story. Grand designs floundered because locals wanted to live in the same kind of homes in the same places as they had before. And when the Ugandan government tried to get people to settle away from an area devastated by floods in 1978, they too ran into opposition.

Now history seems to be re-repeating itself in Japan. After an earthquake and tsunami caused meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power station in 2011, some argued that the 80,000 people evacuated should be persuaded not to return, but to go and live somewhere else. 

And some have, but older people in particular seem to be keen to go back to the places they still think of as home. The town of Naraha is the first to be declared safe by the government.

Tsunamis and terrorism - two anniversaries

Today sees the third anniversary of the Japanese tsunami of 2011 which killed at least 15,880 people. More than 2,600 remain unaccounted for, while 267,000 are still living in temporary accommodation.

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake that triggered the tsunami caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and medical authorities in the region are reporting a big increase in thyroid cancer in children and young adults.

The number of suspected or confirmed cases among those under 18 at the time of the disaster has reached 75, compared with 59 at the end of September. There is disagreement over whether the increase is a result of the accident or just of more widespread screening.

Today also sees the 10^th anniversary of the Madrid train bombings of 2004. Ten explosions ripped through 4 commuter trains, killing 191 people, and injuring another 1,800. Seven of the alleged plotters blew themselves up in a flat surrounded by police three weeks later, though arguments continue about who was responsible for the attack.

* A sneak preview of my book Flood: Nature and Culture on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkC-V685Bms

Japan tsunami two years on

Ceremonies have been held to mark the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the north-east of Honshu, Japan’s main island, two years ago, in which more than 18,000 people were left dead or missing.

Emperor Akihito praised the stoicism of survivors, saying how little they complained, but more and more people are expressing frustration at the slow pace of reconstruction, as tens of thousands have not been able to return to their homes.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has made regular visits to the regions affected, pledged to try to speed things up , but a fierce debate continues over the future of nuclear power in Japan.

After the quake damaged the Fukushima nuclear power station, Japan’s 50 reactors were shut down, and only two have been re-opened.  Mr Abe would like to get them running again, but on Sunday, thousands of people marched in Tokyo demanding an end to nuclear power.

(See also my blogs of 14 and 22 March, 1 April, 2011, and 5 Feb, 2012.)

Fukushima - tell it like it is

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

Japan earthquake - nuclear fears

As reports come in of thousands of bodies being washed up on the north-eastern shore of Honshu – Japan’s main island – following the earthquake and tsunami, concern is now growing about the danger of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power station.

Two reactors have been damaged by explosions, and a third has its cooling system out of action. The government is saying there is no cause for alarm, but more than 20 people are being treated for the effects of radiation, and tens of thousands have been evacuated, while the US military has pulled its people back from the area.

The decision to build nuclear power stations in an area so prone to earthquakes was heavily criticised. Atomic energy and secrecy tend to go hand in hand, so everyone is hoping the Japanese authorities are being more open than the Soviet apparatchiks at Chernobyl in 1986, where a ‘safety experiment’ produced the world’s worst nuclear accident.

At first they tried to hush the whole thing up, and it was only when a Swedish monitoring station detected unusual levels of radiation that the Russians began to admit the truth. Twenty-five years after the explosion, people are still dying from its effects, and some estimates put the number of additional cancers that it will cause as high as 200,000.

* Yesterday I was interviewed about the earthquake on BBC Radio Berkshire. This is the link:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_tLViNtSlU