Pesek: Japan Nuclear Mobsters Don’t Share Pain via Bloomberg view

A year after an earthquake in Japan (JGDPAGDP) touched off the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, here’s the question on my mind: Who’s going to jail?

The news media are asking the obvious and safe questions ahead of March 11: How well did the government respond? Whither the devastated northeast? What’s the economic effect? When might the 52 of 54 nuclear reactors mothballed since then reopen?

This barrage of “anniversary” articles misses the point. Anniversaries commemorate events in the past, ones for which there is a modicum of closure. Radiation is still venting into the air around Fukushima. Makeshift equipment, some held in place by tape, is keeping vital reactor systems operating. Is Japan’s 3/11 history? Not unless we change the definition.

What the first anniversary of the disaster requires is a dose of accountability. We need a few good perp walks by current and past Tokyo Electric Power Co. executives, whose arrogance, negligence and corruption sent radiation clouds Tokyo’s way. Next on the docket should be the government officials who enabled what more closely resembles an organized crime syndicate than an energy sector.

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