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Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima

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Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima Volume 9 | Issue 37 | Number 3 | Article ID 3599 | Sep 21, 2011 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima: A “Two-Headed Dragon” Descends into the Earth’s Biosphere •Japanese original text is available 福島で進行中の核の大惨事を どう見るか −−「双頭の天龍」を地球生命圏に降下させた危険を見据 えよう Fujioka Atsushi Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Jinzaburō (Citizens’ Nuclear Information Disaster in Fukushima: A “Two- Center) once pointed out. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster broke out on April 23, 1986, Headed Dragon” Descends into the and shortly after that Takagi wrote the Earth’s Biosphere following: The Japanese original text is available Nuclear technology is the Fujioka Atsushi equivalent of acquiring on earth the technology of the Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs heavens….The deployment here on earth of nuclear reactions, a The author assesses the Fukushima nuclear phenomenon occurring naturally disaster in light of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only in heavenly bodies and Hanford, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the completely unknown to the natural nexus between nuclear weapons and nuclear world here on the earth’s surface, power. is…a matter of deep significance. This summer, I participated for the seventeenth For all forms of life, radiation is a time in the “Pilgrimage for Peace,” traveling to threat against which they possess Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a group that no defense; it is an alien intruder included seventeen American students led by disrupting the principles of life on Professor Peter Kuznick of American earth. Our world on the surface of University, seven international students from this planet, including life, is across Asia, and sixteen students from Japan. composed most basically of During our eleven days together, we had many chemicals…and its cycles take discussions on the topic of “How to Understand place as processes of combination the Relation between the Fukushima Nuclear and dissolution of chemical Disaster and Hiroshima/Nagasaki.” Our substances….Nuclear civilization Canadian coordinator and interpreter always harbors in its womb a Norimatsu Satoko and two students from moment of destruction, like a Fukushima introduced by Gotō Nobuyo made a ticking time bomb. The danger it special contribution to these discussions. presents…is of a kind completely unlike those we have faced before. In the midst of this, I was struck by the And now isn’t it the case that the prescience of something the late Takagi ticking of its timer is growing 1 9 | 37 | 3 APJ | JF louder and louder in our ears?1 any living body it passes through. This was why primitive life could only survive at the bottom of deep oceans, where it was beyond Despite Takagi’s words of warning 25 years the reach of those harmful forms of radiation. ago, despite the painful experience of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Thanks to the photosynthesis of plants in the we failed to cultivate the ability to hear the ocean, the carbon dioxide absorbed into ocean ticking of the timer throughout the nation. It water was split into carbon and oxygen; the was against this background, sadly, that March carbon sank to the ocean floor in the form of 11, 2011 arrived. Here, I would like to explore calcium carbonate, while the oxygen was the tasks that the present catastrophe presents released into the earth’s atmosphere. As the for social science research. oxygen content of the atmosphere increased, a part of the oxygen entered into an ionic Breaking Away from the “Celestial Fire” of reaction with ultraviolet rays to produce ozone the Cosmos: The Formation of the Earth’s (0 ), and gradually an ozone layer formed Biosphere 3 between twenty and fifty kilometers above the As Takagi emphasized, nuclear reactions taking earth’s surface. It shut out the ultraviolet rays place inside the nucleus of atoms (nuclear and x-rays emitted with energy from the fusion and fission) are the “celestial fire,” the cosmos’ nuclear reactions and became a crucial original energy source of the cosmos. While mechanism for protecting the earth’s chemical reactions (reactions that produce biosphere. In this way, an environment unions of atoms, i.e., molecules, through hospitable to life on land took form. As exchanges of electrons between atoms) were photosynthesis by plants on land increased, the not entirely unknown in interstellar space, concentration of carbon dioxide in the nuclear reactions remained the primary energy atmosphere further decreased. Eventually, the source, and the cosmos took form as a world concentration of carbon dioxide declined to swirling with ionizing radiation that they 0.04%, while the concentration of oxygen produced. reached 21%—an optimal environment for living organisms. Some 3.6 billion years