“THE FACELESS ‘Fukushima 50’ may be Japan’s last hope,” read the headlines. They referred to 50 faceless technicians—since then boosted to 180—who dampen fires at four tsunami-damaged nuclear reactors. All are volunteers.
“Otoko wa chie,” a Japanese proverb says. A man is esteemed for courage. These 50, augmented now by firemen and crews dumping water from helicopters, seek to prevent a repeat of Russia’s 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.
“If that place explodes, it’s the end for all of us,” Maeda Akihiro told BBC. “All I can do is send them encouragement.”
Akihiro-san speaks for us, too.
Australia, Germany and the United States urged voluntary evacuation of minors and citizens. Buses picked up almost 200 Filipinos from Sendai and Fukushima. Catholic churches in Roppongi and Kichijogi house them before they fly home—to joblessness.
Despite economic growth, 100,000 Filipinos became unemployed in January, the National Statistics Office reports. Their ranks will further be swollen by overseas Filipino workers fleeing armed conflicts in the Middle East.
“The Arab democracy spring that began with such exhilaration in Tunisia and Egypt is now enduring a brutal winter in Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen,” the New York Times notes. The UN Security Council’s decision to clamp a no-fly zone in Libya ratchets the pressure.
In Japan, the fear is radiation. An evacuation zone of 12 miles has been carved out. A circle of ghost towns and farms is widening. Is this “Prometheus’ fire”?
Greek fables depict Prometheus as god of crafty counsel. He molded people from clay and snitched the choicest meats from sacrificial banquets. He also stole fire from heaven. Hidden within stalks, the flame was passed on to mortals.
Furious, Zeus created the first woman, Pandora. She was to usher “misfortune into the house of man.” Prometheus was tied to a stake on Mount Kaukasos. There, an eagle fed upon his ever-regenerating liver. Only generations later did Herakles released the “fire thief.”
When scientists split the atom, man could release “Promethean fire” or vast amounts of energy. Today, the world has 460 nuclear power plants. France operates 80. After Fukushima, China froze plans to add to its 20 plants.
But unease always persisted. In August 1939, Albert Einstein and Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard wrote US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nuclear fission could enable Nazi Germany to produce atomic bombs, they warned.
In response, the US and allies launched the secret “Manhattan Project.” Five years, 130,000 workers and $2 billion later, two bombs, “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the first time ever, the world saw nuclear fireballs.
That image haunts efforts to cap nuclear arms proliferation. Iran, ruled by a fanatical theocracy, and North Korea, crippled by mass hunger, seek to add “Promethean fire” to their arsenals. Countries break into cold sweat as terrorists groups seek such weapons.
Japan’s current battle has led to a review of President Corazon Aquino’s decision in April 1986 to mothball the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. She cited over 4,000 technical flaws discovered by a National Union of Scientists (NUS) audit.
An Export-Import Bank $2.3 billion loan bankrolled the project. Constructed by Westinghouse, the BNPP straddles an earthquake fault. Government has not recovered bribes bagged by Marcos crony, “Count” Herminio Disini. The BNPP never generated a single watt of its designed 621-megawatt capacity. Taxpayers paid the last Westinghouse bill in 2007.
“I chaired the Cabinet Committee on (BNPP) and its Senate counterpart,” recalls former Sen. Rene Saguisag. “I remain convinced it is beyond economic repair. And there’s the matter of safety.”
Pangasinan remains open to the idea of hosting a plant. IMBY? In My Backyard? Pangasinan is not hermetically sealed. If we fear radiation from Japan, how much more from a next-door province?
President Benigno Aquino III has no plan of reversing his mother’s decision. Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda said: “In terms of priority, that’s on the low, low end… Safety has been made more emphatic because of Fukushima.”
Dr. Carlo Arcilla of the UP National Institute of Geological Sciences disagrees. The BNPP was not built on an active fault. It uses pressurized water reactors, as in the US and France. What damaged Fukushima was the 30-foot tsunami.
“The only cheaper alternative to nuclear power is geothermal,” Arcilla said. It is more expensive to deliver. Far from the cities, geothermal’s “connecting infrastructure is very expensive.”
Southeast Asia’s largest, and commercially successful, wind-power plant is in Ilocos Norte. That has implications for a net energy importer country. Some proposals are spelled out in the 2007-2035 Philippine Energy Plan.
Legislators will review Philippine preparedness plans. The parameters will have to extend beyond evacuation, return flights and temporary doles.
That is not enough, after Fukushima and the unrest roiling the Middle East. There, an old order of aging autocrats clash with an emerging regime of disaffected citizens who seek broader human freedoms.
Squeezed between “Promethean fire” and libertarian hopes are over two million OFWs. They seek decent livelihoods denied them by corrupt governance. “All they know of tomorrow,” as La Cordaire wrote, “is God will rise before the dawn.”