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It may take more than just one speech by the prime minister, Naoto Kan, to persuade Japan that the worst is now over
Japan has been shaken by more than 400 strong aftershocks since the earthquake and tsunami hit a month ago. Hard on the heels of a collective silent prayer on Monday to mourn the loss of an estimated 28,000 people, there was another shock: the decision to put the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors on a par with the explosion at Chernobyl. This is not only an admission that the amount of radiation released is of a new order of magnitude (although it is still only a 10th of that form the Soviet accident). It is also a marker for the future. It could take Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) months to get the stricken reactors and spent-fuel-rod pools under control, and as radiation continues to leak, the total amount could, it is feared, exceed the levels of the 1986 disaster.
Has the pendulum been made to swing too far the other way, by the very people who dismissed comparisons with Chernobyl only weeks ago? In many ways, Fukushima bears little comparison to the world's worst nuclear accident. The explosion and fire at Chernobyl sent parts of the reactor core high into the atmosphere in a plume that drifted over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and western Europe. The contamination around Fukushima could potentially spell a terminal blow for the communities around it, as we report today, but those communities lie within 25 miles of the plant and the area affected is still local. The equivalent vehicle for the dispersal of radiation from Fukushima is water rather than air, in this case a rather large quantity of it – the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, the particles are being carried by a strong current away from population centres, dispersing and diluting them. There are unknowns in this too, such as the degree to which radioactivity will become concentrated in the food chain. But in terms of its geographical reach, Fukushima is still, thankfully, a long way behind Chernobyl.
Both disasters have however this in common: weeks after they happened, the experts are no nearer dealing with the root of the problem. They have stopped pumping low-level radioactive water from the buildings into the sea, but they are no closer to restoring the plant's cooling system. And there is potentially three times as much material to contain in Fukushima as there was in Chernobyl. That is the problem of assessing the risk of living with nuclear power. Other industries, such as coal extraction, have incomparably higher death tolls and many more accidents. The risks of a nuclear accident are small in comparison. But when one of them happens, it does so big time.
It may take more than just one speech by the prime minister, Naoto Kan, to persuade Japan that the worst is now over, that the situation at the plant is stabilising, and that people should now concentrate on reconstructing the areas devastated by the tsunami. Formidable problems still remain, such as the 150,000 people still living in emergency shelters – a number that could nearly double if the 130,000 living between 20 and 30 kilometres from the plant have to leave their homes too. Anger at the ever changing assessments of the radiation dangers and advice has so far been directed at Tepco. The governor of Fukushima prefecture, Yuhei Sato, was so upset he refused to meet Tepco's president, who had travelled to the area to apologise.
The Japanese have responded to the worst disaster to befall them in modern times stoically – some, such as the workers who volunteered to stay in the stricken plant, heroically. It has been a month from hell for people who have had little time to mourn the loss of their families and their homes, let alone devise new lives for themselves. But their test has only just begun, as the impact on the economy starts to show through. It could be that the nation finds heart and fresh purpose in the reconstruction, but it will take massive amounts of will and discipline to ensure that it does.