“People’s understanding of
disasters will continue to be constructed by media. How media members
frame the presence of risk and the nature of disasters matters.” –
Celine Marie Pascale, American University, Mar 10, 2015.
Fearing radiation; terrified by the
nuclear option. Perfectly sensible instincts that never seem to
convince establishments and those who have long ceased to loathe nuclear
power and its various dangerous by-products. Each nuclear disaster,
such as the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plants five years ago,
come with its treasure of apologetics and justifications. The reason is
always the same: nuclear energy is safe and we cannot really do without
it.
To that end, the emergence of
“radiophobia” is a designation that dismisses as much as it supposedly
diagnoses. It pokes fun at those ninnies who think that they are about
to perish because of the effects of nuclear catastrophe and radiation
contamination. Risk, according to this philosophy of concerted denial,
is always exaggerated.
Shunichi Yamashita, a proclaimed expert
on the effects of radioactivity, was invited by the Fukushima prefecture
in the aftermath of the meltdown to reassure rather than investigate.
“The effects of radiation,” he claimed, “do not come to people who are
happy and laughing, they come to people who are weak-minded.”[1]
This Dr. Strangelove dismissiveness is
as much an advertisement for the virtues of doom as it is about the
brutal consequences, real and imaginary, of radiation poisoning.
Radiation is the invisible killer that stalks the earth, but for many,
it is hardly worth a thought. For one, it suggests a simple calculation
in environments that are not, supposedly, that dangerous.
“With low radiation doses,” argued this doctor of nuclear apologetics,
“the people have to decide for themselves whether to stay or to leave.”
Despite this bubbling confidence on the
part of his colleagues, Japanese American physicist Michio Kaku had
little time for such views as Yamashita’s. In an interview soon after
the meltdown, Kaku claimed that,
Smile with upbeat confidence, and the
problem goes away. If people are depressed before radiation, suggests
Yamashita, they will succumb as the negative dramatists they are.
“Stress is not good at all for people who are subjected to radiation.”
Then again, stress could hardly be deemed good for anybody in
particular, irrespective of radiation.
Such fabulously misguided nonsense is
central to the amnesiac context of Fukushima. Makiko Segawa put it
rather poignantly in his contribution in the Asia-Pacific Journal:
initial enthusiastic snaps and coverage by the press corps, an
insatiable lust for disaster imagery, quietened in due course. Writing a
year after the disaster, Segawa noted how “the journalists have packed
up and gone and by accident of design Japan’s government seems to be
mobilizing its agenda, aware that it is under less scrutiny.”[3]
Robert Jacobs similar notes that
Fukushima conforms to that litany of disasters that has afflicted the
human experience, a matter of rejection and experience rather than
learning and adapting. “Fukushima is taking its place alongside the
many forgotten nuclear disasters of the last 70 years.”[4]
Sociologist Celine Marie Pascale of the American University, on scouring some 2,100 news stories from four media outlets (The New York Times, Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Politico) came to the conclusion that a strategy of minimisation was underway.[5]
The implications of such an event had to be downplayed, de-emphasising
the risk of massive contamination and environmental disaster. A mere 6
per cent of the articles examined the health implications of the event.
A necessary process of mendacity has to
come into play. The Tokyo Electric Power Plant (TEPCO), Japan’s largest
power company and owner of the affected power plants, initially denied
the existence of meltdowns when it knew three had taken place. It was a
process of deception that continued for three months after the event, a
situation made even more absurd for the fact that hundreds of thousands
were evacuated in the vicinity. It is a disaster episode that keeps on
giving.
Even in March 2015, their reassurances
seemed less than comforting. Chief Decommissioning Officer Naohiro
Masuda would claim rather blandly that, “Even if some contaminated water
remains, I feel that we can reduce a substantial amount of risk.”[7]
The nuclear genie is a creature that
encourages the lie in planning establishments. There are lies about
safety; there are lies about legacies. As Jacobs suggests, the
Disneyfication of disaster sites affected by the nuclear or atomic
scourge is all too real. The Manhattan Project that led to the
development of the atomic weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki became
“Disney theme parks of American exceptionalism”. The quest for the
nuclear option in both the military and energy contexts saw massive
environmental degradation.
Even now, the ghostly sense of
Fukushima should be a reminder of errors and negligence rather than
dismissal and indifference. Jacobs suggests a simple but necessary
formula to combat nuclear amnesia: see the impacts of radiation exposure
“before they become vaguely visible as cancers nestled in health
population statistics”.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Notes:
- http://www.spiegel.de/
international/world/studying- the-fukushima-aftermath- people-are-suffering-from- radiophobia-a-780810.html - http://www.democracynow.org/
2011/4/13/expert_despite_ japanese_govt_claims_of - http://apjjf.org/2012/10/19/
Makiko-Segawa/3752/article. html - http://apjjf.org/2016/05/
Jacobs.html - https://isaconf.confex.com/
isaconf/wc2014/webprogram/ Paper39469.html - http://www.american.edu/media/
news/20150310-Fukushima.cfm - http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/
press/corp-com/release/2015/ 1248751_6844.html
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Dr. Binoy Kampmark, Global Research, 2016
Comment on Global Research Articles on our Facebook page
Become a Member of Global Research
No comments:
Post a Comment