Japanese Science Ministry: 8
Percent of Country Contaminated by Radiation
Fukushima Power Plant
EMF Protection Devices
Magnetic Field Detector
By: David Dayen Tuesday November 29, 2011
We haven’t heard a lot about the Fukushima nuclear disaster
lately, but this
story reminds us how really bad it
was and remains:
Japan’s science ministry
says 8 per cent of the country’s surface area has been
contaminated by radiation from the crippled Fukushima
nuclear plant.
It says more than 30,000
square kilometres of the country has been blanketed by
radioactive caesium.
The ministry says most of
the contamination was caused by four large plumes of
radiation spewed out by the Fukushima nuclear plant in the
first two weeks after meltdowns.
The government says some
of the radioactive material fell with rain and snow, leaving
the affected areas with accumulations of more than 10,000
becquerels of caesium per square metre.
This doesn’t come from an
investigative report where you might have to assess the
reliability of the source. It comes from the Japanese
science ministry. If anything, we could expect that it lowballs the
actual level of radiation, if there were any political
meddling involved. So I’d argue that at least 8% of the
surface of Japan is contaminated.
Now, what does contaminated
mean? Does it mean unlivable? So far, it appears that this
extends mostly to agriculture. Tests from last week found
contamination above the maximum allowable level in recently
harvested rice in the Fukushima area. Other food like beef,
mushrooms and green tea have had radiation scares recently
as well. That is likely to be a lingering problem, which is
a crushing blow to the Japanese economy, requiring more
imports and a lower balance of trade. We saw with the mad
cow disease scare of previous years that just the appearance
of impropriety on this front is enough to collapse
agriculture exports.
But agriculture could be the
least of the nation’s worries. If the surface area becomes
uninhabitable, it adds massive relocation and cleanup costs
to an already crippling series of liabilities from the
Fukushima nightmare. The fear arising from the threat of
radiation – which can often be more outsized than the actual
problem – is enough to set a lot of these costs in motion.
In short, you have an unfolding catastrophe in Japan, one of
the world’s leading economies. I know that everyone is
looking to Europe as the main driver of economic malaise
these days, but even with the supply chains largely fixed,
the Japanese disaster has really had serious economic
impacts. And that’s to say nothing of the potential human
toll.
Yet all
over the world, including right here, governments continue
to backstop the creation of nuclear power plants, setting
the conditions for another disaster like Fukushima.
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