Just a month ago, we wrote a first short story about the Fukushima disaster, comparing it to Chernobyl with a question mark, read " Fukushima nuclear disaster, the other Chernobyl? the 15/03/2011 at 11:49 ″. Today this question mark is no longer relevant since the Japanese authorities have classified the Fukushima disaster at INES level 7. 7 is the level reached by Chernobyl. The highest level of a nuclear accident.

The situation for a month has therefore worsened, we followed it as much as possible in the topic dedicated to disaster that no less than 1000 responses in one month! This is a record for our forums!

Fukushima devastated, similar to a bombing! Source.

But with Libya war, the French mass media have largely ousted the nuclear disaster in favor of the latter. It is to be asked if the Lybian intervention was not accelerated by the French authorities for this purpose (France is the country whose electricity is the most "nuclear" in the world)! But we must also admit that, on the Japanese side, the transparency of information on the evolution of the situation is not there. Read this chronological article from Le Monde: Fukushima, 1 month of communication errors...

The situation seems still somewhat controlled! So the wildest hypotheses are considered, such as, by the US, to bomb the power station to "drown" it in the ocean!! Do not miss a toupee, Areva took the opportunity to unveil to the public its project " Flex Blue ”transportable nuclear reactor and… submarine! Arguing that water was the best way to reduce the risk of radioactive leakage… and marine life?

The lessons of the disaster

Even if the situation is not yet stabilized, we can already learn lessons from this disaster! We learned that, in the past, Tepco had had maintenance problems, concealed information on security, was the subject of various corruption ... Since the disaster, minimization of the seriousness of the situation seems to be required and above all it appears. a lack of "good decisions" ... we "tinker" by trying to save the industrial tool in defiance of health security!

So if the couple "earthquake + tsunami" is a great "bad luck", the main responsible for the disaster and its aggravation would it not be "wild capitalism"? The one who places profits well before human security? Continuation and development of this reflection in the topic: the lessons of Fukushima and energy and industrial globalization.

Néamoins this catastrophe the economic impacts are global, such as the increase in the price of oil can also be taken as an opportunity! The opportunity to improve the "system", to change our mentalities, to do without this energy, to reduce energy consumption ...

At the individual level, each of us can, for example, choose to stop heating with (nuclear) electricity as much as possible: by changing our heating mode (and sustainable alternative to electric heating are varied), by signing a green contract or even more simply by reducing your thermostat ...

Our research during this “nuclear month” also made us discover a 1961 video interview with Boris Pregel, nuclear engineer, who wanted to place urban nuclear plants in the city. A very instructive interview with the current hindsight, to be weighed against, on the contrary, the behavior of quebecois decision rejecting the nuclear solution.

Towards the end of the Anthropocene?

Chernobyl, the final balance was estimated between 500 and 1000 billion, contributed to the fall of communism in the USSR. We were told that it was the catastrophe of a dying economic system that could never happen in the West: we had been lied to ...

What if today's capitalism is as dying as the communism of the day? Seen the recent successive crises of the economic and financial system, it is possible to think that Fukushima will contribute to the evolution of "bad capitalism", extreme capitalism, that which places the profits of a minority well before the well-being of the majority ...

Evolution, we hope, towards a more “human” capitalism… maybe more econological…

It is still free to dream and we are not the only ones to do so since the World headlined an article the end of the anthropocene...

Christophe Martz

Learn more and return links:
- Topic of follow-up of chronological evolution in Fukushima
- Images, maps and graphics on Fukushima
- Comparison of deaths by type of energy
- Understanding nuclear energy
- The lessons of Fukushima and globalization
- Interview with Boris Pregel
- The non-nuclear in Quebec
- Balance sheet and Chernobyl costs
- Understanding the economic and financial crises
- Fukushima or the end of the Anthropocene