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“Nearly seven years after the triple reactor meltdowns, this unique nuclear crisis is still underway,” Greenpeace International’s Shaun Burnie wrote in a blogpost last December. The word “unique” is an understatement but true. The March 11, 2011meltdowns are the world’s first combined earthquake-tsunami-reactor catastrophe. Moreover, while other power reactors have run out-of-control, melted down and contaminated large areas, never before have three simultaneously suffered mass earthquake damage, station black-outs, loss-of-coolant and complete meltdowns.

The consequences of its meltdowns-cubed are uniquely over three times deeper, broader and more expensive than anyone was prepared to handle. In the days following the initial quake, tsunami(s), and explosions, the head of the emergency response said, “There is no manual for this disaster.” Managers have had to invent, design, develop and implement the recovery whole cloth. Evacuation was so haphazard that on August 9, 2011, one local mayor accused the government of murder.

The crisis is ongoing in many ways: radioactively contaminated water is still pouring into the Pacific Ocean (permanently contaminating and altering sea life which bio-accumulates and bio-concentrates the radioactivity); radioactive gases and perhaps even “hot particles” are still wafting out of destroyed reactor structures and waste fuel pools; the constant threat of earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan puts millions of gallons of radioactive waste water now stored near the shore in tanks at risk of spilling; and the dangerous work of collecting radioactive soils, leaves and tree trimmings from farmlands, school yards, parks and gardens continuously adds to vast collections of 1-ton radioactive waste bags.

The government estimates that 30 million cubic meters of this collected rad waste — a nearly unimaginable 29 million tons — will eventually require burial, incineration or re-use in road-building. The disaster is ongoing because the dangerous radiation exposures endured by the workers in these disaster response jobs is cumulative and irreversible — and the work will continue for 3 centuries or so.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Belgium Begins Free Distribution Of Iodine Pills “In Case Of Nuclear Disaster”

March 7, 2018

Belgium Begins Free Distribution Of Iodine Pills “In Case Of Nuclear Disaster”

As part of the government’s new nuclear safety policy, as of today, every Belgian citizen can come to a pharmacy and get free iodine pills.

Belgium has two nuclear plants, Tihange and Doel, with a total number of seven reactors, and is one of the world’s most nuclear-reliant nations…

In 2017 alone, there were seven incidents at the facilities.

Free distribution of iodine tablets has started in Belgium as a precautionary measure in the event of a nuclear catastrophe, the Belgian Pharmaceutical Association told Sputnik on Tuesday. Before March 6, only those living within 20 kilometers (12 miles) from nuclear sites were entitled to receive the medication free of charge.

As SputnikNews reports, Belgium’s neighbors, Germany and the Netherlands, are concerned over the safety of the kingdom’s ageing nuclear reactors.

In 2016, Germany requested Belgium to shut down its two reactors because of defects found in their pressure vessels, but the kingdom refused. In September 2017, citizens of Aachen, a western German city located 70 kilometers (43 miles) away from the Belgian Tihange, started getting free iodine tablets.

In 2016, the Netherlands started distributing the pills to people who lived within a 100-kilometre (62-mile) radius of the neighboring Dutch Borsselle and Belgian Doel plants.

So how would a population react to their government offering iodine pills – just in case… Fear, of course!

Scared people are not rational, they’ll buy virtually anything that promises to alleviate their fear. Every totalitarian, every proponent of curtailing freedom, knows this. It’s the equivalent of the smoking hot babe: fear sells government.

“Not reassuring”

Justin Stares@JustinStares

Free iodine tablets distributed as of today across Belgium in case of disaster at one of country’s ageing nuclear power plants. Not reassuring. https://www.hln.be/nieuws/binnenland/vanaf-vandaag-gratis-jodiumpil-voor-elke-belg~a3cee5fb/ …

4:30 AM – Mar 6, 2018

Vanaf vandaag: gratis jodiumpil voor elke Belg

De apotheken zullen vanaf vandaag gratis jodiumpillen verstrekken aan iedereen die erom vraagt. Dat meldt VTM Nieuws en wordt bevestigd door het kabinet van Binnenlandse Zaken.

