Thousands evacuate as Fukishima nuclear emergency is declared

[Magda Hassan]

Wow. Thanks for that Keith! I'd forgotten what a brilliant film maker he was and how is that for prescience? Tapping into the collective unconscious as all good artists do.

[Peter Lemkin]

A new strong earthquake just a half-our ago cut the power to all the reactors that had had the power restored [although no cooling pumps have yet be started...and may never]. Also the water cooling of the spent fuel rod pools has had to be stopped and the plant evacuated. It is very likely that Japan will experience HUNDREDS more powerful quakes in the next weeks and months....this is normal when one gets such a huge quake as 9.2 - it takes a long time for the rocks deep below to find a 'comfortable' resting position for a few decades - until the next breakage.

[Magda Hassan]

I heard they are about to extend the exclusion zone but I am not clear by how much. It currently is 20kms but because of the cumulative radiation it is going to be extended. Apparently milk in the US in now showing radiation levels higher than acceptable and no doubt the solution will be to redefine 'acceptable' and not to have the food products destroyed or any changes in nuclear power production. (aka agricultural and energy company profits)

[Peter Lemkin]

I heard they are about to extend the exclusion zone but I am not clear by how much. It currently is 20kms but because of the cumulative radiation it is going to be extended. Apparently milk in the US in now showing radiation levels higher than acceptable and no doubt the solution will be to redefine 'acceptable' and not to have the food products destroyed or any changes in nuclear power production. (aka agricultural and energy company profits)

Yes, they will soon move it to at least 30Km - some foreign experts have suggested 50km....which in small Japan is a large area! No one publicly, anyway, really knows the radiation readings [levels] and species [types of radioactives] are in the area - or even at and around the plant. We get little pieces, very incomplete and the worst ones are usually retracted as 'mistakes' in reading the meters, or some such nonsense. They read out in scientific notation on a digital display that is put in memory - very hard to make a mistake about!!!!!!

As to you guess that they will just raise the 'acceptable' levels in foods....they probably will in a round-about way....by saying that it would take X years of eating/drinking Y in order to exceed the safe usage...and as the whole world will soon end - and their chances of getting killed in as a soldier in some Imperial War or a car crash or shot by the police are much greater, and anyway; who cares! The PTB don't mileymad:

[Magda Hassan]

Japan raises nuclear alert level to seven

Fukushima Daiichi power plant emergency is now on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl warning

• Justin McCurry in Tokyo
  
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 April 2011 01.54 BST Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station where the radiation level warning has been raised to a maximum of seven. Photograph: EPA
  
  Japan is to raise the nuclear alert level at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to a maximum seven, putting the emergency on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
  Nuclear safety officials had insisted they had no plans to raise the severity of the crisis from five the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 according to the international nuclear and radiological event scale.
  But the government came under pressure to raise the level at the plant after Japan's nuclear safety commission estimated the amount of radioactive material released from its stricken reactors reached 10,000 terabecquerels per hour for several hours following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's northeast coast on 11 March. That level of radiation constitutes a major accident, according to the INES scale.
  The scale, devised by the international atomic energy agency, ranks nuclear and radiological accidents and incidents by their severity from one to seven.
  Japan also temporarily issued tsunami warnings for parts of the north-east coast on Monday following another powerful aftershock. It is exactly a month since a magnitude-9 earthquake created huge waves that left an estimated 28,000 people dead or missing. NHK, the public broadcaster, warned of a tsunami up to 2 metres high on the coast of Ibaraki prefecture after the magnitude-7.1 quake.
  Although the waves were estimated to be much smaller than those that hit on 11 March, the meteorological agency warned people in Ibaraki to evacuate to higher ground. The warnings were later lifted.
  The aftershock came as the government said it was widening the evacuation zone around the plant due to high levels of accumulated radiation and fears about long-term effects on residents' health. A fire that broke out at the plant's number four reactor at 6.38am local time was extinguished, the operator, Tokyo Electric Power company (Tepco), said.
  More than 14,000 people are still missing following the disaster, and 152,000 survivors are living in evacuation centres.
  The prime minister, Naoto Kan, placed a message in newspapers in several countries, including Britain, China and the United States, thanking the international community for its support. Kan said the generosity shown towards Japan in its time of need demonstrated the human capacity for kizuna, or bonds of friendship, and vowed that Japan would emerge a stronger nation.
  "We deeply appreciate the kizuna our friends from around the world have shown and I want to thank every nation, entity, and you personally, from the bottom of my heart," he said.
  The government's chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said the current 12-mile (20km) evacuation zone would be extended to five other communities, including the village of Iitate, which lies 25 miles from the plant.
  
