Fukushima Revisited
By James Heddle and Mary Beth Brangan - EON
Published on January 15, 2025
A view of the Fukushima nuclear plant on March 14, 2011 after the reactor failures. Hydrogen explosions in units 1 and 3 may have contributed to the dispersal of cesium microparticles into the atmosphere. Photo12 / Ann Ronan Picture Library - Source
On January 13, 2025 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published an extensive article by investigative journalist François Diaz-Maurin entitled How Fukushima’s radioactive fallout in Tokyo was concealed from the public. It revealed how,
“Japanese radiochemist Satoshi Utsunomiya found that air samples from March 15, 2011, in Tokyo contained a very high concentration of insoluble cesium microparticles. He immediately realized the implications of the findings for public safety, but his study was kept from publication for years.”
A Precient Interview
Nine years ago, EON posted an in depth interview with Dr. Majia Nadesan. Majia Nadesan is an interdisciplinary scholar whose extensive research examines the ethical implications of societal governing logics and risk-management strategies. Dr. Nadesan is a professor in the Communication department at Arizona State University and a respected and prolific scholarly comentator who had published a book titled Fukushima and the Privatization of Risk
In the light of François Diaz-Maurin’s recent expose’, Dr. Nadesan’s interview turns out to have been remarkably precient and we republish it now in two segments because of its lasting relevance.
Transcript:
EON: So, you begin your book by drawing an example of the kind of siamese twin connection… joined at the hip connection… between weapons and nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Nadesan: Yes. Well, I went back and I looked at old archival New York Times articles about the development of nuclear weapons and also the development of nuclear energy. And many of the atomic scientists who were involved in the Manhattan Project didn’t even believe that nuclear energy was safe. Because of the problem of residual heat and containment.
So there was a lot of, you know, dissensus about whether nuclear energy would ever be safe. But the Atomic Energy Commission pushed forward. And Eisenhower, in his “Atoms For Peace” speech, created that kind of rhetorical rationalization for how the atom that was used in weapons could be transformed as a peacekeeper by ensuring energy security. Because energy security is a cause for war.
Japan, for example, has historically not had energy security. And one of the reasons that they lost in World War Two is they were running out of energy. They were running out of access to oil. So there was this utopian idea that if we had energy security then war would be irrelevant. And that idea was deliberately promoted by Eisenhower and others.
At the same time, there was a clear recognition by the powers in the… in the world that if you had nuclear and had the capacity to develop a nuclear weapon, nobody would invade you—because you would have the power of nuclear deterrents.
And so countries like India on the surface embraced the idea of the peaceful atom. But they used the uranium from their civilian plants to produce their first nuclear weapon. So from the very beginning there was this intimate connection. And when countries pursued the peaceful atom, oftentimes they were also pursuing it in order to have the capacity to build nuclear weapons that would give them the deterrent power. And the capacity for nuclear to provide indefinite energy was never realized.
I believe that Helen Caldecott, among others, have demonstrated pretty conclusively that when you look at the entire energy cycle—what it takes to mine uranium and, you know, what it takes to decontaminate a nuclear plant after it has been closed down, like San Onofre—that… that nuclear is very energy-intensive, and it’s not carbon-neutral at all, and that this idea that it’s going to provide energy security is an unsubstantiated fantasy. But it’s a convenient one. And it provides the rationale for countries that want to have that nuclear deterrent power.
And Japan definitely wanted to have this nuclear deterrent power, because it… it doesn’t have a lot of friends in Asia. And so it was pursued very aggressively in the post-World War Two context, and it became a great market for reactors that were being sold by the U.K. and by also the United States and General Electric in particular. And lurking there, on the other side, is this nuclear deterrent capability. Now, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution prevents any act of war. And so the nuclear weapons deterrent capabilities had to always be kind of understated and in the background. But you can tell that it was there, because Japan very, very aggressively pursued enrichment and reprocessing of uranium, and started stockpiling plutonium.
And there has been this fantasy in the nuclear industry that you could take nuclear waste and… and in every fuel rod that has been spent there’s a certain amount of plutonium that remains, and that you could take that and refine it and enrich it, and then you could recycle it in specially designed reactors that will burn plutonium. And Japan pursued this—these breeder reactors that could run on plutonium and that would help them recycle all the fuel from their boiling water reactors.
But the breeder reactor programs had been closed in… in France, and the U.K., and the United States, because plutonium is very volatile and very difficult to control. And Japan, alone, did not close the system. And they started acquiring more and more stockpiles of plutonium. And they also were purchasing plutonium from other countries—from Russia, for example. And there was plutonium that belonged to Japan that was stored in France and also the U.K. So Japan was stockpiling all this plutonium. And many people have expressed concern about this. Because Japan is the only country that doesn’t have—quote-unquote—“nuclear weapons” that stockpiles plutonium.
And there have been concerns about this since the ‘80s. So this is not a new concern. There are many people who have argued that Japan actually had a secret nuclear weapons program. And there’s no way of proving whether in fact they had that or not. But it’s one thing is clear is they certainly had the plutonium on hand to be able to develop a nuclear weapon.
And then they… in 2008, they passed the Aerospace Law, which allowed them to develop, essentially, rockets. So they would have the capabilities of delivering a nuclear weapon. Because you could have an atomic bomb, but if you don’t have the… the rockets to deliver it, it’s not going to be much use to, you know, nuke your enemies—because they’re too far away.
So in 2008 when the Aerospace Law was passed, that allowed them to develop these missiles and have them on hand. And then in 2011, the ban on exporting advanced weaponry was lifted. So they have the infrastructure. I like to think of it is they probably have a just-in-time system. You know? The Japanese are so good on just-in-time systems. So if they wanted to have a nuclear weapon, I doubt it would take too much work, because probably the assembly line is in place and they have all the necessary parts. And under the current administration, there has been a lot of saber rattling. And so this nuclear capacity of Japan is receiving more attention and more concern, particularly from countries like China.