Japan Erects Huge New Roof Above Crippled Fukushima Reactor

February 23, 2018

Japan Erects Huge New Roof Above Crippled Fukushima Reactor

In what the Japanese press heralds as an important step to safely removing all the radioactive material left inside the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant’s ruined reactors, the Japanese utility in charge of cleaning up the site has finished installing a roof over reactor No. 3.

The work started last August to set up a dome-shaped cover. It is part of preparations for removing nuclear fuel from the reactor’s storage pool. A total of 566 spent and unused fuel units remain in the storage pool of the No. 3 reactor.

On Wednesday, workers installed the last part of the cover, which is 17 meters high and 22 meters wide, and weighs 55 tons.

Tepco, which ran the plant and also criminally lied and obscured the full extent of the radioactive leakage caused by the disaster, is scrambling to accomplish as much as possible ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Cleanup of the power plant’s crippled reactors – which experienced meltdowns when a tsunami thrashed the Japanese coast back in 2011 – is expected to take decades.

More recently, Tepco has been criticized for draining what it described as “harmless” radioactive material into the water near the plant – sparking outraged local fishermen to fight back.

Last year, the Japanese government started cutting benefits for people who were forced to flee their homes and possessions because of the disaster. This has forced some people to move back to the exclusion zone for the first time since the initial evacuation. Photos of the area depict a nightmarish ghost town overrun by radioactive wild boars.

it is unclear what the true radiation level is in the zone, as none of the government’s data are reliable or credible.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Radioactive Plume That’s Clouded in Secrecy

November 24, 2017

A Radioactive Plume That’s Clouded in Secrecy

September 29 marked the 60th anniversary of the world’s third most deadly— and least known — nuclear accident. It took place at the Mayak plutonium production facility, in a closed Soviet city in the Urals. The huge explosion was kept secret for decades. It spread hot particles over an area of more than 20,000 square miles, exposing a population of at least 270,000 and indefinitely contaminating land and rivers. Entire villages had to be bulldozed. Residents there have lived for decades with high rates of radiologically induced illnesses and birth defects.

Now, evidence is emerging of a potentially new nuclear accident and indications point once again to Mayak as one of the likely culprits. Ironically, if there was indeed an accident there, it happened on or around the precise anniversary of the 1957 disaster. The Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad in the region is another possible suspect.

The presence of the man-made radioactive isotope, ruthenium 106, was detected in the atmosphere in early October by a French nuclear safety institute and by a Danish monitoring station, but only recently confirmed by Russia’s meteorological agency. However, the Russian authorities continue to deny that the releases came from one of their nuclear facilities and the source of the release is yet to be identified.

And the release of ruthenium 106 is a massive one, indicating a major accident, not a minor leak. The French radiological institute for nuclear safety IRSN) calculated the release at 300 Terrabequerels. To put this in perspective, it is an amount equivalent to 375,000 times the annual release of ruthenium 106 authorized for a French nuclear power plant.

IRSN has consistently downplayed the potential harm of the plume’s fallout across Europe, a position all too eerily familiar to the French, who were falsely told at the time of the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine that the radioactive plume would not cross into France.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fukushima Darkness

November 22, 2017

Fukushima Darkness

Photo by thierry ehrmann | CC BY 2.0

The radiation effects of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant triple meltdowns are felt worldwide, whether lodged in sea life or in humans, it cumulates over time. The impact is now slowly grinding away only to show its true colors at some unpredictable date in the future. That’s how radiation works, slow but assuredly destructive, which serves to identify its risks, meaning, one nuke meltdown has the impact, over decades, of 1,000 regular industrial accidents, maybe more.

