Category: mahatma gandhi

The seven sins of nuclear power

“(In closing,) – I would like to quote the “seven social sins” that Mahatma Gandhi warned against, and which are inscribed on his tombstone. The first is “Politics without Principle.” To those who gathered here today, I would like you to take these words deeply to heart. Gandhi’s other sins, such as “Wealth without Work,” “Pleasure without Conscience,” “Knowledge without Character,” “Commerce without Morality,” all apply to electric power companies, including TEPCO. And with “Science without Humanity,” I would challenge academia and its all-out involvement with the nation’s nuclear power policy, and that includes myself. The last one is “Worship without Sacrifice.” To those who have faith, please take these words to heart, too. Thank you very much.”

Koide Hiroaki began his career as a nuclear engineer forty years ago drawn to the promise of nuclear power. Quickly, however, he recognized the flaws in Japan’s nuclear power program and emerged as among the best informed of Japan’s nuclear power critic. His cogent public critique of the nuclear village earned him an honourable form of purgatory as a permanent assistant professor at Kyoto University. Koide would pay a price in career terms, continuing his painstaking research on radio nuclide measurement at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute (KURRI) in the shadows. Until 3.11.

Since the earthquake tsunami and nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, he has emerged as a powerful voice and a central figure in charting Japan’s future energy course in the wake of disaster: in scores of well attended public lectures, in daily media consultations and interviews, in his widely read posts and in three books that have helped to redefine public consciousness and official debate…

August 1, 2011
Nuclear Crisis in Japan

NIRS: Tepco reported today the highest radiation levels yet measured at Fukushima Daiichi—1,000 Rems/hour (10 Sieverts/hour)—a lethal dose. The measurements were taken at the base of the ventilation stack for Units 1 and 2 (the stack that did not work during the accident). The actual levels may have been more than measured, since the monitoring equipment could not measure more than 10 Sieverts/hour. Workers sent to the area to confirm the measurements, which were first picked up by a gamma measuring camera, received doses of about 400 millirems in just a few minutes.