First There Was an Earthquake, then There Was no Earthquake
by C. L. Cook
 Monday, July 16th, 2007 will not be a date that will live in infamy. Not at least within the marbled corridors and high haunts of the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) editorial board.
Listening to the Beeb's World Service radio dispatches, aired on the hour, the two massive earthquakes that struck Japan, destroying hundreds of buildings, killing nine at last count, and injuring more than a thousand people rated only a fourth story position in the six minute, eight news item segment.
This despite the marginally pertinent fact of the natural disaster: The temblor proved too much for the local nuclear power plant, triggering fires, a spill of radioactive water, and the venting of radioactive gases.
Rather than lead the news with this, the B.B.C. editors decided
to bang further their seeming constant drum beat for a broader war with
Iran.
Reuters now reports, more than 10,000 people in
Kashiwazaki, Japan are sheltering in evacuation centres in the wake of
yesterday's 6.8 earthquake, and aftershocks are still rocking the area.
The Beeb might be forgiven for not kenning the seriousness of the
situation yesterday, (preferring to air their elaborate agit-prop piece
blasting Iran's mullahs), as Japanese officials had then only admitted
to a "litre and a half" spillage of radioactive material from the
seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear complex, the planet's largest;
but today, with the official admission that: The plant was not designed
to withstand a 6.8 Richter scale quake; a hundred barrels containing
nuclear waste were overturned and burst; 1200, not 1 and a half,
litres of contaminated radioactive waste was released into the sea; and, a cloud of nuclear steam (cobalt-60, iodine and chromium-51) too
was released into the atmosphere, the story still barely rated better
than it did the day before.
Today the Japan earthquake item on the BBC
followed yet another car bombing in Iraq, and the British government's
sabre rattling with Russia over the failure of that country to allow
extradition of a man, ironically enough, they charge murdered another
Russian with a radioactive isotope.
Reacting to the disaster and
how it was managed, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe complained about
the company's slow reporting of the spills, saying;
"Nuclear power plants can only be operated with the trust of the people."
Adding;
"For this, if something happens they need to report on it thoroughly and quickly."
Anyone at the BBC listening?
UPDATE: Japanese officials have issued a shut-down order on the plant. Electricity shortages are predicted throughout the country.
UPDATE II: The financial papers are weighing in on risk, while the Japanese auto industry, first among others wonders what next, but environmentalists and nuclear opponents have the most to worry over, as the new estimate of the radioactive potency of the water sluiced into the sea is at least twice that first reported.
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