It’s been six years since the triple 100% nuke meltdowns occurred at Fukushima Daiichi d/d March 11th, 2011, nowadays referred to as “311”. Over time, it’s easy for the world at large to lose track of the serious implications of the world’s largest-ever industrial disaster; out of sight out of mind works that way.

According to Japanese government and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) estimates, decommissioning is a decade-by-decade work-in-progress, most likely four decades at a cost of up to ¥21 trillion ($189B). However, that’s the simple part to understanding the Fukushima nuclear disaster story. The difficult painful part is largely hidden from pubic view via a highly restrictive harsh national secrecy law (Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, Act No. 108/2013), political pressure galore, and fear of exposing the truth about the inherent dangers of nuclear reactor meltdowns. Powerful vested interests want it concealed.

Following passage of the 2013 government secrecy act, which says that civil servants or others who “leak secrets” will face up to 10 years in prison, and those who “instigate leaks,” especially journalists, will be subject to a prison term of up to 5 years, Japan fell below Serbia and Botswana in the Reporters Without Borders 2014 World Press Freedom Index. The secrecy act, sharply criticized by the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations, is a shameless act of buttoned-up totalitarianism at the very moment when citizens need and in fact require transparency.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chinese Scientists Warn North Korea’s Nuke Test Site At Risk Of Imploding, “Releasing Many Bad Things”

September 6, 2017

Chinese Scientists Warn North Korea’s Nuke Test Site At Risk Of Imploding, “Releasing Many Bad Things”

Earlier we showed the shocking satellite images showing numerous landslides aound the mountain that is North Korea’s nuclear test site, and it appears Chinese officials are also keeping a very close eye on the region, instigating “emergency monitoring” for radiation leaks as the former chairman of the China Nuclear Society warns of the potential for a massive environmental disaster.

As SHTFplan.com’s Mac Slavo notes, we already know that North Korea has the capability of not only firing Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles that could strike major U.S. cities, but that they have the nuclear technology to make any such attack absolutely devastating.

Weapons of Mass Destruction, electro-magnetic pulse weapons and World War III aside, however, the South China Morning Post reports that another danger lurks just below the mountain where North Korea has been testing their nuclear devices.

A total of at least six nuclear device tests have reportedly taken place in North Korea and Chinese seismologists have been able to pinpoint their locations to within 100 meters.

nk-testsite1

(January 2016 Blast Site – via The Daily Signal)

nk-testsite2

(The September 2017 blast took place in the same location – Via Norsar)

It turns out that all of the tests occurred under the same mountain and scientists are now warning that it could implode, leaving a massive hole that would leak deadly radiation across the entire region, including China:

Wang Naiyan, the former chairman of the China Nuclear Society and senior researcher on China’s nuclear weapons programme, said that if Wen’s findings were reliable, there was a risk of a major environmental disaster.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TEPCO Admits Fukushima Radiation Levels Reach Record Highs As Hole In Reactor Discovered

February 4, 2017

TEPCO Admits Fukushima Radiation Levels Reach Record Highs As Hole In Reactor Discovered

With just 3 years left until the 2020 Olympics, Japan is likely desperate to reassure the world’s athletes that all is well, but an admission from TEPCO – the Fukushima nuclear plant operator – that they discovered a hole at least one square meter in size beneath the reactor’s pressure vessel, and lethal record-high radiation levels have been detected, will not likely reassure anyone.

Radiation levels of up to 530 Sieverts per hour were detected inside an inactive Reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex damaged during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami catastrophe, Japanese media reported on Thursday citing the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). A dose of about 8 Sieverts is considered incurable and fatal.

As RT reports, a hole of no less than one square meter in size has also been discovered beneath the reactor’s pressure vessel, TEPCO said. According to researchers, the apparent opening in the metal grating of one of three reactors that had melted down in 2011, is believed to be have been caused by melted nuclear fuel that fell through the vessel.

The iron scaffolding has a melting point of 1500 degrees, TEPCO said, explaining that there is a possibility the fuel debris has fallen onto it and burnt the hole. Such fuel debris have been discovered on equipment at the bottom of the pressure vessel just above the hole, it added.

