That's what Fukushima means or the rough translation is - or was - Good Fortune Island. Now it is a sad place with 4 dozen workers standing guard as a half dozen reactors and storage ponds literally burn and melt, where sophisticated and redundant backup safety technology resorted to fire truck pumpers to flood cooling ponds with sea water to keep things from getting even worse. That is a bit of hyperbole of course but measurable, although minor, amounts of radiation well above normal are in the air in Tokyo some 150 miles away. That isn't hyperbole - that is fact.
The sad part, or sadder part past the enormous tragedy is that 20 years from now, when this town of third of a million has come back to life, when a new generation assumes possession of the daily goings on and all the mud and death are memories of a varying degree, this place, this set of reactors, will be standing mute near the sea like Easter Island heads bravely looking out at something that so easily overpowered them and their technology, and they will be the markets of an off limits zone. They will morph into a sacred shrine of sorts where no man can tread. Instead of a vengeful god of power, they will be just an unsafe set of buildings that no one can enter without danger.
I visited Chernobyl shortly after it occurred with some folks from the Ministry of Health, Ukraine. On the way out of Kiev, the conversation centered around how some heroic folks stayed behind to make sure that things shut down safely - safely being a total lie of course - and when we got there and I could see the building torn open by the explosion and a guard at the access point spent a lot of time making sure that we/I knew that we had to change out of our clothes and put on special clothing as we might accidentally brush up against some minor radioactive residue and thus ruin our clothes (another lie as the residue was thick and everywhere) and once closer my tour guides from the Ministry of Health suddenly cut short the visit claiming that some VIP had a schedule change and our lunch was moved up and we had to go.
No one mentioned that our dosimeters were off the charts, with mine picking up about 3 years worth of radiation in 15 minutes, and out we went to the changing rooms, and back in the car and away to the safety of a distant lunch. Of course we got slightly lost and passed inadvertently too close to the housing complex that was built for workers, then evacuated with more guards and gates and dosimeters. It had the same silence as Good Fortune Island which was swept clean of all things not at first by a radioactive wave but one from the sea and to the same effect.
I expect that some areas of Good Fortune Island will have little checkpoints and changing rooms for a while to come and good guides from the Ministry of Health will scurry visitors in and trump up imaginary lunches to get them out in short order.
Good Fortune Island may need a change of name.
Comments
Post a Comment