The email sent will contain a link to this article, the article title, and an article excerpt (if available). For security reasons, your IP address will also be included in the sent email.
September 21, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/21/what-tepco-and-the-media-are-hiding/
by TAKASHI HIROSE
When did the radiation start to leak from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and how far has it spread?
About this our greatest interest, the Japanese Government announced nothing for several days (at least until March 17) after the earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011. They just described the facts saying they “….happened” in the past tense, explaining neither the cause of the explosion nor its mechanism. They never talked about expectations of danger. What is “the worst scenario” that this nuclear accident might lead to? A reporter asked this of Edano Yukio, Chief Cabinet Secretary, at a news conference, but whether because Edano couldn’t answer or didn’t want to, he said nothing clearly.
Like the government, most of the media, rather than informing us of the dangers posed by this accident, kept claiming groundlessly that there was none. The stock phrase used by both Edano and the TV “experts” – “no immediate effects to health” – means what? That radiation effects start one year or 10 years later? If the radiation was to have “immediate effects”, that would be a horror. People would be dropping dead in the streets of acute radiation sickness as they did after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But that is not what we are talking about. The question is whether radiation taken into children’s bodies is really safe.
Return to Article