Text Fwd: Steven Leeper: "We need to be working together, trying to help each other

Ten Thousand Things
Steven Leeper: "We need to be working together, trying to help each other, trying to find the truth & sharing it honestly & openly with each other."
March 25, 2011

Leeper, the director of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, which manages the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, told Democracy Now! on March 17, “In Hiroshima, we are pretty sensitive to radiation issues, and we’re very sensitive to disaster issues. We are known as a place that knows about radiation. We have a team of doctors. They left yesterday to go up into that area with their equipment to try to figure out what kind of radiation is up there."

The doctors have returned to Hiroshima, but haven't yet released their report. Today, he shared this follow-up:

In your Democracy Now! interview, you said that we need to know exactly what kind of radiation is out there, which kinds of isotopes are being emitted. What have your doctors found?

This information is not available. If the doctors know, they are not saying anything right now. We do know that iodine and cesium are out there at high levels. The TV is saying all you have to do is wash your vegetables. But the government is making a lot of farmers throw away a lot of product.

Do the risks lessen the further away one is from the Fukushima plant? What are the risks for people in Fukushima; the adjacent prefectures, and beyond?

The risk lessens rapidly with distance from Fukushima. The people within 20km have been evacuated, within 30km people are being asked to stay indoors as much as possible and to wear masks etc when they go out.

How should we read the measurements published by the Japanese government? The top priority for the government and even the scientists right now is to prevent panic. You should read the measurements as extremely conservative.

People are concerned about the use of MOX fuel. ?Would you speak to this?

Reactor 3 runs on MOX, which means it has a lot of plutonium in it. Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances on Earth. A tiny bit inside you will cause cancer. That is why it is very important to know if this plutonium is in the air. At this moment, most people do not think it is.

Should we be concerned about the smoke arising from the plant?

Yes, for two reasons. One is, it is surely radioactive to some extent. The second is that it indicates some sort of fundamental instability that they have yet to control.

Will Fukushima prefecture be able to "come back" eventually like Hiroshima did? Is a a nuclear plant disaster different from an atomic bombing disaster?

There is still an area 30km in radius around Chernobyl where no one can live.

At this moment, my understanding is that the radiation in Fukushima is fairly superficial and will be washed clean by a few big storms (except for right around the plant).

However, it is still possible that we will have a Chernobyl type meltdown, or even four such meltdowns. If we do, we will lose a big chunk of Fukushima Prefecture for a very long time.

A nuclear power plant is tens of thousands of times dirtier (more radiation) than any bomb. The main thing to know is, this is not over, not at all. We are still in terrible danger of a major nuclear disaster.

Do the HPF physicians recommend iodide supplementation for people throughout and outside Japan?

The people I have talked to do not recommend potassium iodide at this point. They don’t think it’s good for you and they don’t think it is necessary. Also, from what I have heard, no one can buy it anyway because the government has bought it all up and is planning to distribute it in the event of a real emergency. This has not been confirmed, but I heard it from a reliable source.

Conflicting information in the media is creating cognitive dissonance. At the Kyoto Journal Facebook page, there was a long discussion about which sources to trust. How do you advise lay people on how to obtain and evaluate information?

In general, the government is trying to prevent panic. The power company and the nuclear industry is trying to minimize the danger and maximize the appearance of control.

The anti-nuclear folks are maximizing the danger and lack of control.

In Kyoto, you have a guy name Koide-sensei. I trust him. Here we have Kamata-sensei. I trust him. However, neither of them have access to the real raw data from the site.

The doctors I was hoping would tell us the truth around here seem to be taking the position that they do not want to cause panic, which causes me to panic.

Hoshi-sensei, who has been on TV, says that right now we are not in great danger, but that the situation is extremely serious and could turn very very bad. He is deeply worried, but not about what’s happened so far, only about what might happen.

I think we all need to listen very carefully to all the information coming to us, then do what our own intuition tells us to do. No one really knows what is happening. No one knows what will happen.

Besides which, the situation is so extremely complex that no one, even with the best of neutral intentions, can possibly know what is happening. What is in the air? Where is it going? Where is it falling? What will it do to you if you breathe it or eat it? All of this is complex beyond any scientific ability to say anything.

We all need to listen and use every reference point we can, be we all need to understand that our guesses are as good as anyone else’s.

What do you advise us on how to deal with the collective psychological trauma we are experiencing?

I think I answered that in the previous question, but in addition, I would say that the key is in the word "collective." We are all in this together.

We need to be working together, trying to help each other, trying to find the truth and sharing it honestly and openly with each other.

We have to avoid taking our stress out on each other and turning this into a blame game filled with anger and hatred and fear. That will only make the situation worse and keep people from being able to make their best contributions. We need to keep calm, at least until the situation with the reactors is resolved.

Then we can start investigating the causes and who to blame and all that accountability stuff, but right now, we need TEPCO people going in there risking their lives to save us, and we need to be grateful that they are doing so.

Love will help us more than anger. Courage will help more than panic.

- Posted by Jean Downey