The latest findings were released after a recent camera probe inside the reactor, TEPCO said. Using a remote-controlled camera fitted on a long pipe, scientists managed to get images of hard-to-reach places where residual nuclear material remained. The substance there is so toxic that even specially-made robots designed to probe the underwater depths beneath the power plant have previously crumbled and shut down.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Fukushima, A Bitter Legacy Of Radiation, Trauma and Fear

September 24, 2016

In Fukushima, A Bitter Legacy Of Radiation, Trauma and Fear

Five years after the nuclear power plant meltdown, a journey through the Fukushima evacuation zone reveals some high levels of radiation and an overriding sense of fear. For many, the psychological damage is far more profound than the health effects.

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

A radiation monitoring station alongside a road in Namie, Japan.

Japan’s Highway 114 may not be the most famous road in the world. It doesn’t have the cachet of Route 66 or the Pan-American Highway. But it does have one claim to fame. It passes through what for the past five years has been one of the most radioactive landscapes on the planet – heading southeast from the Japanese city of Fukushima to the stricken nuclear power plant, Fukushima Daiichi, through the forested mountains where much of the fallout from the meltdown at the plant in March 2011 fell to earth.

It is a largely empty highway now, winding through abandoned villages and past overgrown rice paddy fields. For two days in August, I traveled its length to assess the aftermath of the nuclear disaster in the company of Baba Isao, an assemblyman who represents the town of Namie, located just three miles from the power plant and one of four major towns that remain evacuated.

At times, the radiation levels seemed scarily high – still too high for permanent occupation. But radiation was just the start.

As we climbed into the mountains, the radiation measurements on the Geiger counter increased.

More worrying, I discovered, was the psychological and political fallout from the accident. While the radiation – most of it now from caesium-137, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 30 years – is decaying, dispersing, or being cleaned up, it is far from clear that this wider trauma has yet peaked. Fukushima is going to be in rehab for decades.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“This Is Catastrophic” – Thousands Of Gallons Of Radioactive Waste Leak At Nuclear Site

April 19, 2016

“This Is Catastrophic” – Thousands Of Gallons Of Radioactive Waste Leak At Nuclear Site

The ongoing radioactive leak problems at the Hanford Site, a nuclear storage tank in Washington State, are nothing new.

We first wrote about the ongoing radioative leakage at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, in 2013.

As a reminder, during the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Alas, the site has been leaking ever since, as many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate and Hanford’s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the neighboring Columbia River.

Hanford’s weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons of high-level radioactive waste, an additional 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste, 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater beneath the site and occasional discoveries of undocumented contaminations.

The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup. The government spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup — one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The cleanup is expected to last decades.

However, as Krugman would say, the government was not spending nearly enough, and after a major documented leak in 2013, over the weekend, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste are estimated to have leaked from the Site once again, triggering an alarm and causing one former worker to label it as “catastrophic.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fukushima Five Years After: Health Researchers Turn Blind Eye to Casualties

April 12, 2016

Fukushima Five Years After: Health Researchers Turn Blind Eye to Casualties

shutterstock_300628928 (2)

Last month made five years since the nuclear plant at Fukushima, Japan suffered meltdowns. The release of highly toxic radiation from the reactors was enormous, on the level of the Chernobyl disaster a generation earlier. But Fukushima is arguably worse than Chernobyl. There were four reactors that melted down, vs. just one at Chernobyl. And the Chernobyl reactor was buried in a matter of weeks, while Fukushima is still not controlled, and radioactive contaminants continue to leak into the Pacific. In time, this may prove to be the worst environmental catastrophe ever.

Japan, which had 54 reactors in operation, closed them all to improve safety features. But the nation’s people, who had suffered from the two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are adamantly against nuclear power. As a result, despite strong efforts of government and industry, only three (3) reactors have been brought back on line.

