The Fukushima Anniversary.

         It is five years since Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, and still the horror is there. As the man said, nuclear is forever. What do you do with all that radioactive material you have taken from the disaster area? This is a disaster that we will hand to our children and our grandchildren.

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Spaceship Earth Has No Escape Capsule.

         April 26 1986, marks the 28th. anniversary of what was probably the world's worst man made disasters, to date, namely Chernobyl, we are still measuring Fukushima. Though that babbling brook of bullshit the mainstream media, has long since dropped it as a subject worth reporting, the disaster lingers on. Neighbouring towns and cities within a 30km exclusion zone were abandoned, and residents have still not been allowed to return. Within 36 hours approximately 50,000 residents were evacuated. Most scientist agree that it will not be safe to inhabit for thousands of years. Radiation from the explosion contaminated soil, water and solid matter, across large swaths of Europe and Western USSR. Deaths from cancers etc. are put in the 100's of thousands and we are still counting.

      Although the disaster was at Chernobyl, the workers lived in a nearby town specially built for them called Pripyat. A once new town with grand buildings, schools and shops, it is now an eerie ghost town hardly recognisable as nature slowly takes over. The town's concrete square is now broken with trees and shrubs pushing up and slowly turning it to rubble. Once fine buildings stand with trees and other vegetation sprouting from balconies, floors and window frames. The surrounding forest is slowly taking back the town. Standing as a symbol of the disaster is the towns new amusement park, with its giant yellow ferris wheel, meant to open for May Day 1986, was used for a couple of hours to amuse the residents on the 27 April, before they were ordered to evacuate.It now stands trees, shrubs and other vegetation, slowly but surely strangling it, as nature wants its territory back.

       Capitalism being what it is, can't miss an opportunity to make a buck, so there are tour companies that will arrange guided tours around this eerie ghost town. Though it is illegal to take items in or out of Pripyat for fear of spreading the radioactive contamination. The town's inhabitants are now wild boar, wolves and stray dogs, of course there will be the usual smaller life, rabbits etc. though I doubt if any of it is worth hunting. A handful of individuals have returned to their contaminated towns and villages and live there without official permission, they are known as “self-settlers”.

         This is a large slice of the planet that we probably can never use again, and with the ongoing saga of Fukushima, spilling into the ocean, it looks like we are about to repeat the disaster on a larger scale, on both land and sea. This is contamination on a permanent scale, a poisoned heritage for our grandchildren, yet the babbling brook of bullshit, spews out information of football managers losing their job, privileged parasites prancing about with their kid, and the latest scandal from some soap. We should remember, Spaceship Earth has no escape capsule.

An extract from a more detailed article from Nautilus Blog:

        Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink. Long after bleeding from the core, this unique piece of waste continues to be a testament to the potential dangers of nuclear power. The Elephant’s Foot will be there for centuries, sitting in the dark basement of a concrete and steel sarcophagus, a symbol of one of humankind’s most powerful tools gone awry.

Read the full article HERE:

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AFTER FUKUSHIMA.

      We all know the dreadful results from the tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011, no matter how horrendous the effects of the natural forces, this disaster was heightened and lengthen by the fact that the part of the area hit was the Fukushima nuclear power station. The nuclear radiation effects will live on long after the tsunami damage has been repaired.

       We in Glasgow are fortunate to get a chance to hear about the after effects of the Fukushima disaster from someone who was there. On Thursday 30 August, Professor Yamaguchi of Fukushima University, will be giving a talk on the after effects from the tragedy. The talk will be held in the St. Mungo Museum 2 Castle Street Glasgow at 2:30pm.

Please circulate widely.

Date: Thursday August 30th.

Time: 2:30pm.

Venue: St. Mungo Museum, 2 Castle Street Glasgow.

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THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT???

      With all the nuclear plants around the world and what is happening at the moment in Fukushima, Japan, I can't help but feel that as far as this planet is concerned,--The future is bright.

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DISASTER CAPITALISM????

    The following is an article by Bob at Politics in the Zeros. The question is, is there any other type of capitalism? We all know the answer to that one, a resounding NO. Time for change, capitalism must go or it takes the civilised world down with it, it's our choice.

   

     Capitalism doesn’t just profit from disasters, as Naomi Klein says. It also, through greed, shortsightedness, and corruption, creates disasters. It could be a real estate bubble inflated by corruption and a deliberately asleep government that finally popped, taking down the US economy with it. It is also nuclear plants built to inadequate specs and monitored by toothless regulatory agencies that have been compromised by the very industry they pretend to regulate.

         In both cases, the causes are the same, a lunatic capitalism that is concerned only with short-term profits and governments who are beholden to and owned by it.

For example.

         A noted physicist describes what Japan is doing at the reactors as using a squirt gun against a raging forest fire. What’s worse, attempting to dump salt water on the reactors could damage them even further. Instead, he says, do what they did at Chernobyl, bury the reactors in boric acid, sand, and concrete and be done with it.

         The reaction to this from supposedly savvy Japanese government and business to this admittedly huge disaster has been like the Keystone Kops and not anything coherent. No doubt Tepco wants to save the reactors, thus their increasingly deranged attempts do something, anything, and not write them off completely. The government has lied and evaded so consistently that it can no longer be trusted. Instead of championing the needs of their increasingly desperate populace, it manufactures fantasy statements and pretends things will be better soon. Their interests intertwine with those of the corporatists. They are the same. Japan has a disaster, one that is made much worse by an enfeebled government that is more concerned with saving face than saving people and a poisonous form of capitalism that cares little about anything but profits. And that, my friends, is why we have yet another disaster of capitalism.

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