  
  

[Peter Lemkin]

Break out the radioactive champagne! I and many others have been saying this for a month...it took the Japanese govt. a 'while' to see the inevitable. It will end the same way as Chernobyl x 6, too. There they buried one in concrete - here all six. The only problem is that in the meantime 4-5 of those reactors could still experience complete meltdown [and huge releases] and even AFTER being put in a sarcophagus it is still too near the ocean and the water table to not continually leak radiation down and out! :what: Make that an EIGHT on a one to seven scale! :mexican:

There have been four new strong earthquakes in the last 48 hours. Each time, they evacuate the plant and each time slightly more damage is done and the cooling of the overheating cores and waste pools is halted. If they get one or two more very strong aftershocks [very likely], one of the six containment vessels or spent fuel pools could crack....after that....I don't even want to think....those scenarios are possible even without new earthquakes. They now expect the total minimum [!] release of radiation will equal Chernobyl....only over a longer time period. The TOTAL amount of radioactive materials in the plant that COULD be released is many thousands of times that of Chernobyl...it depends on the scenario....and still they have not started building the containment structure....amazing!

The 'party-line' in Japan and most MSM around the world is that 'only' 10% of the amount of radiation released at Chernobyl has so far [sic] been released in Japanernobyl....and if one counts to air, that is probably close [no one really knows - or are telling]...BUT if one adds in the radioactives put into the ocean it is definitely now EQUAL to Chernobyl and this will, at best, be ongoing for another year. [If they'd get going, they could likely entomb the plant in 6-8 months; if they don't get going, look at a year or more.....once they begin!] - I don't see how they will ever stop the radiation into the groundwater and sea.....maybe there is a 'fix', but it will be very expensive and quite an engineering feat!!!!

[Keith Millea]

10 Apr 2011 A giant mass of floating debris swept out into the ocean by the Japanese tsunami could reach the West Coast in three years, researchers at the University of Hawaii are predicting. Thankyou to CBC Updates can be found there- http://www.cbc.ca/news/

http://therealnews.com/t2/component/seyr...nk&id=9617

Video:
[video]http://youtu.be/XgKc-gbJ-yk[/video]

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: Japan has raised the severity rating of its nuclear crisis to the highest level, matching the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The level 7 rating signifies a major nuclear accident. At a news conference today, an official from the Tokyo Electric Power Company said, quote, "The radiation leak has not stopped completely, and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl."

For an update on the situation, we go to Tokyo. Thomas Breuer, head of the Climate and Energy Unit for Greenpeace Germany, joins us by Democracy Now! video stream. He's part of a field team of radiation monitors in Japan.

Thomas Breuer, Greenpeace has been talking about the situation being more severe for a number of weeks now. Explain what it means for Japan to lift the crisis level from 5 to the very highest, to 7.

THOMAS BREUER: Yeah, Amy, maybe first of all, the idea from the INES scale, which was introduced after the Chernobyl accident, is exactly to inform the public in a timely manner. And Greenpeace has done calculations with scientists already three weeks ago, where we figured out that this accident is in a scale 7 accident. And we are wondering why the government of Japan needs three weeks to come to the same conclusion, especially because they must have way better data than we have. So, what it means now, they wasted three weeks of not informing the public about the real, real risks of this accident.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, though, talk about what 7 means. I mean, we're talking about the continuing nuclear catastrophe that's unfolding in Japan being equal to the worst nuclear disaster in history: Chernobyl.

