Large Fierce Mammal

Almost a year ago, the petroleum seeking arm of the voracious energy monster that is human society handed the planet its own bag of shit to hold, proving through months of ineffectual flummoxing that they were completely unprepared for the inevitable. The nuclear power industry has proven itself no different, but far more deadly. Much of what is unfolding now will never be put right.

“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 2.2

“Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.” ~ Francis Claud Cockburn

Yesterday, the clusterfuck at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor site was elevated to 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). For further elaboration on the INES, you should read the pamphlet on the subject published by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEC), and if you’re really voracious you may also wish to tackle the 218 page INES User’s Manual, 2008 Edition.

According to the IAEC website:

The primary purpose of the INES Scale is to facilitate communication and understanding between the technical community, the media and the public on the safety significance of events. The aim is to keep the public, as well as nuclear authorities, accurately informed on the occurrence and potential consequences of reported events.

It’s important to grasp something here – just because an incident has gotten so bad that it hits the top of the International Nuclear Event Scale does not mean it has gotten as bad as it can get.

Prior to yesterday’s upscaling of Fukushima, only the 1986 Chernobyl incident in the Ukraine had reached 7 on the INES. That time, an explosion resulted in exposure of overheated graphite moderator material to the air (for an explanation of what a moderator is, refer to my article Build Your Own Nuclear Reactor – Well, Not Really). Essentially behaving like coal, the graphite ignited and burned, spreading radioactive gases and particles over a large geographic area. Two cities and vast portions of the down wind countryside were evacuated, and more than 350,000 people left their homes for resettlement, never to return. The so called “cleanup” after Chernobyl is still ongoing, and much of the territory contaminated by it will never be inhabitable.

The media keep speaking of Fukushima and Chernobyl as comparable. They are not.

As terrible as it was, the Chernobyl incident involved fewer reactors, much less fissionable material (nuclear fuel), and it was located inland. Although it was next to a river feeding into one of the largest surface water systems in Europe, it was not adjacent to the largest ocean on the planet. Its design made it particularly vulnerable to the fire that facilitated such wide spread contamination, but also facilitated the measures that eventually damped it out. Compared with the situation in Fukushima, new supplies of radioactive effluent pouring out of Chernobyl were curtailed relatively quickly. The Fukushima reactor cores and spent fuel stored at the site continue to require cooling while means are explored to put an end to things once and for all, and as time ticks by, hour by hour, the atmosphere and ocean continue to receive a continuous resupply of toxic soup.

What information is being provided ranges between the rantings of wild eyed internet conspiracy theorists and calming words from nuclear industry and complicit government apologists. In the end, it shouldn’t matter to anyone how much radiation can be considered “safe”. Sure, we are all irradiated constantly by sources in the rocks beneath our feet, the stones in our basement, the mountains we live near. There are innumerable natural sources of radiation, but when someone adds another source to that mix and then tries to tell me I’m still not getting an “unsafe” dose, I can’t help but cry BULLSHIT! The fact is, I didn’t have it before, and I don’t want it now. And let’s not forget that in Japan, what is considered a safe dose of radiation has been upped several times since 11 March 2011 so that government announcements of safe levels could be rendered true. Ah, the truth, t’is a fluid thing.

Sadly for all of us, Fukushima is out of control and nobody knows when or how it will be contained. In the mean time, radioactive particulates have crossed North America and continue to do so, passing over prime food producing areas along the way. Some of that, to varying degrees, will end up in rain water. From there, it will be in the food supply. Contaminated seawater is being pumped into the Pacific as I write this, and nobody knows how or when it will be possible to stop the flow.

The G20 countries control the wealth of what presently passes for civilization on Earth, and it is not in their best interests to bite the hand of the major businesses that feed their economic power. Energy drives the money machine, and nuclear energy, when it works, can be relied upon to be extremely cost effective and therefore maximize profits. Fukushima has proven that no government that is truly responsible to the people who elected it can advocate a national energy policy of its own, nor can it condone one from any other country, that does not condemn nuclear power as a viable source of energy, and work instead to map a course for energy self-sufficiency and, most importantly efficiency on an individual, household, and community level.

The trend in the world has been toward engendering dependency on government and big business for decades, and encouraging any level of self-sufficiency in the population will no doubt be a hard pill to swallow, if it gets swallowed at all. That may not matter though, because it may already be too late.