Dina Gilio-Whitaker: Nuclear threat headed towards California

Dina Gilio-Whitaker discusses how the nuclear crisis in Japan might reach California:
Not a lot of good news has been coming out of Japan lately. This week at the United Nations COP 19 climate talks meeting in Warsaw it was announced that Japan will renege on its carbon emissions pledge. This means that instead of lowering its emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 its emissions will actually increase based on 1990 levels. The reason Japanese officials give is because of the shutdown of its fifty nuclear power plants, which will mean more reliance on fossil fuels to meet its energy needs.

Of course, the shutting down of the nuke plants is not a bad thing, especially in light of the Fukushima disaster which until very recently seems to have been suffering from a bit of a news blackout by the mainstream corporate media. This is especially troubling given the imminent passage of a new censorship law in Japan that could make reporting news about Fukushima a crime in the name of protecting state’s secrets (gee, sound familiar?).

How much you know about the situation on the ground at the crippled Daiichi plant depends on how much you are intentionally seeking the information. Many people I talk to still don’t seem to fully comprehend the scope of the problem, likely because it hasn’t dominated the evening news. There is a lot to know but the most troubling facts are 1), that 300 tons of radioactive water have been spilling into the Pacific Ocean every day and is seeping into the groundwater; 2) the clean-up process is so risky that it continues to be delayed and has been called the world’s It’s also been called “the potentially the biggest ticking time bomb in human history.”

Get the Story:
Dina Gilio-Whitaker: Fukushima's Nuclear Plume Is Heading Toward My SoCal Beach (Indian Country Today 11/25)