03-16-2011, 03:44 PM
All this about Japan's nuclear power plants has brought back a disturbing memory from 13 years ago. In the summer of 1997, I lived in Mito, Japan for a month. Mito is a coastal city north of Tokyo that was hit hard by the quake, not by the tsunami. Very few Westerners live there, so it was a real immersion to live there.
At the end of July every year, there is a huge fireworks display throughout Japan. We were watching this from afar, and someone said to us -- the real fireworks waiting to happen is in this nuclear plant 25 miles from here ... there's some **** going on there that could keep a person from sleeping at night. We didn't have any idea we were near a nuclear plant.
That was the Tokai nuclear plant. Two years later, it did indeed have a major accident. You probably never heard of it. There had been a disregard of safety procedures.
http://www.n-base.org.uk/public/report_l...ident.html
It turns out there was a prelude in the form of an event that had happened only two weeks before I got there (but my husband was there). We never heard anything about it at the time. It was covered up.
That plant was shut down, decommissioned.
Fukushima is about 100 miles north of where I lived. I found a blog entry yesterday from two Americans in Mito. They think everything at Fukushima is being well handled and they are in no danger.
Point being, the Japanese government has been in the business of keeping the lid on nuclear mishaps for years, and I really have no trust in their reports. Also, it is so important to save face in Japan. That does not lend itself to officials admitting when they are out of their depth.
Anyhow, you can read about the prior incident if you google Tokai nuclear accident.
I'm just saying, it's not like their industry was in perfect shape and the earthquake plus tsunami just happened to create a situation. More likely they were already doing things in a sloppy fashion, that were not very safe, and now all those acts of slop are going to have consequences.
I too am full of admiration for the brave workers who are going to die trying to fix this.
At the end of July every year, there is a huge fireworks display throughout Japan. We were watching this from afar, and someone said to us -- the real fireworks waiting to happen is in this nuclear plant 25 miles from here ... there's some **** going on there that could keep a person from sleeping at night. We didn't have any idea we were near a nuclear plant.
That was the Tokai nuclear plant. Two years later, it did indeed have a major accident. You probably never heard of it. There had been a disregard of safety procedures.
http://www.n-base.org.uk/public/report_l...ident.html
It turns out there was a prelude in the form of an event that had happened only two weeks before I got there (but my husband was there). We never heard anything about it at the time. It was covered up.
That plant was shut down, decommissioned.
Fukushima is about 100 miles north of where I lived. I found a blog entry yesterday from two Americans in Mito. They think everything at Fukushima is being well handled and they are in no danger.
Point being, the Japanese government has been in the business of keeping the lid on nuclear mishaps for years, and I really have no trust in their reports. Also, it is so important to save face in Japan. That does not lend itself to officials admitting when they are out of their depth.
Anyhow, you can read about the prior incident if you google Tokai nuclear accident.
I'm just saying, it's not like their industry was in perfect shape and the earthquake plus tsunami just happened to create a situation. More likely they were already doing things in a sloppy fashion, that were not very safe, and now all those acts of slop are going to have consequences.
I too am full of admiration for the brave workers who are going to die trying to fix this.