Three years ago the massive tsunami generated by a huge earthquake struck northern Japan, killing more than 15,000 people. The tsunami wave measured more than 100 feet in height, wiping out both the electrical power and the back-up generators at the seaside nuclear power plant (many nuclear power plants, including all the plants in California, operate by the sea to use seawater for cooling). This led to the melt-down of the nuclear fuel as the plant’s cooling equipment had no power, leading to the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Some 300,000 people had to be evacuated because of the radioactive contamination. 1500 of them died because of hardships and lack of medical treatment. Radioactive cooling water has been leaking from the power plant’s storage tanks, going into the ground water and then the Pacific Ocean.

Although most Japanese support the continued shutdown of Japan’s 50-plus nuclear power plants, the right-wing government of Shinzo Abe supports nuclear power. So far two nuclear power plants have been reopened in Japan.

Despite the growth of worldwide opposition to nuclear power after the disaster, the Obama administration is also continuing support nuclear power. Two new nuclear power plants are now under construction, the first since the U.S. Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. Two more are approved, and there are more than 25 applications by the utility industry to build more nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power only exists because the government provides insurance against a disaster and it has proven to be an expensive form of energy. In addition, there is no safe way to store the radioactive waste from nuclear fission power reactors, which can last hundreds of thousands of years.

However, with government backing, nuclear power can be very profitable, especially for the giant corporations such as General Electric, which designed the nuclear power plants at Fukushima. More than one-third of the 100 nuclear power plants in the U.S. have the same design (‘boiling water reactor’) as the Fukushima Daiichi and twelve are in seismically active areas prone to earthquakes, including both of California’s plants at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre.

While the tsunami was a natural disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was manmade. People in the U.S. need to continue to push for the complete shutdown of nuclear power and an end to export of this expensive and dangerous energy to other countries.

#SanJoséCA #EnvironmentalJustice #nuclearEnergy #FukushimaDaiichiNuclearPlant

The nuclear disaster taking place in Japan comes on top of the natural disaster of the 9.0 earthquake and 12 meter (38 foot) tsunami that traveled as much as 6 miles inland in places, washing away roads, buildings and vehicles. An estimated 10,000 people have lost their lives. The tsunami caused a complete power failure at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, which has 6 nuclear reactors.

The earthquake and tsunami were natural disasters. It could take several years to clean up the debris, rebuild housing and clean salt from the rice paddies and soybean fields in the area impacted by this disaster.

The nuclear disaster currently unfolding is a man-made disaster that could have been prevented. Talking heads for the nuclear industry appear on TV and imply that the nuclear meltdown is akin to aliens landing on planet earth, something that could not have been planned for. This is simply not the case. In 1923 Japan experienced an 8.3 earthquake that generated a 30 to 40 foot tsunami, yet the Fukushima plant was not built to withstand the effects of a similar earthquake and tsunami.

Listening carefully to the nuclear industry’s experts the reason is clear. As happens daily under capitalism, profits are put before people. Making nuclear plants designed to withstand a worst case scenario and protecting the surrounding population is deemed too costly by the profit driven system.

This profit driven decision making is rubber stamped by regulators that are closely tied with the industry they are supposed to regulate. Steff Yorek, a spokesperson for Freedom Road Socialist Organization said, “Allowing the nuclear industry to regulate itself is like letting the kids set the rules for the candy store. The same process that led to the BP oil spill a year ago is the cause of the disaster at Fukushima. We cannot allow the health of people and the safety of the environment to be discarded in favor of maximum profit for a handful of wealthy people.”

She added, “The natural disaster by itself would have been difficult enough to cope with, but in five years or so life could have returned to normal. Even in the best case scenario, the working people of Japan will now face radioactive seafood and soil and contaminated ground water for the next 300 years. Capitalism has doomed another Japanese generation to cancer and birth defects. The only question now is in how large of an area will be impacted and how high the dosage of radiation will go.”

#Japan #NuclearCrisis #EnvironmentalJustice #nuclearEnergy #FukushimaDaiichiNuclearPlant

The plant was designed by the U.S. based corporation, General Electric, which also supplied equipment for the complex. The plant design has faced criticism from scientists over the potential for cooling system leaks. General Electric has also played a major role in the production of nuclear weapons.

Over the last two years, there has been a wide scale effort to revive the nuclear power industry in the United States. No new nuclear power plants have been commissioned here since the disaster at Pennsylvanian’s Three Mile Island Nuclear power plant in 1979. Those disasters strengthened an already existing mass movement against nuclear power, effectively putting the industry on the ropes.

The events in Japan call into questions plans by U.S. energy corporations to build new nuclear power plants.

Commenting on the situation, Steff Yorek, a spokesperson for Freedom Road Socialist Organization stated, “We are in solidarity with the people of Japan and our heart goes out to the huge numbers of working people whose lives, already endangered by natural disaster, have been put at additional risk by this man-made disaster.”

She continued, “The capitalists who run the developed countries cannot be trusted with something as dangerous as nuclear power. They will always put profits over safety. Nuclear power is an inherently unsafe way to produce electricity. We need to move to safe, and environmentally sound ways of addressing energy needs.”

#Japan #NuclearCrisis #EnvironmentalJustice #nuclearEnergy #GeneralElectric #ThreeMileIsland #FukushimaDaiichiNuclearPlant