Why is the potential turning point of 3/11 being allowed to slip away? via The Japan Times

Dried Anpo persimmons from Fukushima Prefecture are famed for staying fresh and juicy. However, for the second successive autumn, 90 percent of the crop has had to be discarded due to it registering radioactive contamination levels above legally set limits.

Mushrooms, a staple of Japanese cuisine, have now been found with unacceptable levels of radioactive cesium as far away from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, whose explosions and three reactor meltdowns caused the contamination, as Aomori and Nagano prefectures — several hundred kilometers away.

It is clear that the dangers lurking in the food we eat in this country have by no means been eliminated.

Now victims of radioactive contamination in Fukushima have come together to confront the nuclear power plant’s owner and operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., and the Japanese government, that, as they see it, have together neglected their welfare.

[…]

“Even before 3/11 (the date of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011), Japan was in a state of collapse. A major cause of this was certainly the deteriorating framework of political parties, the bureaucracy and business that has prevailed since the Meiji Era (1868-1912); a breaking down that led to the catastrophic events in Fukushima.

“Faced with this catastrophe, many people concluded that this social and political deterioration had to be remedied and Japan’s energy and nuclear power policies fundamentally changed. We are witnessing a once-in-a-century opportunity where such change is possible.”

Until 3/11, Japanese governments turned a blind eye to the realities and pitfalls of nuclear power generation. Concomitant dangers were papered over by members of the so-called nuclear village, a gathering of mountebank-scholars and sycophants in the subsidized sway of the nuclear cartel.

What happened in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the tsunami it triggered was no “accident,” Iida maintains. “The history of nuclear fuel-cycle efforts is marked by failures, fabrications and perverted policy,” he contends.

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