THOMAS BREUER: So, from my point of view, it is not equal to Chernobyl, it is way worse, because we are, like, facing three reactors totally, or partly, destroyed. A fourth reactor has a problem with the spent fuel, which had a huge explosion. And when we did the calculations like three weeks ago, we figured out that, depending of course about the spread between the three reactors, each of these reactors could be rated as a INES scale 7 accident, because the INES scale does not even consider a multiple accident, what we are seeing here in Fukushima. So, that is way worse than what we've seen in Chernobyl. Another point there, which is very important, so in Chernobyl was more or less rural area around the reactor. But Fukushima is in a densely populated area, so millions of people are living around it. So, even that makes it worse and more difficult to manage.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think Japan needs to do right now?

THOMAS BREUER: So, there are urgency measures. So, it is now clear that, since we did our field research, we warned the government that there are a lot of cities and villages outside the 20-kilometers evacuation zone where the radiation levels are so high that people need urgently to be evacuated, especially children and pregnant women, because they are the most vulnerable part of the population to radiation. And so, they have to do that now. They have to screen the whole Fukushima area, where there are other hot spots which need to be evacuated.

And then they have towhat they haven't done so farreally, really explain to people who are still living there what to do, how to behave. So, we were approached from a lot of farmers during our field work, asking us whether we can come to their fields and do food testing, because they have no idea whether they still can eat the food or sell it or whatsoever. So, that's a very difficult situation. We have been in Fukushima City. That's a city with 340,000 inhabitants, and we found very high levels of radiation in the city all over again. But life seems to be like, on the surface, like normal life, and it has to do with the fact that the government did not put out information, how to behave, what to do. So people are really left alone with this accident, which wasn't caused by them.

AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Breuer, you're in Tokyo right now, but you head the Climate and Energy Unit for Greenpeace Germany. You're speaking to me in the United States, where our president, President Obama, is really pushing a nuclear renaissance for the first time in decades, pushing for the building of nuclear power plants. Talk about the response around the world to what's happened in Japan.

THOMAS BREUER: So, it's not understandable how one can push for nuclear renaissance, especially if you dig into the whole industry. It's, first of all, not compatible with democracy, because the open society, as we are living in, they cannot deal with nuclear, because they are so vulnerable to terrorism and to accidents that there will be always a clash with democracy at the end of the day. And so, Obama should look what is happening in Germany. So, Angela Merkel, even though she used to be quite pro-nuclear, as well, after the accident, she understood the real risks of nuclear power plant, and she closed down immediately eight of the 17 reactors in Germany. And I think that's a responsible way to deal with nuclear: it has to be closed down.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you, Thomas Breuer, for joining us, head of the Climate and Energy Unit for Greenpeace Germany, part of the field team of radiation monitors in Tokyo, Japan.

[Christer Forslund]

Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?
U.S.-Japan security treaty fatally delayed nuclear workers' fight against meltdown

by Yoichi Shimatsu
Global Research, April 12, 2011
Fourth Media (China) - 2011-04-11

Confused and often conflicting reports out of Fukushima 1 nuclear plant cannot be solely the result of tsunami-caused breakdowns, bungling or miscommunication. Inexplicable delays and half-baked explanations from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) seem to be driven by some unspoken factor.
The smoke and mirrors at Fukushima 1 seem to obscure a steady purpose, an iron will and a grim task unknown to outsiders. The most logical explanation: The nuclear industry and government agencies are scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants.
A secret nuclear weapons program is a ghost in the machine, detectable only when the system of information control momentarily lapses or breaks down. A close look must be taken at the gap between the official account and unexpected events.
Conflicting Reports
TEPCO, Japan's nuclear power operator, initially reported three reactors were operating at the time of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Then a hydrogen explosion ripped Unit 3, run on plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (or MOX). Unit 6 immediately disappeared from the list of operational reactors, as highly lethal particles of plutonium billowed out of Unit 3. Plutonium is the stuff of smaller, more easily delivered warheads.


