The Japan earthquake and tsunami and its resultant nuclear crisis has contaminated food and public water creating a critical shortage of both. The crisis has also revealed the glaring folly of a centralized power distribution system that concentrates control of an essential service to millions into the hands of a very few profit driven corporations.
The detection of cobalt, iodine and cesium in the sea near the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant north of Tokyo this week hurt fish sales in the world’s second-biggest seafood market. Shoppers ignored government reassurances that their food and water supplies were safe even as countries from Australia to the U.S. restricted food imports from Japan on fears of radioactive contamination.
Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japanese government admit that radiation levels above the safe allowable limit have been detected outside of the 20 kilometer evacuation zone and 30 kilometer ‘stay in the house’ zone but have not ordered further evacuation. TEPCO also expects to have to maintain a program of rolling blackouts for a year or more while the utility recovers its infrastructure and the loss of its nuclear power generating facilities. The Japanese people are now held hostage to business model that only serves utility company shareholders and leaves ratepayers dependent upon power generated hundreds of miles from the point of use.
The centralized power system of transmitting electricity long distances over high voltage lines is not only vulnerable to earthquakes but is hugely inefficient losing 2.2kwh for kilowatt hour consumed. Decentralizing power or producing power at the point of consumption allows for better load matching and power conditioning and improved redundancy. More than anything it allows the consumer a choice over the one size fits all approach of the investor owned utility.
Democracy Now reports on the nuclear crisis in Japan
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, some people are speculating that the—given the reported levels of release of radiation from the plant, that this kind of—these amounts of radioactive iodine shouldn’t be showing up in the water, that perhaps this is an indication that the government has not given a full report on how much radiation was released earlier on.
AILEEN MIOKO SMITH: Absolutely. A few days ago, the French nuclear authority said that perhaps, up to now, the estimate could be about 10 percent of Chernobyl releases. And then, yesterday, the Austrian meteorological agency said that probably the estimates would be about 20 percent to 50 percent of what had been released at Chernobyl. So we’re talking very high levels, serious, serious levels.
Yesterday, the Japanese government admitted that 30 kilometers outside—this is not an evacuated zone—a person could have been exposed to as much as 100 millisieverts of radiation. That would be twice the amount of the evacuation threshold established by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization. And yet, the Japanese government refuses to evacuate people from beyond a 20-kilometer—that’s a 12-mile—area. And just an hour ago, up to 23 Diet members of the Japanese national parliament have issued a statement saying that immediate evacuation, drastically increasing the area outside of that 30-kilometer zone right now, should happen. And immediately, at the very beginning, pregnant women and preschool-aged children should be evacuated from this area that still hasn’t been evacuated. It’s about a 20-mile area right now.
