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8 months, 10 mishaps: A look at Fukushima errors

15 Comments
By MARI YAMAGUCHI

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15 Comments
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The workers seem to be stressed, overworked or just fed up with the whole dangerous business. Prolonged low dose radiation may also be having an effect not yet known. They just have to work because they have to survive, but it is obvious that most likely, they would opt out if they had an alternative

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Perhaps if the Yakuza were not skimming the money from the workers and paying them in cash this wouldn't be a problem. Hire stupid what do you expect.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Just can`t trust anything coming out of this place. In addition to all the mess ups, corruption (read up on the all the contractors corrupt dealings and treatment of staff), the unknown radiation emissions, the fuel rod gamble next month etc. Wooh! The Japanese are in for a big surprise someday. They have to wake up soon.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

If that's the case, they should stop hiring temp workers. Plus if it was usa, they would be paid $100,000 per year minimum. Of course they can only work short period before their radiation limit is up so harder to hire permanent workers.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

This doesn't really fill me with confidence for the work they're going to start next month on removing the reactor cores. A challenge which has never been attempted by anyone before, let alone a bunch of minimum-wage earners conducted by incompetent clowns. And which, if mishandled, could cause a catastrophe which makes 3/11 and its aftermath look like a pleasure cruise.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-a-global-threat-that-requires-a-global-response/5355480?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fukushima-a-global-threat-that-requires-a-global-response

But, luckily, Abe's new Secrecy Acts will most likely mean we don't get to read anything which might upset us. We wouldn't want "miscommunication" to cause " worry and create misunderstanding" would we?

2 ( +4 / -2 )

And, next month they will start removing the thousands of fuel rods one at a time. The stupid mistakes made so far have had very little consequence, but one mistake during the removal of the fuel rods could cause a rod to go critical and create a nuclear catastrophe that could render all of the kanto area uninhabitable for the next 10,000 years. Have your passports at the ready people.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Have any Japanese papers reported that the plant could explode and render Japan a wasteland? Just wondering because I'm wondering if TEPCO has given a press conference about the procedures they plan to take and what they would do to prevent the atomic explosion?

I've read terrifying reports that it could kill millions of people if there is just the slightest impact between rods. I have loved ones and friends in Chiba Prefecture and Tokyo and I have to tell you I am terrified that they are going to die.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Well, you won't be able to report about this kind of thing in the near future, as it's "state secrets". They don't want their embarrassing mess-ups known.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

I was hoping to apply to colleges here soon in Japan and this is not reassuring at all :( Honest opinion, would you recommend people move to Japan if not already there? Does anyone really see this getting better or is it an unspoken doomsday just around the corner? :/

0 ( +0 / -0 )

People need answers, data and honest information to help them deal with what is going on. Media blackouts, propaganda and greedy self-interested industries, of any kind, who allow human beings' health to be affected, and deaths to occur, must be stopped now. That senior TEPCO man and the leading nuclear academic in Japan did not break down crying and resign their positions because all was well at Fukushima.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Ad nauseam. Ad infinitum.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Badly edited article means it lacks the punch that it should have. Who is 'he' in para 3 for example, and Tanaka in the next paragraph? To the casual reader everything is confusingly in the wrong order. A bit like TEPCO, really.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It would be good to list all the tepco/gov assertions that all is well and then where they lied.

The new secrets act, welcome big brother!! We love you. There is already nearly zero press freedom in Japan and this will be even more a blow to it. They will definitely use it to hide the embarrassment of Fukushima and other stuff.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Technically speaking the following are not really notable at all:

Sept 27: A piece of rubber lining mistakenly left inside a water treatment unit clogs it up, causing it to fail hours after it resumed a test-run following repairs. The fragment is removed, and the unit returned to testing.

Foreign body gets into water processing system, stops a test-run, is found, is removed.

Sept 19: A firefighting water pipe is damaged during debris removal, and 300 liters of non-radioactive water spurt out. The same day, TEPCO provides Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a hazmat suit for a plant visit with the wrong Japanese character for his family name on the nametag. Spotting the mistake halfway through the tour, an apparently displeased Abe peels the sticker off.

300 litres of non-radioactive water. Earth-shattering. As for PM Abe, so what?

April 4: A worker pushes the wrong button on a touch panel, temporarily stopping one of three water treatment units during a pre-operation test.

Again, a pre-operation test is interrupted. Shocking!

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

The s-i-tillation counter is really going to hit the fan when they pull those rods out, but as long as all the other myriad mishaps were human error, we've absolutely nothing to worry about.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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