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No.121
06/13/12

Fukushima Daiiche - from nuclear power plant to nuclear weapon #1

by Anthony Hall Our world is faced with a crisis that has never before been envisaged in its whole existence The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe. Albert Einstein, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 1946 Albert Einsteins Warning and the Ominous Fate of Fukushima Daiichi As the bad news gradually spreads that the debacle at Fukushima nuclear power plant #1 is becoming more perilous rather than less so, the words of Albert Einstein come to mind. Recall that the legendary physicist, Einstein, helped to set in motion the Manhattan Project whose personnel designed and built the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In his letter to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939 Einstein warned that if the United States did not enter and win the race to harness the destructive potential of atomic weaponry, Germany would almost certainly do so. The Manhattan Project became a primary prototype for the Research and Development R&D partnerships linking the US government and for-profit corporations in what a Dwight D. Eisenhower would later describe as the military-industrial complex. Einstein himself did not directly participate in this huge initiative aimed at defeating the Axis powers linking Japan with Germany and Italy. One of the twentieth centurys most iconographic thinkers watched from the sidelines as other physicists and technologists ruined Japans oldest operating nuclear power plant. The evidence grows every day that this local incident extends to national, regional and global chain reactions that one way or another will end Japan as we have known it, and will transform our world in ways that are difficult even to imagine at this early stage of the crisis. The direction and quality of this transformation depends very much on whether we can transform our way of thinking to adapt to the transformations brought about by our explorers of science and the innovators of technology that travel in their wake. By charting a course heading deep into inner space and tapping the volatile energy sources emanating from matters molecular constitution our civilization has been altered in ways that put us face to face with Einsteins prophecy. The four-decades-old installation on Japans eastern coast was, at the moment of Fukushima #1s destruction, a virtual museum of nuclear technology. The design of the six GE Mark I reactors had been lifted from that of the power plant developed in the early 1950s for the US Navys first nuclear submarine. As the tsunami hit, one of these antique GE reactors, number 3, was filled with the newest generation of plutonium-laced Aveda MOX fuel rods. A basic ingredient of nuclear bombs, plutonium isotypes are sprinkled among the 500 or so radionuclides currently being spread into air, ocean and groundwater from the massive explosions that transformed the Fukushima Daiichi power plant into the worlds largest and most menacing nuclear weapon. In Japanese daiichi means number one. Fukushimi nuclear power plant #2, 1

applied many of Einsteins theories to the building of atomic weaponry. After Japan lay in ruins, not only from the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also from the massive carpet bombing of Tokyo and several other urban centers, Einstein went public with his fears and anxieties. In famous passages that have been subject to various translations and paraphrasing Einstein observed, Our world is faced with a crisis that has never before been envisaged in its whole existence The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe. Albert Einstein worried that human ways of thinking could not be made to adapt to the changes brought to the world by the tapping of the enormous energy sources emanating from the molecular constitution of inner space. Japan as Laboratory There have been many previews of the catastrophe anticipated by Einstein, after 1945 and before March 3, 2011 (3/3/11), the day an earthquake and tsunami set in motion a chain reaction of crises that

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Fukushima Daini, is also situated on the Pacific coast about seven miles closer to Tokyo than Fukushima #1. Fukushima #2 also incurred major damage on 3/3/ 11. Presently all 54 nuclear power plants in Japan save one are completely shut down. There is every reason to suspect that the vital information about the full extent of the nuclear disaster in Japan is still being kept from the public; that the lifethreatening damage to Japans nuclear infrastructure does not end with Fukushima #1. The lack of public trust in an industry notorious for its lies, secrecy, military

underpinnings, and lack of credible regulation is infusing resolve into the growing movement within Japan and around the world demanding that the nuclear power grid in one of the worlds most unstable geological regions should never be switched back on. The growing evidence of increased frequency and severity of earthquakes in Japan with attending tsunami dangers adds urgency to the argument for the permanent decommissioning of nuclear installations that should never have been built in the first place. Some fundamental shift seems to taken place in the tectonic plates underlying this unstable region.

The Fukushima Debacle is Only in Its Infantcy The growing realization that the worst of the Fukushima debacle lies in the future rather than in the past puts in sharp relief the pertinence of Einsteins observation. Indeed, the prophetic nature of Einsteins warning is starkly reflected in the failure of so many in government, in the media, in the academy, and especially in the richly-funded inner sanctums of the nuclear industry, to respond appropriately to the terrifying implications of what is going so terribly wrong at Japans spewing Fukushima #1 power plant.

Maine Republic Free State News, 3 Linnell Circle, Brunswick, Maine 04011 http://maine-patriot.com