Some friends of mine accused me of being “extreme” for pulling up my vegetable garden because of my concern of possible radiation from the Fukushima Dalichi Nuclear accident. I found out later that my gardener did put the top four inches of soil into the trash but he took the veggies home to feed his family of 6. Thank you, Jacqueline Craven, for your letter last week and I agree with you that eating seaweed salad “does not sound to pure” as the seaweed comes from Korea which sits on the Sea of Japan.
After some reflection I wanted to make clear that my first thoughts and prayers were for the people of Japan for the untold suffering that they are going through after the earthquake, tsunami and evacuation of more than 400,000 people that have so far been affected by this accident. As of Friday, the death toll is 12,878 with 14,806 people missing. The emotional horror that they are experiencing is beyond the scope that I could imagine. Many of the refugees lost almost everything and are dealing with the loss of family, their homes and businesses. They must be in deep despair with rebuilding questionable and the future bleak.
The builder of the Fukushima Nuclear plant was the United States Corporation General Electric. General Electric’s revenue in 2010 was 150.2 billion dollars with a profit of 14.2 billion dollars which they paid no taxes on. I am curious to know how much they will contribute to providing humanitarian support to those suffering from this disaster. Will they take any responsibility? After all they assured everyone that the plant was safe and would bring economic prosperity to the area.
I really resent the Obama Administration telling us this year that our taxes are to support a 35 billion dollar budget of new nuclear plants in America. There are farmers in Wales whose lamb is too radioactive to sell and last summer thousands of wild boar hunted in Germany were declared unfit for human consumption for the same reason and radiation has been found in the milk of cows in Washington State. These are only a few examples of the reality of the nuclear age.
E.F. Schumacher, ecological prophet, wrote in 1973, “No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make safe and which remain an intangible danger to the whole of creation”. Can we please pursue safer, cleaner electricity for our addiction to never ending electronic gadgets? Can we think of the legacy that we will leave for future generations?
Valerie Sklarevsky