While the people struggle against leaders to determine the nuclear future of Japan, many questions remain. The most crucial question is, without doubt, how many casualties occurred from the 2011 disaster?

Public health leaders have addressed the topic with ignorance and deception. A search of the medical literature shows only two studies in Japan that review actual changes in disease and death rates. One showed that 127 Fukushima-area children have developed thyroid cancer since the meltdown; a typical number of cases for a similar sized population of children would be about 5-10. The other study showed a number of ectopic intrathyroidal problems in local children – a disorder that is extremely rare. No other studies looking at changes in infant deaths, premature births, child cancers, or other radiation-sensitive diseases are available.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pro-Nuclear Environmentalists and the Chernobyl Death Toll

April 11, 2016

Pro-Nuclear Environmentalists and the Chernobyl Death Toll

shutterstock_334258334

With few if any exceptions, self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalists peddle misinformation regarding the Chernobyl death toll.

Before considering their misinformation, a brief summary of credible positions and scientific studies regarding the Chernobyl cancer death toll (for detail see here).

Epidemiological public health studies are of course important but they’re not much use in estimating the overall Chernobyl death toll. The effects of Chernobyl, however large or small, are largely lost in the statistical noise of widespread cancer incidence and mortality (see here for the most recent scientific review of the epidemiological studies).

Estimates of collective radiation exposure are available ‒ for example the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates a total collective dose of 600,000 person-Sieverts over 50 years from Chernobyl fallout. And the collective radiation dose can be used to estimate the death toll using the Linear No Threshold (LNT) modelwhich holds that the risks are proportional to dose. LNT enjoys heavy-hitting scientific support ‒ for example the 2006 report of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation states that “the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and … the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.” Likewise, a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states: “Given that it is supported by experimentally grounded, quantifiable, biophysical arguments, a linear extrapolation of cancer risks from intermediate to very low doses currently appears to be the most appropriate methodology.”

If we use the IAEA’s collective radiation dose estimate, and a risk estimate derived from LNT (0.1 cancer deaths per person-Sievert), we get an estimate of 60,000 cancer deaths.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Start of a New World War

March 23, 2016

Start of a New World War

Propaganda about Russian and Chinese “aggression” has cloaked the reality of the U.S. and the West moving aggressively to encircle both countries, the start of a new world war, says John Pilger.

I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini,” they say, “You mean the swimsuit.”

Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 — the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years.

President Barack Obama uncomfortably accepting the Nobel Peace Prize from Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009. (White House photo)

Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated. Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered “unsafe” on a Geiger counter.

Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called “Bravo.” The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of miles, perhaps forever.

On my return journey, I stopped at Honolulu airport and noticed an American magazine called Women’s Health. On the cover was a smiling woman in a bikini swimsuit, and the headline: “You, too, can have a bikini body.” A few days earlier, in the Marshall Islands, I had interviewed women who had very different “bikini bodies”; each had suffered thyroid cancer and other life-threatening cancers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Over 3,000 tons of unregistered radioactive waste stored in Japan – report

March 14, 2016

Over 3,000 tons of unregistered radioactive waste stored in Japan – report

At least 3,100 tons of toxic waste lacking proper registration is being stored in Japan, local media report. Heaps of radioactive waste have been produced in the cleanup of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, but local officials are reluctant to report it.

Tons of contaminated soil as well as other radioactive garbage are being stored at temporary depots across the country, Japanese NHK TV-Channel reports.

The level of radiation at the storage sites is higher than 8,000 Becquerels per kilogram, while the norm is 10 Becquerels per kilogram.

NHK gathered the data by questioning local administrations of the Ibaraki, Iwate, Miyagi, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo and Fukushima prefectures. The largest quantity of nuclear waste is said to be stored in the city of Kurihara in the Miyagi prefecture.

According to Japanese law, local authorities must report to the government about the nuclear materials stored in their prefectures.

