Vulnerable to Rain

The rain was falling on and on broken First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, and it turned into contaminated water and went on and on flowing to the sea. Tokyo Electric Power Company announced on Sunday that polluted rainwater flew over the fence that surrounded tanks with highly contaminated water produced by the process of cooling broken nuclear reactors. The rainwater was suspected to be with high radiation and had possibly flown into the outer sea. Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, still kept on saying that “affection” of the contaminated water was blocked within the harbor annexed to the plant.

It heavily rained around the plant during Sunday. Although the tank site was surrounded by low fence with a foot high, rainwater flooded over them. TEPCO had a plan to raise the fence to two feet high or higher, but it could not catch up with this typhoon season. The flooded water was supposed to have escaped to the sea through the ditch, which was connected to the sea out of the harbor. According to TEPCO, the rain was so heavy that their pump system was unable to avoid the flood.

The announcement of TEPCO was, as usual, too unfair to believe it. On the possibility of the rainwater to have flown into the outer sea, the spokesman told that he could not deny it. Since people in Japan learned from precedents in which TEPCO kept on underestimating the impact of contaminated water, no one believed that the company was telling the truth. Rather, they understood their words to be meaning the opposite. As the perception of ordinary citizens, it was likely that the rainwater flooded into the sea.

Due to this incompetence of TEPCO, Abe is wearing new clothes of an emperor. In that weekend, Abe visited Soma City, thirty miles north of the plant, and appealed the safety of sea products captured off shore of the city. Eating fish and octopuses, Abe reiterated “yummy” in front of TV camera. How many watchers did believe in his performance?

If he really wanted people to consume sea products from Fukushima, his government needs to provide with reliable information to the public. It is unrealistic that TEPCO regain its credibility. On Monday, Yasuhisa Shiozaki, former Chief Cabinet Secretary in the first Abe Cabinet, asked in his question in Budget Committee of the House of Representative to divide TEPCO in two, one was for dismantling the First Fukushima and another was for supplying electricity to its customers. The administration needs to consider such an idea.

As long as the government allows TEPCO cooling down reactors, producing contaminated water, accumulating it in the tanks, leaking it from joints of the tanks, polluting the land, turning it into contaminated rainwater, and releasing it to the sea, this whack-a-mole game will not be over.