TEPCO & Japanese Government Stupid Over Fukushima

What Are They Doing?

And Why Are The So-Called 'Fukushima 50' Being Celebrated?

The Center is calling for the immediate entombing of the Fukushima Daiichi site.  We have called for a sarcophagusing of the site since the hydrogen explosion at the first reactor building.  What is Tepco trying to do by exposing workers to high levels of radiation?  To what end?  Are they trying to somehow salvage an unsalvagable site?  We find it disgusting that workers are being needlessly exposed to deadly levels of radiation for no good reason.  The western press is even trying to portray the workers as noble kamikazes. 

There is nothing noble about it.  Just as the kamikaze pilots were stupid for making such a needless sacrifice.  Fukushima is NOT Three Mile Island, which still operates to this day.  It is a dead site that will have a 12-mile dead zone around it forever.

Sarcophagus.  Now. 

The Chernobyl disaster resulted from a badly executed test, rather than a tsunami, which led to the explosion at Chernobyl. Open to the air, a graphite fire burned for 10 days, spewing huge amounts of radioactive material; at Fukushima, with a different type of reactor, graphite is not used as a moderator so such a graphite fire could not happen. However, radiation has gotten airborne from the Daiichi reactors and Tepco will dump thousands of tons of highly radioactive water into the ocean.  Damn.  But what else would you expect after spraying thousands of tons of water onto the site to try to cool it down?  Sometimes when engineers and scientists make these types of decisions in the service of big business and big government, it makes us wonder.  Amateurs just might do a better job.  If Tepco and the Japanese government do not know what to do, then put the Center in charge.  We will have a sufficient sarcophagus in place within a month, or sooner.

The Japanese government should enlist assistance from other nations to dump boron, sand, cement, concrete, steel, dirt, rubble and every other material needed to permanently seal that site.  This should be a military operation headed by the Japanese government that works around the clock to cover the site.  We will assume that a sarcophagus about 500 feet high should be sufficient to shield the site.  The U.S. EPA has detected radiation in the United States from that site.  Americans on the West Coast are taking iodine pills.  Maybe it is time for President Obama to insist that the Japanese should seal that site  because it is posing a threat to Americans.

The response to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster is making us angrier every day.  And until they install a sarcophagus, we will remain angry. We understand this aspect of Japanese culture that blindly adheres to big business and big government methodology -- for it is what has made their society great.  But at moments such as this, someone must step forward and hit the big boys over the head with a two-by-four.  Sarcophagus.  Now.  (Wash Post, 4/3/2011)