At 2:46pm, 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami hit north east Japan, triggering three meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since then, an unthinkable amount of radioactive contamination has been discharged to our sea, our air, our land, and onto ourselves. It has changed the lives of millions of people, destroyed local farmlands and fisheries that were carefully protected for generations.
The most contaminated areas of Fukushima nuclear disaster remain inhabitable, and will for decades. This leaves the 160,000 ordered to evacuate stuck in limbo, unable to go home, and unable to build new lives elsewhere because they lack proper compensation and support.
Meanwhile, companies deeply involved in the design, construction and running of the reactors involved in the triple meltdown are not being held accountable. Shockingly in some cases, they are making more profits out of the disaster recovery. These companies, namely GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba who designed and built reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, have special rights under the Nuclear Damage Liability Law that protect them from product liability should there be a nuclear disaster. Essentially this means they can profit without worrying about the risks of a meltdown, since the public pays the damage should an accident happen.
The estimated cost of the nuclear disaster is $250 billion US, an impossible figure for any single company - even TEPCO, one of the largest power companies in the world. It is why compensation and life support for the people affected is not what it should be, and why 3.2 trillion yen ($43.7 bn) of Japanese taxpayers money has been injected into the company.
We have been talking with GE, Hitachi and Toshiba, however, when it comes to a question of their responsibility, they simply point to their existing Corporate Social Responsibility webpage or report, where they present their charitable activities in response to the earthquake and tsunami. They have avoided explaining their responsibility in the Fukushima nuclear disaster as a supplier of critical equipment...
more: General Electric, Toshiba & Hitachi hide from their responsibilities in Fukushima | Greenpeace International • Blogs | Greenpeace International
see also
General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba designed, built and serviced the reactors which directly contributed to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, yet these companies have not paid one cent of the cost for the reactor failures!
No comments:
Post a Comment