Top news: TEPCO gets radiation levels wrong; Greenpeace radiation team starts monitoring near Fukushima; Japanese Gov’t admits possibility of partial meltdown; anti-nuclear protests held in Italy and Netherlands over the weekend.
Projection on Borssele Nuclear Plant © Greenpeace / Bas Beentjes
#Nuclear: TEPCO stated that radiation levels were 10m times higher than normal, before correcting the figure to 100,000 times. The Japanese government has said this mistake was “unacceptable”. Meanwhile, government spokesman Yukio Edano has finally admitted that there has been a possible partial meltdown inside reactor No 2.
#Nuclear: A Greenpeace radiation safety team has started an independent monitoring of the contamination outside the Fukushima evacuation zone. The found that radioactivity outside the 20 km exclusion zone is a public health risk. This story has been running on Le Figaro (France), Waikato Times (New Zealand), Ta Kung Pao (Hong Kong), La Jornada (Mexico), Agora Sao Paulo (Brazil) amongst others.
#Nuclear/action: Last night, Greenpeace Netherlands projected an nuclear symbol onto the Borssele nuclear plant resembling “The Scream” by Edward Munch, and it has been reported in several Dutch newspapers.
#Nuclear/action: Imagine if Fukushima happened in Italy… Greenpeace Florence group staged a “nuclear emergency” flashmob on Sunday, trying to persuade Italian politicians not to go nuclear. To the sound of a siren eighty people fell to the ground in the Republic Square in Florence, demonstrating the effects of radiation.
#Nuclear/action: In Germany, tens of thousands of people also took to the streets this weekend in what is being considered the country's biggest-ever protests against nuclear power, in the wake of the Fukushima crisis in Japan.
That’s it for today!
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