A fire ignited inside the damaged housing of the Unit 4 reactor, reportedly due to overheating of spent uranium fuel rods in a dry cooling pool. But the size of the fire indicates that this reactor was running hot for some purpose other than electricity generation. Its omission from the list of electricity-generating operations raises the question of whether Unit 4 was being used to enrich uranium, the first step of the process leading to extraction of weapons-grade fissionable material.
The bloom of irradiated seawater across the Pacific comprises another piece of the puzzle, because its underground source is untraceable (or, perhaps, unmentionable). The flooded labyrinth of pipes, where the bodies of two missing nuclear workersnever before disclosed to the press were found, could well contain the answer to the mystery: a lab that none dare name.
Political Warfare
In reaction to Prime Minister Naoto Kan's demand for prompt reporting of problems, the pro-nuclear lobby has closed ranks, fencing off and freezing out the prime minister's office from vital information. A grand alliance of nuclear proponents now includes TEPCO, plant designer General Electric, METI, the former ruling Liberal Democratic Party and, by all signs, the White House.
Cabinet ministers in charge of communication and national emergencies recently lambasted METI head Banri Kaeda for acting as both nuclear promoter and regulator in charge of the now-muzzled Nuclear and Industrial Safety Commission. TEPCO struck back quickly, blaming the prime minister's helicopter fly-over for delaying venting of volatile gases and thereby causing a blast at Reactor 2. For "health reasons," TEPCO 's president retreated to a hospital ward, cutting Kan's line of communication with the company and undermining his site visit to Fukushima 1.
Kan is furthered hampered by his feud with Democratic Party rival Ichiro Ozawa, the only potential ally with the clout to challenge the formidable pro-nuclear coalition
The head of the Liberal Democrats, which sponsored nuclear power under its nearly 54-year tenure, has just held confidential talks with U.S. Ambassador John Roos, while President Barack Obama was making statements in support of new nuclear plants across the U.S.
Cut Off From Communications
The substance of undisclosed talks between Tokyo and Washington can be surmised from disruptions to my recent phone calls to a Japanese journalist colleague. While inside the radioactive hot zone, his roaming number was disconnected, along with the mobiles of nuclear workers at Fukushima 1 who are denied phone access to the outside world. The service suspension is not due to design flaws. When helping to prepare the Tohoku crisis response plan in 1996, my effort was directed at ensuring that mobile base stations have back-up power with fast recharge.
A subsequent phone call when my colleague returned to Tokyo went dead when I mentioned "GE." That incident occurred on the day that GE's CEO Jeff Immelt landed in Tokyo with a pledge to rebuild the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant. Such apparent eavesdropping is only possible if national phone carrier NTT is cooperating with the signals-intercepts program of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
The Manchurian Deal
The chain of events behind this vast fabrication goes back many decades.
During the Japanese militarist occupation of northeast China in the 1930s, the puppet state of Manchukuo was carved out as a fully modern economic powerhouse to support overpopulated Japan and its military machine. A high-ranking economic planner named Nobusuke Kishi worked closely with then commander of the occupying Kanto division, known to the Chinese as the Kwantung Army, General Hideki Tojo.
Close ties between the military and colonial economists led to stunning technological achievements, including the prototype of a bullet train (or Shinkansen) and inception of Japan's atomic bomb project in northern Korea. When Tojo became Japan's wartime prime minister, Kishi served as his minister of commerce and economy, planning for total war on a global scale.
After Japan's defeat in 1945, both Tojo and Kishi were found guilty as Class-A war criminals, but Kishi evaded the gallows for reasons unknownprobably his usefulness to a war-ravaged nation. The scrawny economist's conception of a centrally managed economy provided the blueprint for MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry), the predecessor of METI, which created the economic miracle that transformed postwar Japan into an economic superpower.
After clawing his way into the good graces of Cold Warrior John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's secretary of state, Kishi was elected prime minister in 1957. His protégé Yasuhiro Nakasone, the former naval officer and future prime minister, spearheaded Japan's campaign to become a nuclear power under the cover of the Atomic Energy Basic Law.
American Complicity
Kishi secretly negotiated a deal with the White House to permit the U.S. military to store atomic bombs in Okinawa and Atsugi naval air station outside Tokyo. (Marine corporal Lee Harvey Oswald served as a guard inside Atsugi's underground warhead armory.) In exchange, the U.S. gave the nod for Japan to pursue a "civilian" nuclear program.
