Global Education: Austrian Students Search for the Missing Link

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Read in German.

I am proud to introduce the work of a unique class of high school students in Austria, under the guidance of two teachers, Hermann and Lenore (pictured left). They have spent their semester looking at different facets of the Fukushima disaster and preparing essays expounding on their reactions. They have relied heavily, but not entirely, on the work available on this site.

 

Read the class pamphlet

 

For the past 36 months this site, www.AkioMatsumura.com, has focused on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster and provided expert scientific, medical, and political commentary to better understand the implications of an ongoing nuclear issue. We have connected nuclear experts, diplomats, medical experts, and power plant technicians in order to provide a complete picture. In other words, we see the importance of establishing horizontal connections between professions, rather than limiting our perspective to one area of expertise.

The Fukushima disaster is only one example of why we need to Find the Missing Link. Before this I worked to stem religious conflict, create political unity in Asia, and create global environmental awareness.

To me, finding the missing link is discovering solutions to the gaps that exist between the silos of our vertical thinking. What problems do we face that we had never anticipated, or at least not discussed appropriately? Fukushima is certainly one.

A pivot to true horizontal thinking – connecting groups and fields otherwise unconnected – is the only viable approach to resolve the issues we will face throughout the 21st century.… Continue reading

NYT: High Levels of Strontium Found in Groundwater Near Fukushima Plant

Read in Japanese (日本語 )French and German.

 

A June 18 New York Times article by Hiroko Tabuchi — “High Levels of Radioactive Strontium Found in Groundwater Near Fukushima Plant” — alerted us that Tepco has found strontium-90 and tritium well above their legal limits in the groundwater at the Fukushima Daiichi site:

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Diagram from the Asahi Shimbun

Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima, said Wednesday that it had detected high levels of radioactive strontium in groundwater at the plant, raising concerns that its storage tanks are leaking contaminated water, possibly into the ocean. The operator said it had found strontium-90 at 30 times Japan’s safety limit in groundwater near its No. 2 reactor, which suffered a fuel meltdown in 2011. The company has struggled to store growing amounts of contaminated runoff at the plant, but had previously denied that the site’s groundwater was highly toxic. If ingested, strontium-90 can linger in bones, emitting radiation inside the body that can lead, in time, to cancer.

Nuclear expert Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, helps explain the effects of exposure to Tritium and Strontium-90.

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Dr. Gordon Edwards

 

Explaining Radiation
During the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster in March 2011, hundreds of different types of radioactive materials were disseminated into the environment.

Like all material things, radioactive substances are made up of atoms. However, the atoms of a radioactive material are unstable, unlike most of the atoms in most of the materials around us in everyday life, which are stable.… Continue reading