New Book: RETURN TO FUKUSHIMA
Posted: 11th March 2025
C O M I N G S O O N
A HAUNTING NEW BOOK ON LIFE IN THE SHADOWS OF NUCLEAR DISASTER
“Eloquent and haunting . . . Its searing tableau of immense destruction and decades of danger ahead is all the more relevant today as warfare sweeps back and forth across another country dotted with nuclear power plants, Ukraine.”
―Adam Hochschild
RETURN TO FUKUSHIMA
“Fascinating . . . a compelling message about a crucial question―one so crucial that it bears on the survival of the earth.”
—Noam Chomsky
“Excellent. I would recommend this book to anyone who is as concerned as I am about the ongoing pressure of the international nuclear lobby to construct hundreds of reactors globally as the ‘answer’ to global warming.”
―Helen Caldicott
and get 15% off
Read an excerpt below
Read an excerpt below
2023 was the summer of the atom. Atomic energy was featured in films ranging from Wes Anderson’s Atomic City to Oliver Stone’s Nuclear Now and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Even Greta Gerwig’s Barbie begins her voyage to the real world by becoming conscious of death.
The summer of 2023 was also when Japan began releasing radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. Eighteen Pacific Island nations condemned the release, and China, after accusing Japan of using the ocean as its “personal sewer,” banned the importation of fish from Japan. This was followed by a run on the shelves for iodized salt by people thinking it would protect their thyroid glands from fallout.
The Japanese prime minister assured everyone that the release was harmless, that this was standard practice in the industry, that it had been approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and that Japan, having run out of room, had no choice but to release Fukushima’s “treated” water into the ocean. None of these statements were true, but parsing their untruth requires some explanation.
In 2011, after three of Fukushima’s nuclear reactors melted down and a fourth reactor exploded, the plant was flooded with water to keep more radiation from escaping into the atmosphere. This cooling water, along with water that flows daily into the reactors from the neighboring hills, is currently stored in more than a thousand tanks, three stories high, filled with 1.37 million tons of water. This is three hundred and sixty-two million gallons or the equivalent of five hundred and fifty Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The task of managing the ongoing disaster at Fukushima is shared by the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the reactors but was partly nationalized in 2011. Imagine your local power company managing the world’s worst industrial accident, with more than a hundred thousand people still displaced from their homes and costs mounting toward a trillion dollars. A scandal-plagued, insular company, with no knowledge of how to decommission nuclear reactors, Tepco pretends to expertise that it lacks. On several occasions the company has been caught lying about its work at Fukushima. For years Tepco assured the public that the cooling water at Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushima No. 1, or F1, had been cleaned of radioactivity by an advanced liquid processing system (Alps). In 2018, Tepco admitted in a technical report that its Alps-treated water was filled with plutonium-239, strontium-90, radioactive iodine, cesium, and other radionuclides. Altogether, the water contains sixty-four radioactive particles at levels thousands of times higher than permissible for release into the ocean.
Tepco apologized. They had forced too much water, too fast through the Alps filters. They promised to filter the water again, but even today, the company admits that three fourths of Fukushima’s cooling water is contaminated with high concentrations of strontium-90 and other radionuclides. This information is self-reported, which makes it even more alarming. No outside observers have been allowed to monitor the water at Fukushima. Nor has Tepco published an inventory of what its tanks are holding.
The Japanese government admits that Tepco is dumping large amounts of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen that is impossible to remove from the water around it. Tepco tries to keep the conversation focused on tritium alone, but in 2020 the company admitted that the water also contains high levels of carbon-14 and iodine-129, which the Alps system is not designed to remove. These radionuclides are harmful when they bind with microorganisms and enter the food chain. Of the two hundred fish species swimming off the coast of Fukushima, nearly a quarter have registered high levels of radiation and been banned from sale for short periods of time. In 2022, after a radioactive black rockfish was caught far to the north of F1, this species, along with a couple of others, will likely be banned for life. Japan already limits the number of days per month that Fukushima fishermen are allowed to fish. For the rest of the month they are paid not to fish. The government has allocated over a hundred billion yen ($691 million) for a campaign to counter Fukushima’s “reputational damage.”
Japan claims that nuclear reactors in China and Korea release even larger volumes of tritium into the ocean. This is true. When operating at full capacity, a water-cooled reactor can discharge up to a billion gallons of water per day. Heated to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and contaminated with tritium, this water is pumped into the rivers and oceans of the world. The entire nuclear industry is based on dismissing the harmful effects of tritium, which include an increased risk of cancer if inhaled or ingested. Countering Japan’s argument is the fact that Fukushima is dumping not only tritium but at least sixty-two other radionuclides. Releasing cooling water from melted reactors is not standard practice. It is a risky venture at unprecedented scale, a cheap fix by a utility company that never seriously considered alternatives—sinking the water into bore holes, using the contaminated water to make cement, or simply pumping it uphill to be stored in the nuclear exclusion zone that stretches for miles around the plant.
Japan and Tepco leave uncorrected the mistaken idea that the International Atomic Energy Agency has approved the Fukushima water release and is monitoring its effects. The IAEA was created to promote the use of nuclear power. It has no regulatory authority, and it has a long history of downplaying the medical and social consequences of atomic disasters. The IAEA criticized Tepco in several technical reports, until the agency finally signed off on Fukushima’s water release—not by saying that it was safe or offering to analyze the water independently—but merely by saying that Tepco’s plan was consistent with industry standards. Since no one before has ever dumped cooling water from three melted reactors into the Pacific Ocean, and since neither the IAEA nor Tepco has published an inventory of the radionuclides in Fukushima’s storage tanks, the world is actually confronting an absence of industry standards.
