Japan, U.S. Move to Expand Nuclear Power Programs Despite Contamination at Fukushima & New Mexico

We end today’s show with news that Japan has announced a major push to revive its nuclear energy program, just weeks before the third anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. This comes just a week after it was revealed about 100 tons of highly radioactive water have leaked from one of the hundreds of storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Here in the United States, the Obama administration announced last week it approved $6.5 billion in loan guarantees to back construction of the country’s first new nuclear power plant in more than 30 years. This comes as a nuclear waste disposal site is set to reopen in New Mexico following an unexplained leak of radioactive material. We speak to Edwin Lyman and Susan Stranahan, co-authors of the new book, “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster.”

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with nuclear news from both Japan and the United States. Japan has just announced a major push to revive its nuclear energy program, just weeks before the third anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown. This comes just a week after it was revealed about a hundred tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from one of the hundreds of storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Here in the United States, the Obama administration announced last week it approved $6.5 billion in loan guarantees to back construction of the country’s first new nuclear power plant in more than 30 years. This comes as a nuclear waste disposal site is set to reopen near Carlsbad, New Mexico, following an unexplained leak of radioactive material that occurred on February 14th. The underground waste dump was shut down after an air monitor detected radioactive contamination. On Monday, federal regulators reported “slightly elevated levels” of airborne radioactivity, but said they didn’t pose a threat to the public.

For more, we’re joined by the co-authors of the new book,Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster. Edwin Lyman is one of the country’s leading experts on nuclear power safety and security and is senior global security scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Susan Stranahan is with this. She has covered nuclear energy issues since she was the lead reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of the Three Mile Island accident, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

We’re going to begin with Edwin Lyman. Talk about these parallel nuclear developments, Japan with its conservative prime minister, Shinzo Abe, despite the polls showing overwhelming opposition to anti-nuclear—to growth of nuclear power reliance, is announcing upping this, and the United States is also moving in this direction.

EDWIN LYMAN: Well, I think these are both symptoms of the same phenomenon, which is the complacency about the nuclear industry and its dangers that was prevalent before Fukushima and is still—and still exists today. So, we have Japan, the new government, which is hoping that the people will eventually forget about the crisis that they went through, so that they can restart the 50 nuclear power plants that were shut down after the accident. In the United States, we have the government’s all-of-the-above energy policy, which includes more government subsidies for nuclear power. And we’re very concerned that if these efforts go forward without taking all the lessons of Fukushima into account, that we’re setting up a potential disaster.