They have not done so for five years, however, for the fear of negative publicity. Should the toxic waste be officially registered, local authorities will be told to build permanent storage facilities, which they fear may affect the attractiveness of their regions to investors.

The meltdown of the reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant was triggered by a disastrous earthquake followed by a huge tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011. It was biggest nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl tragedy and forced 160,000 people to flee their homes.

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RT ✔‎@RT_com

Bad news for bots: #Fukushima cleanup robots overpowered by radiation (VIDEOS) http://on.rt.com/76re pic.twitter.com/qlPZqNinbx

8:10 PM – 12 Mar 2016

The number of victims suffering from radiation poisoning is hard to count. The 2011 disaster itself left more than 18,000 people dead, but this figure does not count people who died because of the leakage of radiation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Happens to Nuclear Power Plants Following an EMP?

March 11, 2016

What Happens to Nuclear Power Plants Following an EMP?

ReadyNutrition guys and gals, we have covered some bases on the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) and how to prepare the home and supplies against it. One of the major problems with the EMP is not just what will not work regarding unshielded equipment, but what will happen when certain things do not run anymore. What I’m referring to the real danger of nuclear power plants throughout the United States. Not only will there be a shortage of power, but there will be a larger problem: radiation.

A large percentage of electricity goes into maintaining and cooling the spent fuel rods in a nuclear power plant installation. A prime example is a Nuclear Facility that may have one working (running) reactor and two that are shut down with spent fuel rods. This is not uncommon to find. Now, follow the reasoning: when the primary power shuts down and the backup is rendered inoperable, how is coolant water to be pumped to cool the spent fuel rods?

We saw what happened with Fukushima, and most of us remember the horror story that almost emerged with Three Mile Island nuclear power facility in Harrisburg, PA. The reason this is being mentioned here is that these things need to be taken into account with regard to your preparations. What good is it to make it through the initial nuclear attack when the attack renders your nearest nuclear power facility a ticking time bomb regarding spent fuel rods?

I strongly recommend reading Cresson Kearney’s materials (downloadable for free) on Nuclear War Survival. You will learn about doses and dosimeters, rads and fallout. You will receive the plans on how to construct your own Kearney Fallout Meter from household materials. The series contains a wealth of information that you can burn off…information that may save your life.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Former-PM Admits “Future Existence Of Japan Was At Stake” As Mutations Appear In Fukushima Forest

March 6, 2016

Former-PM Admits “Future Existence Of Japan Was At Stake” As Mutations Appear In Fukushima Forest

“The future existence of Japan as a whole was at stake,” admits Japan’s prime minister at the time of the 2011 quake and tsunami, revealing that the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of a nuclear disaster requiring the evacuation of 50 million people. Naoto Kan expressed satisfaction at the three TEPCO executives facing charges over negligence, but this shocking admission comes as AFP reports, conservation group Greenpeace warned that “signs of mutations in trees and DNA-damaged worms beginning to appear,” while “vast stocks of radiation” mean that forests cannot be decontaminated.

In an interview with The Telegraph to mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, Naoto Kan described the panic and disarray at the highest levels of the Japanese government as it fought to control multiple meltdowns at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

He said he considered evacuating the capital, Tokyo, along with all other areas within 160 miles of the plant, and declaring martial law. “The future existence of Japan as a whole was at stake,” he said. “Something on that scale, an evacuation of 50 million, it would have been like a losing a huge war.”

Mr Kan admitted he was frightened and said he got “no clear information” out of Tepco, the plant’s operator. He was “very shocked” by the performance of Nobuaki Terasaka, his own government’s key nuclear safety adviser. “We questioned him and he was unable to give clear responses,” he said.

“We asked him – do you know anything about nuclear issues? And he said no, I majored in economics.”

“When we got the report that power had been cut and the coolant had stopped working, that sent a shiver down my spine,” Mr Kan said. “From March 11, when the incident happened, until the 15th, the effects [of radioactive contamination] were expanding geographically.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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