BY ETHAN INDIGO SMITH
It’s been three years this month since three nuclear reactors melted down in Fukushima, Japan, and the situation remains highly unstable. After the initial meltdowns and release of radiation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency turned off public access to radiation monitors in the United States, and Canada did the same. Radiation limits placed on products were subsequently raised, too. This nuclear experiment has led to environmental destruction on a scope beyond the pale, beyond our conventional understanding. It has also led to the elimination of free speech and open reporting of information in Japan. The recently enacted secrecy law was arguably written solely for, and passed only because of, Fukushima. It allows for harsh consequences for whistleblowers and reporters on sensitive issues such as the meltdown, making it difficult to obtain honest information on the biggest ongoing disaster in Japan to ever unfold.
Nuclear experimentation poisons the environment and prevents access to clean water; it also eliminates freedom of speech and free access to information. Nuclear experimentation results in increased illness, belittled truth, and a permanent problem.
Japan turned oligarchical after Fukushima, and the EPA restricted public access to radiation monitoring systems thereafter. Many scientists suggested the Pacific Ocean would dilute radioactive particulate, whereas it only dispersed it. The EPA raised the permissible safe levels of radiation in our food and consumer products, essentially so people would ignore the ongoing calamity. Radioactive particulate and radiation is invisible, but the results of the ongoing catastrophes in Fukushima and the Hanford nuclear waste complex in Washington, and the latest failure of the experiment at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, where plutonium was released into the environment last month, are all too affronting. The results of nuclear experimentation are so horrendous that no one wants to address it, but the real quiet comes from institutional insistence that nuclear energy experimentation is clean.
Based on entropy and decay, nuclear experimentation kills, but it can also brings people together, people who appreciate the mutually threatened freedom of speech and right to clean water. We all have an interest in accessing clean water and free speech, and we have to stand up to demand clean energy. Only when enough individuals say something will the nuclear experiment be properly addressed.
~ Ethan Indigo Smith is an author residing in North Lake Tahoe. He wrote “The Matrix of Four” and “108 Steps to Be in The Zone,” among other books, which are available on amazon.com.