Secret diplomacy was required due to the overwhelming sentiment of the Japanese public against nuclear power in the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. Two years ago, a text of the secret agreement was unearthed by Katsuya Okada, foreign minister in the cabinet of the first Democratic Party prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama (who served for nine months from 2009-10).
Many key details were missing from this document, which had been locked inside the Foreign Ministry archives. Retired veteran diplomat Kazuhiko Togo disclosed that the more sensitive matters were contained in brief side letters, some of which were kept in a mansion frequented by Kishi's half-brother, the late Prime Minister Eisaku Sato (who served from 1964-72). Those most important diplomatic notes, Togo added, were removed and subsequently disappeared.
These revelations were considered a major issue in Japan, yet were largely ignored by the Western media. With the Fukushima nuclear plant going up in smoke, the world is now paying the price of that journalistic neglect.
On his 1959 visit to Britain, Kishi was flown by military helicopter to the Bradwell nuclear plant in Essex. The following year, the first draft of the U.S.-Japan security was signed, despite massive peace protests in Tokyo. Within a couple of years, the British firm GEC built Japan's first nuclear reactor at Tokaimura, Ibaragi Prefecture. At the same time, just after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the newly unveiled Shinkansen train gliding past Mount Fuji provided the perfect rationale for nuclear-sourced electricity.
Kishi uttered the famous statement that "nuclear weapons are not expressly prohibited" under the postwar Constitution's Article 9 prohibiting war-making powers. His words were repeated two years ago by his grandson, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The ongoing North Korea "crisis" served as a pretext for this third-generation progeny of the political elite to float the idea of a nuclear-armed Japan. Many Japanese journalists and intelligence experts assume the secret program has sufficiently advanced for rapid assembly of a warhead arsenal and that underground tests at sub-critical levels have been conducted with small plutonium pellets.
Sabotaging Alternative Energy
The cynical attitude of the nuclear lobby extends far into the future, strangling at birth the Japanese archipelago's only viable source of alternative energyoffshore wind power. Despite decades of research, Japan has only 5 percent of the wind energy production of China, an economy (for the moment, anyway) of comparable size. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a nuclear-power partner of Westinghouse, manufactures wind turbines but only for the export market.
The Siberian high-pressure zone ensures a strong and steady wind flow over northern Japan, but the region's utility companies have not taken advantage of this natural energy resource. The reason is that TEPCO, based in Tokyo and controlling the largest energy market, acts much as a shogun over the nine regional power companies and the national grid. Its deep pockets influence high bureaucrats, publishers and politicians like Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, while nuclear ambitions keep the defense contractors and generals on its side. Yet TEPCO is not quite the top dog. Its senior partner in this mega-enterprise is Kishi's brainchild, METI.
The national test site for offshore wind is unfortunately not located in windswept Hokkaido or Niigata, but farther to the southeast, in Chiba Prefecture. Findings from these tests to decide the fate of wind energy won't be released until 2015. The sponsor of that slow-moving trial project is TEPCO.
Death of Deterrence
Meanwhile in 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a muted warning on Japan's heightened drive for a nuclear bomb and promptly did nothing. The White House has to turn a blind eye to the radiation streaming through American skies or risk exposure of a blatant double standard on nuclear proliferation by an ally. Besides, Washington's quiet approval for a Japanese bomb doesn't quite sit well with the memory of either Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima.
In and of itself, a nuclear deterrence capability would be neither objectionable nor illegal in the unlikely event that the majority of Japanese voted in favor of a constitutional amendment to Article 9. Legalized possession would require safety inspections, strict controls and transparency of the sort that could have hastened the Fukushima emergency response. Covert weapons development, in contrast, is rife with problems. In the event of an emergency, like the one happening at this moment, secrecy must be enforced at all cost even if it means countless more hibakusha, or nuclear victims.
Instead of enabling a regional deterrence system and a return to great-power status, the Manchurian deal planted the time bombs now spewing radiation around the world. The nihilism at the heart of this nuclear threat to humanity lies not inside Fukushima 1, but within the national security mindset. The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers' fight against meltdown.

