What's Tepco's Story Now?

Two things in one day have started my fist a-shaking.

First, I read in the wee hours of the morning before sleep but after a lot of wine that Japan's nuclear disaster continues to rage without any moment for rest and respite.  Oh, right, because it's powered by nuclear rods which didn't come equipped with an on/off switch.  When I read this article from the Radio New Zealand site that reported "radiation levels 10 million times higher than it should be for water inside the reactor," I immediately slurred an epithet directed toward the owners of the Tokyo Electric Power Company and then I took an aspirin because me and the vino are fair-weather friends.

Then, after a short sleep fueled by fitful dreams of teenagers-- always a nightmarish addition to sleep vision-- camping on my deck and practicing embarrassing hip hop moves, I awoke to this BBC article and video which describes the frightening spike-- an order of magnitude above appropriate radiation levels-- as a mistake.  Okay.  I guess.  But, really?  Do we just keep accepting this disjointed and anorexic information at face value?  Or maybe it's time to do some fist-shaking?

After admitting its mistake and offering an apology (which, really, has to be as welcome as the pimply cousin who has to play bad piano at Christmas), Tepco revised the levels measured to 100,000 times normal.  In their revision, I can't help but think that there's too much soothing apology and too little straightforward explanation of the continued danger presented by this dire situation.  I'm certainly happy that the radiation levels were incorrectly read last night, but the levels now reported-- 100,000 times higher than what would be tolerated normally-- still demand a serious gut check.  A worker spending an hour face-to-face with that kind of radioactivity would be exposed to four times the acceptable level of radiation for an entire year.  Meanwhile, incomprehensible explanations are being offered for those elevated levels: yes, it's fuel rods; yes, they've temporarily melted down; no, there are no leaks.  Maybe it was the big wave that washed the water out from around the rods into these now ominous puddles.  Maybe.  Maybe it was a radioactive supervillain who took a piss into the reactor.  Maybe!

I feel immensely sorry for the Japanese people who are so altruistic, even in the face of tragedy, and yet somehow not provided the full story they deserve in their recovery.  No matter how patient or pragmatic a population may be, it still deserves correct information and it deserves a game plan.  What happens next?  Is Tepco attempting to recover functionality in the hope that the plant can be used again?  Is Tepco the appropriate actor to police its own disaster?  Will Tepco try to save the land for its future use?  Will it be contaminated for decades?

This ProPublica article helpfully suggests that the effects of the nuclear disaster will not spread beyond a local reach.  Granted, the article is now 10 days old and relies heavily on experts based in the U.S.  But a  positive point that deserves repetition is that the cores are cooler now, lacking the same energy they would have had when operational.  So, while contamination remains possible, the effects of even a worst-case scenario meltdown would be manageable with prompt evacuation of additional areas.

So, maybe that's good.  But, wouldn't it feel a whole lot better if this kind of analysis came from Japan?  Because, as much as I like to think that the overseas experts' assessments are correct, I can't help but suspect that what the experts call "manageable" might be mismanaged by Tepco at this point.  And because of that, I'm shaking my fist at them.

And finally, while still muttering epithets though not influenced by copious amounts of wine, I'm also shaking my fist at anyone who thinks that private enterprise can be expected to properly take care of our social welfare.  Because, frankly, that's not in their interest.  Even when their society is the most altruistic among us.

We can't replace what's lost but we can help restore It (hopefully).

In my last post, I remembered my friends in Japan, and prayed that they were okay.  It had been too many years that were full of too many stories they should have heard, too many parties they should have attended, and too many moments that would have loved their company.  Still, the years stuttered by.  I've noticed they become more fluid, gathering speed as they amass.  I wish that wasn't the case.

I'm so relieved to learn that both Sachi and Masa are happy and healthy and raising families far from the destruction unleashed by the March 11 quake and tsunami.  And I'm happy the distance that time wedged between us collapsed as quickly a moment.  And maybe it was only just a moment after all.

Although my friends are okay, the friends of many others are not.  The families of others are not.  Please take a moment to donate anything you can to the recovery efforts.  There are still 500,000 people without homes.  That means half a million people without the clothes in their closets, the food in their cupboards, the keepsakes from happier times and mementos of loved ones who've passed, the bundles of letters, the albums of photos, the stacks of read books and walls of painted memories.  For all these people, the anchors we drop to secure our pasts have been cut.  They'll be fine, thankfully.  But life, for them, has been interrupted.

And then there are those who remain missing or have died.  Almost 10,000 are confirmed dead and another 12,000 are missing.  When I was a little girl, maybe 7 years old, I read about 250 marines killed in Beirut and tried to understand exactly what that meant.  I imagined all the kids in my classroom lining up on the field.  And I added the fourth-graders in the class next door.  Then I added the kindergartners.  That only got me 70 but it was too many already.  I stopped lining up kids in my head because I couldn't bear to imagine 250 of us wiped away from that day, from recess, and dinner with our moms at night, and bike rides back to school in the morning.

I thought about trying to line up groups of people to fathom the loss of 10,000 people in a single, devastating event but I couldn't even start.  Instead, I made a donation, in the hope that the recovery and reconstruction in Japan will be quick, and that people will rise from the suffering, and that they will begin to find new mementos and keepsakes to remind them of their hopes for the future.

From the U.S., you can make easy donations of $10 to several organizations by text as follows:

• American Red Cross: text REDCROSS to 90999  
• Save the Children: text JAPAN to 20222
• Mercy Corps: text MERCY to 25383

The mobile giving campaign of American Red Cross is organized by the mGive Foundation.  The campaigns for Save the Children and Mercy Corps is organized by Mobile Giving.

From New Zealand, the NZ Red Cross has started a campaign to collect donations to benefit the Japanese Red Cross.  You may consider donating to both the Japan relief efforts as well as the continuing work of the NZ Red Cross in Christchurch.