Tons of radioactive soil at Fukushima

[sprinkleeninow]

are being enclosed in a barrier material and will be buried. Will take decades to get the area cleaned up which is the objective. Mind boggling.

The visual is quite upsetting.

https://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/must_see/48449084/fukushima-how-to-move-a-mountain-of-radioactive-soil

[Control-Z]

1. I had to stop reading when I got to the part

about the Tokyo correspondent being one of the first foreign journalists to be taken inside the damaged reactor.

My reaction: Why? Why the hell would anyone in his or her right mind do that? I hope it was, at least, for a giant paycheck, a full lifetime of medical care/coverage, and a guarantee of extraordinary, lifelong income for the care and needs of his/her family no matter what the outcome after exposure.

Seriously. Like

[sprinkleeninow]

5. Something. Mb they convinced him no big whoop. Only a few minutes in there.

Mb he's got a daredevil spirit.

[Control-Z]

12. I hope any journalist, no matter how poor they are at their job,

has the intelligence to know...you know, better. Ugh.

Scary stuff.

[Cetacea]

2. Abe passed a State law

That forbids the Japanese people from discussing it. That goes for journalists. It's had a chilling effect on journalists globally. And I don't believe for a second that only one person has died from that mess.

[dewsgirl]

4. I remember when it happened, there was a media blackout that extended to the U.S.

media at least partially, if memory serves. Considering it has been pouring into the ocean since, I believe March of 2011. Each time I hear about a die off of marine life, especially with them hiding so much, I automatically think of Fukushima.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Thank you for this.

As we watch the series Chernobyl, Fukishima is not far from the mind.

[sprinkleeninow]

6. Was half paying attention to the broadcast, then the site of all those

barrels piqued my interest. I'm like what are those in such a pattern.

Chilling.

[Moostache]

7. Where will it happen next?

Nuclear power plants dot the USA and Europe near many large metropolitan areas...Around 11% of the world's electricity is generated by about 450 nuclear power reactors. About 60 more reactors are under construction, equivalent to about 15% of existing capacity.

For better or worse, of the country's biggest 20 metro areas by population, at least part of 14 of them lies within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. Overall, about a third of Americans live within one of the 50-mile radiuses.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/do-you-live-within-50-miles-nuclear-power-plant-180950072/

Countries in Asia, on the other hand, have been heading in the opposite direction: 51 new reactors have been added on that continent over the past 20 years, while the rest of the world has collectively added just 30. This means that the future of nuclear power is different in different parts of the world, as Carbon Brief’s blog post points out:

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/03/nuclear-reactors-around-the-world-mapped/473676/

How do YOU feel about Chinese safety and quality? I know I look askew at ANY product or chemical sourced from China due to horrible quality control, terrible enforcement of government control and an overall feeling of cheap goods being acceptable there regardless of the application...

A global view:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-the-worlds-nuclear-power-plants

It WILL happen again, the only question is where and how ill-prepared will THAT community be? Chernobyl and Fukashima will not be the last names on the list of utterly destroyed regions...

[sprinkleeninow]

8. I'm leery especially food products from China. Almost bought canned

mushrooms one time and the origin was China!

Takes me back to that horrendous incident when many pets were dying from was it contaminated wheat gluten?

Then toothpaste was contaminated with an ingredient found in antifreeze.

[Kablooie]

9. Watch Chernobyl on HBO.

It shows what kind of horrifying things have to be done to clean up a reactor.
It's madness.

[sprinkleeninow]

10. I watched a documentary of Chernobyl a number of years ago.

Almost like a 'Nuclear Winter'. Creeped me out.

[DFW]

11. When Chernobyl blew

Our daughters were 1 and 3. We were told not to bring in soil from outside, and not to eat mushrooms found in the local forest, as the cloud from Chernobyl had floated as far west as our part of Germany. If possible, we should try to leave our shoes outside the apartment (we did). The readings in our area were mixed, noting higher radioactivity than normal, but not enough to be considered as unsafe ("they" said).

Our neighbor across the hall, who had bought his apartment (we rented), rang our doorbell and started ranting on to us that he was having guests, and that it was unacceptable that we were leaving our shoes outside at the entrance to our apartment. He said, "I don't know in what country they do that kind of thing (i.e. you dirty foreigner), but here in DEUTSCHLAND we don't do that," and he couldn't be showing such a scene to his guests. I guess he never had Japanese guests, since the Japanese have been leaving their shoes at the entrance to their dwellings since his ancestors were running naked through the woods gathering berries and hunting squirrels with sharpened sticks. I was so angry, I felt myself getting ready to REALLY tell him what I thought, so I went back inside and let my wife handle it. I never spoke to the guy again (we moved out to the house we now live in four and a half years later). I always referred to him from then on as "hotsie-totsie (i.e. "I'm a Nazi" ), and he has since died of a horrible cancer. At least he never left his shoes outside.........