Nearly five years after what is considered the worst “industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is still dealing with serious meltdown problems at its Fukushima, Japan plant.
According to a Truthout report, nuclear expert Arnold Gundersen says Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed…that are all in desperate need of being cooled.” Because of this need, TEPCO has been using hundreds of tons of groundwater that it now has to dispose of as radioactive waste.
TEPCO ‘s solution to that problem is creating potentially bigger problems by dumping this waste into the Pacific Ocean, which could wreak havoc on the US West Coast indefinitely.
Princeton nuclear expert Dr. M.V. Ramana told Truthout that “TEPCO's actions should serve as evidence that organizations that seek to profit from running a nuclear plant are not always the best ones to manage accidents or cleanup.” He says TEPCO’s performance prior to the accident put short-term profits ahead of safety, which he adds is representative of “a number of other utilities, all of whom have conflicting priorities." He says TEPCO just got caught, "while others have escaped, at least so far, due to luck."
A 2013 opinion piece in Japan Times show that many, before now, wanted the Janpanese government to intervene in handling the stricken plant. If Japan finds another group could do a better job, they should be in charge.
Sign this petition to request that Japan conduct an independent investigation of TEPCO's efforts and -if beneficial to potential victims - replace TEPCO with another company.
To Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority:
According to Science Time you were quoted as saying during an April, 2013 interview that “The Fukushima Daiichi plant remains in an unstable condition, and there is concern that we cannot prevent another accident,”
Now almost three years later, reports on the continuing problems with the cleanup indicate that TEPCO has made little progress toward either stablizing conditions to ensure public protection or dealing with the daily “water that keeps pouring into the reactor at the rate of some 75 gal. a minute.“ Nor does it seem to have a safe solution to disposing of the hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive wastewater that has accumulated.
Therefore, we the undersigned, insist that it is time for Japan to conduct an investigation to determine if TEPCO should be replace with another company to handle the cleanup.
Thanks for you time.
