2 sundays ago, I just happened to find my husband watching this show called VICE on HBO. The episode is called "Playing with fire". The focus of this documentary investigates the disaster that the Japanese government is is hiding in Fukushima. It has been three years (March 14, 2011) since the Tohoku earthquake that created a tsunami. This in turn caused a nuclear plant meltdown in Fukushima. There are concerns over the initial amount of radiation that came out of the nuclear plant and the ongoing radiation contamination continuing not only in Japan but in the Pacific Ocean. The information on this incident has been very tightly controlled by the Japanese government.
After the disaster, 160,000 residents were evacuated from the contaminated towns which surround Fukushima. One of the VICE documentary member named Ghandi traveled 3.3 miles outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant which is an exclusion zone. He was given access to visit a displaced residents home that was abandoned 3 years ago. The resident told him that they were never told about how much radiation they were exposed to.
The Japanese government downplayed the severity of the incident. Former Japanese House Representative Hiroshi Kawauchi witnessed first hand the inadequacy of the government response. He stated "The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor has emitted airborne radioactive cesium levels that exceed the Hiroshima A-bomb by 168 times. But we're told everything is OK". The real question is how could this much radiation exposure be perceived as ok?
To investigate further, an elementary school that is located 41 miles outside the nuclear plant is visited. Ghandi finds that there are NGO's testing children for thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer is one of those diseases caused by radiation. The doctor testing the children admitted there has been a substantial amount of radiation poisoning, and "People should not be living here. But the government will not say that out loud. All they wanted was to cover up what had been done. There is a lot of secrecy. Even the radiation monitoring posts are set to a lower level".
Ghandi tests the levels only a few feet away from the reading posts and the readings are twice as high (.37). He walked a few feet further to the edge of the school and those government monitors start feeling irrelevant. The reading was 3.5 which is 20 times higher than the so called "monitoring post". This is a playground at an elementary school! The school is not the only thing that is contaminated. The food that they are eating is contaminated and Fukushima biggest industry is agritculture!
In the end, what is most disturbing is that the long term effects are yet to be seen for these people and the rest of the world. The nuclear plant is leaking radioactive water that has to be siphoned into huge water tanks. The water tanks are even leaking. No one knows hows how to dispose of this waste and it keeps accumulating. Why is the world not worried about this? why is this kept a secret from the public eye? Why isn't this a state of international emergency? I was truly disturbed by this documentary and cannot help but think how much contaminated water has made it here to our home sweet home. Could it be karma knocking at our door?
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