Yoichi Shimatsu who is Editor-at-large with the 4th Media is a Hong Kongbased environmental writer. He is the former editor of the Japan Times Weekly. This article is first appeared in the New American Media.

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan tried Tuesday to calm fears about radiation levels and food safety in the region around the heavily damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. His comments came after Japan raised the severity rating of its nuclear crisis to the highest possible level, heightening concerns about the magnitude of the disaster.

Speaking at a news conference to mark one month since the massive earthquake and tsunami devastated the northeastern coast of the country, Japanese Prime Minister Kan said produce from the region around the Fukushima plant is safe to eat despite radiation leaks.

PRIME MINISTER NAOTO KAN: [translated] From now on, people should not fall into an extreme self-restraint mood, and they should live life as normal. To consume products from the areas that have been affected is also a way in which to support the area. We should enjoy the use of such products and support the areas that have been affected. I ask you to do this.

AMY GOODMAN: A spokesperson for the International Atomic Energy Agency said the latest food sample data indicates levels of contamination are below the limits set by domestic authorities. Denis Flory, IAEA spokesperson, also said yesterday Japan's nuclear crisis was not comparable to Chernobyl.

DENIS FLORY: The mechanics of the accidents are totally different. One happened when a reactor was at power, and the reactor containment exploded. In Fukushima, the reactor was stopped, and the containment, even if it may be somehow leaking todayand we do not knowthe containment is here. So this is a totally different accident.

AMY GOODMAN: Japanese officials said they raised the severity level to 7 because of the total release of radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, not because of a sudden deterioration in the situation. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster is the only other nuclear accident rated at the highest level, 7, on a scale developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency to assess nuclear accidents. But officials insist so far the power plant in Japan has released one-tenth as much radioactive material as Chernobyl.

To discuss the situation in Japan, as well as his latest book, we're joined by Dr. Michio Kaku, a Japanese American physicist, a bestselling author, professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York and the City College of New York. His brand new book is Physics of the Future: How Science Will Change Daily Life by 2100.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It's great to see you again.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Glad to be on the show, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about this raising of the category level to 7, on a par with Chernobyl.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, Tokyo Electric has been in denial, trying to downplay the full impact of this nuclear accident. However, there's a formula, a mathematical formula, by which you can determine what level this accident is. This accident has already released something on the order of 50,000 trillion becquerels of radiation. You do the math. That puts it right smack in the middle of a level 7 nuclear accident. Still, less than Chernobyl. However, radiation is continuing to leak out of the reactors. The situation is not stable at all. So, you're looking at basically a ticking time bomb. It appears stable, but the slightest disturbancea secondary earthquake, a pipe break, evacuation of the crew at Fukushimacould set off a full-scale meltdown at three nuclear power stations, far beyond what we saw at Chernobyl.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about exactlyI mean, as a physicist, to explain to peopleexactly what has taken place in Japan at these nuclear power plants.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Think of driving a car, and the car all of a sudden lunges out of control. You hit the brakes. The brakes don't work. That's because the earthquake wiped out the safety systems in the first minute of the earthquake and tsunami. Then your radiator starts to heat up and explodes. That's the hydrogen gas explosion. And then, to make it worse, the gas tank is heating up, and all of a sudden your whole car is going to be in flames. That's the full-scale meltdown.

So what do you do? You drive the car into a river. That's what the utility did by putting seawater, seawater from the Pacific Ocean, in a desperate attempt to keep water on top of the core. But then, seawater has salt in it, and that gums up your radiator. And so, what do you do? You call out the local firemen. And so, now you have these Japanese samurai warriors. They know that this is potentially a suicide mission. They're coming in with hose waterhose watertrying to keep water over the melted nuclear reactor cores. So that's the situation now. So, when the utility says that things are stable, it's only stable in the sense that you're dangling from a cliff hanging by your fingernails. And as the time goes by, each fingernail starts to crack. That's the situation now.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the food, the level of contamination of the food? They are increasingly banning food exports.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: The tragedy is, this accident has released enormous quantities of iodine, radioactive iodine-131, into the atmosphere, like what happened at Chernobyl, about 10 percent the level of Chernobyl. Iodine is water soluble. When it rains, it gets into the soil. Cows then eat the vegetation, create milk, and then it winds up in the milk. Farmers are now dumping milk right on their farms, because it's too radioactive. Foods have to be impounded in the area.

