Fukushima Radiation: Some Difficult Truths

international | environment | other press Tuesday March 29, 2011 18:24 by Ritt Goldstein

The ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis has raised numerous concerns, the candor of pronouncements regarding the reality of circumstances being one of them. As many wonder what the future will hold, the events reported in this article suggest some possible conclusions, the facts being less than reassuring.

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As radiation counts elevate in Japan, news of nuclear contamination spreading across a widening spectrum of life and its necessities, official pronouncements continue to play down events’ gravity. While some have questioned whether this is being pursued to promote calm, or perhaps the nuclear industry, the result has left many either skeptical of official claims or simply reassured by them. It seems time for some difficult facts.

Reports of false ‘nuclear rain’ warnings have made it to the news; but, just recently, so did valid rain warnings from local Japanese officials. And during the Chernobyl accident radioactive rain did occur, particularly striking some areas in Sweden. It’s been estimated that “five percent of the released caesium-137 from the Chernobyl accident was deposited in Sweden due to heavy rainfall on 28-29 April 1986”.

Since Chernobyl, assorted scientific studies have demonstrated what one such effort termed the “serious impact of the Chernobyl accident on the environmental conditions in Sweden.” To this day, in some areas of the country Chernobyl’s legacy does remain a concern. And Sweden is a long way from Chernobyl.

While numerous proponents of nuclear power pursue what seems an exercise in surrealism, continuing to yet extoll ‘the benefits’ of ‘clean and safe’ nuclear energy, perhaps we should consider why so many trust that ‘the unthinkable' can never occur...at least until it does.