| The government of Japan has assigned billions of dollars to financing the first stage of the reconstruction to take place in the area of that country that was devastated by the earthquake and the following tsunami last month. Meanwhile, the situation is still tense in the area near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as the effort to cool down the reactors continues. Among the most recent measures adopted in order to prevent the risks of radioactive contamination, Japanese authorities have now imposed a total exclusion zone around the plant that extends to a radius of 20 kilometers, as well as imposing the evacuation of five additional cities in that area, with all those measures now having a legal character that makes them totally enforceable by the government. Although the news about the actual situation of the Fukushima nuclear plant reactors is somewhat confusing and sensationalistic, the real fact is that the facility is now totally removed from any future Japanese plans for generating electric power and will be totally shut down as soon as the nuclear fuel there is removed. The catastrophic event once again brings up the ongoing debates about the convenience of using nuclear energy to generate electricity because, although it seems to be cheaper and more environmentally friendly in the short run, an accident happening at anyone of those power plants has consequences that are impossible to predict. Nuclear power as a source of generating electricity will once again make it to the world's mass media headlines during the next few days, as we approach the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl plant explosion in Ukraine, that is considered to be the worst atomic disaster since the United States dropped two atomic bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. It is expected that the Japanese parliament will approve next month a project that will make possible the start up of the gigantic efforts for rebuilding the northeastern region of that Asian nation. The amount of money to be assigned is considered a modest figure, as compared to the cost of the total damages caused by the seismic event and tsunami, which so far has been estimated to be around three hundred billion dollars. In the beginning, the budget expenditures will be allocated to the withdrawal and disposal of rubble, building provisional housing facilities for those that are still living in temporary shelters, starting to repair the road and highway infrastructure and beginning to make the first compensation payments to the victims of the catastrophic events. Although Japan is the world's best prepared nation to deal with a very powerful earthquake, the damages inflicted by the latest events, including the aftershocks, are of an enormous nature. And so far there is no complete evaluation of the impact that this natural disaster will have in the social and economic life of that nation. It is necessary to evaluate the way of life and consumption of resources promoted by the capitalist economic system, as well as the way that we, as human beings, relate and interact with nature, because nature itself is giving much more powerful responses, to which it would be irresponsible to shut our eyes shut or, like the ostriches, bury our heads in the shaking ground. |