And let's be blunt about this: would you buy food that says "Made in Chernobyl"? And the Japanese people are also saying, "Should I buy food that says 'Made in Fukushima'?" We're talking about the collapse of the local economy. Just because the government tries to lowball all the numbers, downplay the severity of the accident, and that's making it much worse.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to be done now? I mean, one of the biggest problems is secrecy, both with the Tokyo company that runs the plants and also the government, the constant downplaying from the beginning. And yet, there are so many people who have been evacuated, who are demanding compensation. There was just a major protest at TEPCO with the people in the area who have been evaluatedno jobs, no moneysaying, "We demand compensation."

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, TEPCO is like the little Dutch boy. All of a sudden we have cracks in the dike. You put a finger here, you put a finger there. And all of a sudden, new leaks start to occur, and they're overwhelmed.

I suggest that they be removed from leadership entirely and be put as consultants. An international team of top physicists and engineers should take over, with the authority to use the Japanese military. I think the Japanese military is the only organization capable of bringing this raging accident under control. And that's what Gorbachev did in 1986. He saw this flaming nuclear power station in Chernobyl. He called out the Red Air Force. He called out helicopters, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and buried the Chernobyl reactor in 5,000 tons of cement, sand and boric acid. That's, of course, a last ditch effort. But I think the Japanese military should be called out.

AMY GOODMAN: To do...?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Because of the fact that the radiation levels are so great, workers can only go in for perhaps 10 minutes, 15 minutes at a time, and they get their year's dose of radiation. You're there for one hour, and you have radiation sickness. You vomit. Your white corpuscle count goes down. Your hair falls out. You're there for a day, and you get a lethal amount of radiation. At Chernobyl, there were 600,000 people mobilized, each one going in for just a few minutes, dumping sand, concrete, boric acid onto the reactor site. Each one got a medal. That's what it took to bring one raging nuclear accident under control. And I think the utility here is simply outclassed and overwhelmed.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, these workers are in for much longer periods of time.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: That's right. And we don't even know how much radiation levels they're getting, because many areas around the site have no monitors. So we don't even know how much radiation many of these workers are getting. And that's why I'm saying, if you have access to the military, you can have the option of sandbagging the reactor, encasing it in concrete, or at least have a reserve of troops that can go in for brief periods of times and bring this monster under control.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the evacuation zone? Is it big enough?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: It's pathetic. The United States government has already stated 50 miles for evacuating U.S. personnel. The French government has stated that all French people should consider leaving the entire islands. And here we are with a government talking about six miles, 10 miles, 12 miles. And the people there are wondering, "What's going on with the government? I mean, why aren't they telling us the truth?" Radiation levels are now rising 25 miles from the site, far beyond the evacuation zone. And remember that we could see an increase in leukemia. We could see an increase in thyroid cancers. That's the inevitable consequence of releasing enormous quantities of iodine into the environment.

AMY GOODMAN: What has to happen to the plant ultimately?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, in the best-case scenariothis is the scenario devised by the utility itselfthey hope to bring it under control by the end of this year. By the end of this year, they hope to have the pumps working, and the reaction is finally stabilized by the end of this year.

AMY GOODMAN: Oddly, it's sounding a little bit like BP when they were trying to plug up the hole.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: "It will happen. It will happen."

DR. MICHIO KAKU: They're literally making it up as they go along. We're in totally uncharted territories. You get any nuclear engineering book, look at the last chapter, and this scenario is not contained in the last chapter of any nuclear engineering textbook on the planet earth. So they're making it up as they go along. And we are the guinea pigs for this science experiment that's taking place. Then it could take up to 10 years, up to 10 years to finally dismantle the reactor. The last stage is entombment. This is now the official recommendation of Toshiba, that they entomb the reactor over a period of many years, similar to what happened in Chernobyl.

AMY GOODMAN: Entomb it in...?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: In a gigantic slab of concrete. You're going to have to drill underneath to make sure that the core does not melt right into the ground table. And you're going to put 5,000 tons of concrete and sand on top of the flaming reactor.

