Fukushima Five Years On

It is hard to believe that what has become known as the Fukushima disaster happened 5 years ago this week. The question to be asked is what has been the fallout (no pun intended!) and what has the Japan, and the world, learned. Not much, if one is to go by this report "Fukushima five years on, and the lessons we failed to learn " in The Guardian.

"Fukushima went from being the name of a provincial Japanese city to becoming global shorthand for a costly and contaminating nuclear disaster.

Fukushima means “fortunate island” but the region’s luck melted down along with the reactors on March 11, 2011. The subsequent system failure, meltdown and uncontrolled release of large volumes of radiation at the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex has become one of the defining events of our age."

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The March 11 Great Eastern earthquake and tsunami devastated much of Japan’s eastern seaboard. It also breached the safety and back-up systems at Tepco’s nuclear complex leading to the loss of life, mass evacuations, hundreds of billions of dollars in economic loss and extensive radioactive contamination of the air, soil and ocean.

The crisis continues today. Japanese nuclear authorities have confirmed that active intervention will be required for the next forty years to stabilise the site, there are on-going radioactive releases and water and waste management issues and charges have just been laid against former senior Tepco officials for “professional negligence resulting in deaths and injury”.

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