EON: It’s an implied deterrent.
Nadesan: It is.
EON: A kind of whispered threat, I guess.
Nadesan: It is. But it’s… it’s not even that implied. Because, for example, the Rokkasho reprocessing plant—which is being completed—will have the capacity to produce even more plutonium. And it was discovered to be on an active fault. And there was a lot of pressure to never open it, never launch it. And the LDP Party has said that it’s vital for national security. And how can it be vital for national security if you’re thinking in terms of civilian energy? It isn’t. So there’s definitely, within the current political climate in Japan, among many… and they’re embracing this nuclear deterrent capability.
Transcript:
EON: Many people think that Fukushima occurred years ago and that’s it. But can you talk about the… the transgenerational implications of its continuing disaster?
Nadesan: One of the things that I discovered when I was looking at the archival research was a report that was issued in 1956. And it’s called the Beir VII: Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation. And it was actually funded in response to public concern about atomic testing. And what was argued in that Report is, is that when you’re exposed to ionizing radiation it increases the mutations—there is no doubt about that—and that those mutations are transmitted across generations.
So that my children inherited all the mutations that I have acquired from environmental exposures or random mutations to my germline cells, and they also inherited it the same from their father. And then they acquire their own mutations from the exposures they have. So each generation is burdened with these mutations, and that they often, the scientists argued, are more likely to affect recessive mutations… ah, excuse me, recessive genes rather than the dominant genes. So that the effects of all these mutations can be relatively invisible—in the sense that you don’t see gross deformities. And if there’s too many mutations then you just won’t have viability of the embryo.
So that they’re, in a sense, kind of invisible. But they describe them as being kind of like a ticking time-bomb, because if you get enough of them they affect health. So they could give rise to a variety of syndromes, and that over time they can cause reproductive failure. But you won’t know until you have reached that point. And the science-fiction film The Children of Men kind of plays on this—where you have relatively suddenly, within a few generations, a complete reproductive failure. But prior to that point, you’re going to have increased disease incidence in the population.
And we are seeing increased rates of diabetes, increased rates of neurological disorders in adults. They’re occurring among people at younger ages. And the actual rate is increasing; it’s not just that people are living longer. We’re seeing increased neurological disorders in children. We’re seeing increased incidence of immunological disorders. And these are syndrome diseases. And it’s very interesting, because this is precisely what they described in 1956.
And if you look at the United Nations’ own scientific committee for studying the effects of atomic radiation, they have described these syndromes that result from the accumulation of transgeneration mutations.
And it looks a lot like autism, for example, which is a… it’s not a single-gene disorder, it’s connected to multiple micro-deletions in the human genome, it doesn’t… it doesn’t manifest the same in each person. It’s a little different in each person, because the way they have been affected is variable depending on the exposures that they had. So my concern is the concern that was laid out in 1956, is that we could be engineering our extinction through the, you know, acquisition of ever, ever more mutations to our DNA; but we won’t know it until it’s too late.
And I think that there’s definite evidence that disease—especially neurological diseases are increasing in frequency. And I think we better start paying attention to this potential or it may be too late for us.
EON: There was just an NBC exposé the other day showing that the first impulse of the regulatory agencies is to protect the nuclear industry from bad publicity, rather than to protect the health of the population. Can you talk about that?
Nadesan: Yes. Well, the reason the NRC was actually created was because the public was fed up with the Atomic Energy Commission, because they felt that it was promoting nuclear and not… and not promoting public health. So NRC was set up as a fix for the perception that the regulatory agency was corrupted, you know, regulatory capture. But the same concerns hold true today.
And… and we see this in the wake of Fukushima. They won’t even talk about the possibility of there being a nuclear meltdown in an American nuclear reactor. So yes, there’s definite efforts to protect the perceived safety of the American nuclear industry, and nuclear in general. And it’s not… it’s highly contrived; it’s not accidental. And you know, we could argue that it’s propogandistic, because it is not reflecting the scope of the knowledge—it’s reflecting the information that the industry wants the public to use when thinking about nuclear. And so it’s… it’s interested; it’s not neutral. And that, to me, is very problematic.
EON: I just recently read a report from the California Department of Health Services Water and Radiological Services Lab. And in it I could see that there were milk samples that were showing radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-134 and -137 as late as June of 2012.
Nadesan: Yes. There’s a plume of, you know, contamination from the disasters that is circling the Earth every 30 or 40 days, and that it comes down with precipitation. And the ongoing, you know, atmospheric releases from Fukushima are… are so hot that they rise high into the atmosphere.
And so they… you know, they are conveyed through the conveyor belt, you know, of the… of the, you know, the atmospheric winds that circulate the Earth. And when there’s precipitation it’s come down. So ongoing deposition of radionuclides from Fukushima is going to occur.
And if there are any more major, you know, events, it just is adding to, you know, the burden of all these contaminants in the air. So yes, it’s there and it’s going to continue. Once it’s in the environment, it’s in the environment; and it’s ultimately going to be bioaccumulating in animals, in plants, and in people. And that we are going to—at the top of the food chain—are going to be bioaccumulating through biomagnification. And then of course it gets transmitted across generations. So we have to find energy sources that don’t engineer our extinction.
That is what we have to…. And we have to create infrastructures—technological and social infrastures—that… that support human health rather than eroding it, or… or we’re just not going to last very much longer.
And there are many people who have come to this conclusion, as… as described in The Sixth Great Extinction Event book and the article…that kind of put this issue on the table: we are engineering a mass extinction event which is equivalent to, you know, a meteor hitting the Earth and destroying life, and we need to become conscious about it and make changes while we still can.
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