Fukushima: Wild Boars and... Ostriches?

Some people are pushing for "clean" nuclear power, citing that the newer versions are safe, so no more Chernobyls.

Ah, but Fukushima had a nuclear plant melt down: it was safe for powerful earthquakes, but the tsunami was a bit too much (the 15 meter high tsunami, was much higher than the protective sea wall).

Japan is hoping to move families back to their homes. Here is a NatGeo film about it.


.............

when folks were quickly evacuated, they had to leave their animals (both pets and farm animals) behind. Many went feral (something seen dramatically in the miniseries of Chernobyl).

But one problem in the area was the wild boars that took over the area. (see minute 8 in the above video).

wild boars are dangerous.

Or this article from 2018, from the SCMP about the problem of wild boars in Japan

The problem is increasing in many area of Japan: of course, they blame "climate change", but actually the wild boars are moving into land becoming depopulated as aging farmers die and their farms go back to nature.

But after the people were moved out at the time of the Fukushima disaster, the boars took over:

This northern region has been hit particularly hard by depopulation. People were forced out when the gigantic 2011 earthquake caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and after the resulting tsunami wiped out coastal towns. So much of the area remains inhospitable for humans, but perfect for boars....

But visitors to the area also started noticing feral ostriches.

Ostriches? from a local ostrich farm.

the UK Guardian in 2015 had an article and photos about the abandoned areas, including this photo of an ostrich:

Deserted Town, from the series The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima by Yasusuke Ota

Their story is here.

about half the ostriches died, but the rest went feral... eventually they were captured and given back to their owner, and used to investigate how radiation affected the feral animals.

and in this video, the narrator discusses many of the problems that happened at Fukushima, many of which were sort of underreported at the time.



supposedly the newer salt reactors would not result in such a catastrophe, so some are pushing these newer design as a "green" source of energy.

Don't ask me.

I'm a doctor, not a nuclear scientist.

But I wonder: As Murphy's law goes: If anything can go wrong, it will.

and if so many things went wrong in high tech sophisticated Japan, imagine what could go wrong in places like the Philippines.

Luckily, the Bataan nuclear power plant, located on an earthquake fault (and built after bribing Marcos) never went on line thanks to local activists opposing it.

So score one for the environmentalist activists.

there is talk now and then about reactivating the almost complete plant but by now, the design is obsolete, so few locals want to take the chance.

so I guess we'll stick with our local hydroelectric power plants, and the periodic brownouts during the hot and dry season.

Luckily for us, unlike the people in northern California, no one really trusts the government or big business, so everyone who can afford one owns their own generator, so brown outs are not a big problem.