ago, on the ocean floor here on planet earth, the conditions necessary These conditions led to the formation of our to produce a world of more complex, organic atmosphere, capable of blocking nearly all of chemical reactions appeared, and the first the ionizing radiation released by the sun. In primitive forms of life were born. In other fact, astronauts living in the international space words, the conditions for forming a realm in station orbiting in the upper atmosphere about which life could be transmitted (the biosphere) 400 kilometers above the earth’s surface are were born on the ocean floor. exposed to roughly one millisievert per day, a potentially lethal dose of ionizing radiation, but The primitive atmosphere that covered the only 1/750th of this radiation reaches the surface of the earth at the time consisted planet surface. Nearly all of the radiation almost entirely of carbon dioxide and water coming from space is filtered out by the vapor. It was a harsh world, with high atmosphere before it can reach the earth’s temperatures and harmful ultraviolet rays and surface. ionizing radiation pouring in relentlessly from the sun. Ultraviolet rays damage cells on the As I noted above, energy from nuclear body surface of living organisms, while ionizing reactions is the driving force behind the radiation causes DNA scission in the cells of formation of heavenly bodies. Even now, within 2 9 | 37 | 3 APJ | JF the earth’s core and mantle, nuclear reactions with an investment in then-current values of are occurring, generating geothermal energy. more than two billion dollars. But a thick soil layer formed, blocking emission of radiation from the world of nuclear reactions Started as a plan by the military-industrial at the earth’s core, creating a mechanism that complex to steal the “celestial fire,” the protects the earth’s biosphere from nuclear Manhattan Project might best be called a reactions taking place in the netherworld far modern-day Prometheus. In terms of the below. It is true that in the granite strata history of the cosmos, it represented a turning formed by hardened magma found in the back against the principles of life, a reactionary Kerala region of India and on the southeast project that aimed to turn the earth’s clock coast of Brazil, there are exposed geological back some 3.6 billion years. layers that include radioactive isotopes. Anyone A reactor for producing plutonium was living in these places would be exposed to established at Hanford in the northwestern about ten millisieverts of natural radiation per United States. The greatest waste product year: like outer space, these regions should be generated by this reactor was an enormous off-limits to human habitation. The lower the quantity of heat. Hanford discharged this heat amount of ionizing radiation, which causes into the Columbia River, and it was Admiral DNA scission in cells, the healthier it is for Hyman Rickover, the “Father of the Nuclear living organisms. Navy,” and the Electric Boat Company who first realized that this heat could be used as a In this way the biosphere formed on the earth’s source of engine propulsion power for surface. The earth’s biosphere extends only to submarines. about fifteen kilometers above the ground and to about ten kilometers below the ocean surface. Combining both its upper and lower limits, it consists of a layer that is at best only 25 kilometers wide. In comparative terms, it is thinner and more fragile than the skin on an apple. The earth’s biosphere is the precious product of more than three billion years of joint activities by the earth’s living creatures. Protecting this world of life and passing it on to future generations is surely the single most meaningful task assigned to humanity. “Nuclear Civilization”: Moving Backward in Cosmic History During World War Two a massive military Hanford reactors along the Columbia research project was launched to collect River, 1960 radioactive uranium (the physical remnant on the earth’s surface of nuclear reaction energy from outer space) and to condense it using Next, the American energy industry came into electricity generated by the Tennessee Valley the picture: by moving onto land the reactors Authority, thereby anachronistically setting off built for nuclear submarines and using them to nuclear reactions within the earth’s biosphere. generate electricity for the American economy, This was the famous Manhattan Project, begun it could reduce the cost of nuclear submarine 3 9 | 37 | 3 APJ | JF reactors through mass production and assure the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. At control over energy resources by the “Free 3:00 p.m. on the following day, March 12, a World.” The construction of the Fukushima hydrogen explosion took place in the No. 1 Daiichi Nuclear Plant was part of this effort. reactor, followed by similar explosions in the The No. 1 reactor at Fukushima was a Mark I No. 3 reactor on March 14 and in the No. 2 and model reactor manufactured by GeneralNo.
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