In Japan, just over a week ago, thousands of bags filled with debris from the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown were swept into a river during the recent typhoon.
The facility where the bags were stored was flooded with torrential rainfall and heavy winds caused by the storm, named “Hagibis,” one of the most powerful typhoons recorded in Japan over the past 20 years.
The city of Tamura’s government could not say just how much of the nuclear-tainted debris ended up in the river, which is about 100 yards from the storage facility.
No covering had been placed over the bags as a precaution.
The three-reactor meltdown eight years ago was one of the worst environmental disasters in the country’s history. The flooding in that event was caused by an earthquake, as was the typhoon in this case.
The recent flooding was responsible for destroying nearly 10,00 homes and at least 74 deaths.
The debris in the bags washed into the river consisted of topsoil, leaves, and plants contaminated from the Fukushima reactor’s meltdown. Only a small amount of the bags have been recovered, and some had already split apart, releasing the debris into the river.
Nearby city officials plan to meet with the Environment Ministry to determine potential harmful effects from the significant amount of nuclear-contaminated debris still unaccounted for.
The official word from the ministry is: “The concentration of radioactive materials is relatively low and has little impact on the environment.”
In related news, some of the more than one million tons of contaminated water collected from the Fukushima meltdown will soon be dumped into the Pacific Ocean.
Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power says that it is running out of room to store the contaminated water and, according to Japan’s environment minister, “The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it.”
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The Fukushima crisis barely gets any coverage in the West’s mainstream media.
For example, absent are the rising tensions between South Korea and Japan over the radiation contamination in various foods from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant and how it is potentially undercutting Tokyo’s effort to promote the 2020 Olympics.
On a grander scale, the reported contamination of the seas, fish, wildlife, etc. of this unprecedented nuclear disaster, which is getting worse and for which there are no solutions, is a grave threat to all living things.