March 8, 2016

By Joshua Krause

This Friday, it will officially have been 5 years since the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disabled Tepco’s nuclear power plant in Fukushima. But despite the passing of 5 years, we still don’t really know much damage this disaster really caused. We don’t know what the long-term effects will be on the environment, or on the people of Japan, and both Tepco and the Japanese government have lied to the world about the gravity of the situation.

And the situation is still much more serious than they’ve been letting on. We know that plant is still leaking radiation, we know the ocean and the area surrounding Fukushima is still radioactive, and we know that the nuclear power plant is a flimsy house of cards that could crumble at any moment.

But as bad as the situation was and still is at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, believe it or not, it could have been far worse. In fact, Japan’s former Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, admitted that the country came within a “paper thin margin” of an apocalyptic disaster.

In an interview with The Telegraph to mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, Naoto Kan described the panic and disarray at the highest levels of the Japanese government as it fought to control multiple meltdowns at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

He said he considered evacuating the capital, Tokyo, along with all other areas within 160 miles of the plant, and declaring martial law. “The future existence of Japan as a whole was at stake,” he said. “Something on that scale, an evacuation of 50 million, it would have been like a losing a huge war.”

SNIP