This is why Japan, even if it proves correct that releasing Fukushima’s contaminated water will have limited environmental consequences, is setting a terrible precedent. Without giving serious thought to alternative solutions or listening to the concerns of its citizens and neighbors, an advanced industrial country has bullied its way into being a bad actor. Dissembling about having no other alternatives and misrepresenting the safety of its plan, Japan has chosen to waste rather than steward the world’s resources. A bad example for all to follow.
The summer of 2023 was also when Japan began releasing radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. Eighteen Pacific Island nations condemned the release, and China, after accusing Japan of using the ocean as its “personal sewer,” banned the importation of fish from Japan. This was followed by a run on the shelves for iodized salt by people thinking it would protect their thyroid glands from fallout.
The Japanese prime minister assured everyone that the release was harmless, that this was standard practice in the industry, that it had been approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and that Japan, having run out of room, had no choice but to release Fukushima’s “treated” water into the ocean. None of these statements were true, but parsing their untruth requires some explanation.
In 2011, after three of Fukushima’s nuclear reactors melted down and a fourth reactor exploded, the plant was flooded with water to keep more radiation from escaping into the atmosphere. This cooling water, along with water that flows daily into the reactors from the neighboring hills, is currently stored in more than a thousand tanks, three stories high, filled with 1.37 million tons of water. This is three hundred and sixty-two million gallons or the equivalent of five hundred and fifty Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The task of managing the ongoing disaster at Fukushima is shared by the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the reactors but was partly nationalized in 2011. Imagine your local power company managing the world’s worst industrial accident, with more than a hundred thousand people still displaced from their homes and costs mounting toward a trillion dollars. A scandal-plagued, insular company, with no knowledge of how to decommission nuclear reactors, Tepco pretends to expertise that it lacks. On several occasions the company has been caught lying about its work at Fukushima. For years Tepco assured the public that the cooling water at Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushima No. 1, or F1, had been cleaned of radioactivity by an advanced liquid processing system (Alps). In 2018, Tepco admitted in a technical report that its Alps-treated water was filled with plutonium-239, strontium-90, radioactive iodine, cesium, and other radionuclides. Altogether, the water contains sixty-four radioactive particles at levels thousands of times higher than permissible for release into the ocean.
Tepco apologized. They had forced too much water, too fast through the Alps filters. They promised to filter the water again, but even today, the company admits that three fourths of Fukushima’s cooling water is contaminated with high concentrations of strontium-90 and other radionuclides. This information is self-reported, which makes it even more alarming. No outside observers have been allowed to monitor the water at Fukushima. Nor has Tepco published an inventory of what its tanks are holding.
The Japanese government admits that Tepco is dumping large amounts of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen that is impossible to remove from the water around it. Tepco tries to keep the conversation focused on tritium alone, but in 2020 the company admitted that the water also contains high levels of carbon-14 and iodine-129, which the Alps system is not designed to remove. These radionuclides are harmful when they bind with microorganisms and enter the food chain. Of the two hundred fish species swimming off the coast of Fukushima, nearly a quarter have registered high levels of radiation and been banned from sale for short periods of time. In 2022, after a radioactive black rockfish was caught far to the north of F1, this species, along with a couple of others, will likely be banned for life. Japan already limits the number of days per month that Fukushima fishermen are allowed to fish. For the rest of the month they are paid not to fish. The government has allocated over a hundred billion yen ($691 million) for a campaign to counter Fukushima’s “reputational damage.”
Japan claims that nuclear reactors in China and Korea release even larger volumes of tritium into the ocean. This is true. When operating at full capacity, a water-cooled reactor can discharge up to a billion gallons of water per day. Heated to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and contaminated with tritium, this water is pumped into the rivers and oceans of the world. The entire nuclear industry is based on dismissing the harmful effects of tritium, which include an increased risk of cancer if inhaled or ingested. Countering Japan’s argument is the fact that Fukushima is dumping not only tritium but at least sixty-two other radionuclides. Releasing cooling water from melted reactors is not standard practice. It is a risky venture at unprecedented scale, a cheap fix by a utility company that never seriously considered alternatives—sinking the water into bore holes, using the contaminated water to make cement, or simply pumping it uphill to be stored in the nuclear exclusion zone that stretches for miles around the plant.
Japan and Tepco leave uncorrected the mistaken idea that the International Atomic Energy Agency has approved the Fukushima water release and is monitoring its effects. The IAEA was created to promote the use of nuclear power. It has no regulatory authority, and it has a long history of downplaying the medical and social consequences of atomic disasters. The IAEA criticized Tepco in several technical reports, until the agency finally signed off on Fukushima’s water release—not by saying that it was safe or offering to analyze the water independently—but merely by saying that Tepco’s plan was consistent with industry standards. Since no one before has ever dumped cooling water from three melted reactors into the Pacific Ocean, and since neither the IAEA nor Tepco has published an inventory of the radionuclides in Fukushima’s storage tanks, the world is actually confronting an absence of industry standards.
This is why Japan, even if it proves correct that releasing Fukushima’s contaminated water will have limited environmental consequences, is setting a terrible precedent. Without giving serious thought to alternative solutions or listening to the concerns of its citizens and neighbors, an advanced industrial country has bullied its way into being a bad actor. Dissembling about having no other alternatives and misrepresenting the safety of its plan, Japan has chosen to waste rather than steward the world’s resources. A bad example for all to follow.