The Rape of Fukushima Dai-Ichi
[link to www.counterpunch.org]

[snip]

Dressed all in white from head to toe (including a respirator), it was a shotgun wedding. Or worse, a rape. But one way or the other, U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials were out to force themselves and their radiation on a helpless Japan — again. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945. More than a hundred thousand dead, perhaps as many born deformed, or stillborn. Then there was Monju in 1995, and Tokaimura in 1997, and again in 1999. And then Fukushima Dai-ichi, 2011.

And now they’re back. The NRC delegation wants Japan to restart more of its nuclear reactors. They’ve been pushing Japan for more than a year, but the citizens of Japan have been opposing restart vehemently.

The NRC continues to work in collusion with the nuclear industry to keep old, dilapidated nuclear power plants open forever — 20 year licenses automatically become 40, then 60, then who-knows-what. It doesn’t seem to matter to the NRC that everywhere they look, reactors are leaking tritium. It doesn’t seem to matter that there is a “waste confidence” issue that federal judges have ruled needs to be resolved. And it doesn’t seem to matter than all over America, nuclear power plants are crumbling due to age. Parts are rusting out and failing abruptly (Davis-Besse’s “hole in the reactor pressure vessel head” in 2002 is a classic example, and Vermont Yankee’s collapsed cooling system in 2007 is another). Major components have failed at numerous nuclear power plants, and it’s only a matter of time before there’s a U. S. meltdown. Will it be San Onofre?