by Mark Pendergrast This is my third and final post about the state of Japan’s renewable energy efforts and other measures that are vital to prevent further climate change and to wean the country from fossil fuel and nuclear power. In my first post, I covered the public-health impacts of climate change and explained why […]
by Mark Pendergrast This is my second post in a series of three about the state of Japan’s renewable energy efforts, which are vital to prevent further climate change and to wean the country from fossil fuel and nuclear power. In the previous post, I covered the public-health impacts of climate change and explained why […]
Environmental Health
Japan’s Tipping Point in Response to Climate Change: Will the Canary Survive the Coal Mine?
by Mark Pendergrast I’m going to talk about Japanese renewable energy in a minute, but first let me explain why. In 2010, I published a book on public health (Inside the Outbreaks), and as a follow-up, I concluded that the overarching threat to the world’s public health that we face in the coming decades is […]
Though the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant has faded from the headlines, cleanup work continues amid high radiation levels. TIME’s Krista Mahr reports that Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has just released a document that includes an April estimate that 1600 workers will be exposed to high levels of radiation while […]
In much of the reporting I’ve seen on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant workers are an anonymous, if much-praised, group. The New York Times’ Hiroko Tabuchi digs deeper to tell us more about who some of these workers are, and what their experiences can tell us about occupational health and safety in Japan. He […]
Mitsuru Obe reports in today’s Wall Street Journal that three workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been exposed to moderately high levels of radiation, due to contact with radiactive water on the ground. Their reported exposures of 170 to 180 millisieverts are less than the new emergency limit of 250 millisieverts, but […]
The workers remaining at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station are braving extremely risky conditions as they try to avert a nuclear catastrophe. They are working to keep fuel rods – both those inside reactors and in the spent rods stored in ponds – cool enough to avert a Chernobyl-type meltdown, which would spew radioactive […]