AMY GOODMAN: Should people be concerned about any food that says "From Japan"?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Not from Japan. But remember, in the area, the sea, we're talking about levels that are millions of times beyond legal levels found right there. However, as you start to get out further, radiation levels drop rather considerably.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to talk about policy in this country. I mean, we are now seeing happening in Japan this horrific event. Japan was the target of the dawn of the Nuclear Age, right?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Your own family mirrors the history of the Nuclear Age. Can you talk just briefly about that, before we talk about current U.S. policy?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Yeah, first of all, I have relatives in Tokyo, and they're wondering about evacuation. In fact, some of my relatives have already evacuated from Tokyo. They have little children. And radiation has already appeared in the drinking water in Tokyo. And so, people are wondering, you know, especially for young children, for pregnant women, should they leave. People are voting with their feet now. A lot of people are voluntarily evacuating from Tokyo, because they simply don't believe the statements of the utility, which have consistently lowballed all the estimates of radiation damage.

AMY GOODMAN: And, though, in the past, in terms of your own family's history, your parents, being interned in the Japanese American internment camps?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: That's right. In California, my parents were interned in the relocation camps from 1942 to 1946, four years where they were put essentially behind barbed wire and machine guns, under the supervision of the United States military.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, you became a nuclear physicist, interestingly enough, and you worked with the people who made the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Yeah. In fact, my high school adviser was Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb. And he arranged for me to get a scholarship to Harvard, in fact, and that began my career as a nuclear scientist. And Edward Teller, of course, wanted me to work on the Star Wars program. He put a lot of pressure and said, "Look, we'll give you fellowships, scholarships. Go to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Livermore National Laboratory. Design hydrogen bombs." But I said no. I said, "I cannot see my expertise being used to advance the cause of war."

AMY GOODMAN: And you've been very outspoken when it comes to nuclear power in the United States. This, of course, has raised major issues about nuclear power plants around the world, many countries saying they're not moving forward. President Obama is taking the opposite position. He really is very much the nuclear renaissance man. He is talking about a nuclear renaissance and has not backed off, in fact reiterated, saying this will not stop us from building the first nuclear power plants in, what, decades.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: Well, there's something called a Faustian bargain. Faust was this mythical figure who sold his soul to the devil for unlimited power. Now, the Japanese government has thrown the dice with a Faustian bargain. Japan has very little fossil fuel reserves, no hydroelectric power to speak of, and so they went nuclear. However, in the United States, we're now poised, at this key juncture in history, where the government has to decide whether to go to the next generation of reactors. These are the so-called gas-cooled pebble bed reactors, which are safer than the current design, but they still melt down. The proponents of this new renaissance say that you can go out to dinner and basically have a leisurely conversation even as your reactor melts down. But it still melts. That's the bottom line.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what do you think should happen? Do you think nuclear power plants should be built in this country?

DR. MICHIO KAKU: I think there should be a national debate, a national debate about a potential moratorium. The American people have not been given the full truth, because, for example, right north of New York City, roughly 30 miles north of where we are right now, we have the Indian Point nuclear power plant, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has now admitted that of all the reactors prone to earthquakes, the one right next to New York City is number one on that list. And the government itself, back in 1980, estimated that property damage would be on the order of about $200 billion in case of an accident, in 1980 dollars, at the Indian Point nuclear power station.

AMY GOODMAN: No private corporation could even build a nuclear power plant: you have to have the taxpayers footing the bill.

DR. MICHIO KAKU: You have to have what is called the Price-Anderson Act, having the United States government guarantee the insurance. Nobody will guaranteenobody will sell an insurance policy for a nuclear power plant, because who can afford a $200 billion accident? That's why the United States government has underwritten the insurance for every nuclear power plant. So the Price-Anderson Act is an act of Congress that mandates the U.S. government, the taxpayers, will underwrite the insurance, because nuclear power stations are not insurable.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Dr. Michio Kaku. We're going to go to break, and when we come back, we want to ask him about, well, his new book, Physics of the Future: How Science Will Change Daily Life by 2100. What would be a day in the life of the future? Is it possible that, oh, the internet can be in your contact lens, that cars will drive themselves? Just what we'll ask Dr. Kaku when we come back. Stay with us.