REMEMBERING FUKUSHIMA THREE YEARS ON
Members of East Lancashire CND from Colne, Barnoldswick, Burnley and Accrington held a Vigil outside Burnley College and UCLAN Campus to remember the third anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan on 11th March 2011. This caused the disastrous melt down of 3 nuclear reactors and wide scale lethal radiation around Fukushima and the Pacific Ocean.
The event highlighted the inherent dangers of nuclear power for the environment and human health. Relevant CND literature was distributed which also showed the connection between nuclear power and weapons. In particular, people were invited to sign the petition to scrap the £100 billion Trident renewal programme.
Members were joined in the Act of Remembrance by College Students.
CND Members & Students outside Burnley College on 11th March 2014
David Penney
Chair, East Lancashire CND
Noyna House, 2 Noyna Street, Colne BB8 0PE
Tel: 01282 870076; Mobile: 07948 203836
E-mail: david.penney53@ntlworld.com
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The Madness of Man
No more to swim in your bluest seas, farewell my dear Pacific,
long did you sustain a myriad of lives, true unimaginable bounty,
You gave all for free and still we stole your life away.
Goodbye salty sea air, no more to breathe your sweetness.
Soon a plume shall come, raining poison death upon us,
watch for wicked winds of radiation,
to silent creep, and deadly seep into
soil and irrigation, you mustn't eat
of tainted wheat, now flee thee to
south of the equator.
C.A Guilfoyle
THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE:
A Symbol of Hope in a dark world
A POEM OF HOPE
One laugh can start a minute.
One rose can dawn the hope.
One seed can set off nature.
One creature can spark spring.
One friend can make a difference.
One breath of fresh air will relieve our lungs.
One sunbeam will light our world.
One star guides millions of minds.
One laugh can change the gloom.
One word starts a life and it’s all up to you.
Leanne T from Riverside Primary School, UK
REMEMBERING FUKUSHIMA
Burnley College/UCLAN, 11th March 2014, 12pm
We have been reminded recently of the dangers of nuclear power stations with the devastating earthquake (8.9 on the Richter scale) and tsunami in Japan on 11th March 2011. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima’s 4 nuclear reactors is now classified at the maximum level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, even worse than Chernobyl with the meltdown of three reactors.
As well as hundreds of tons of melted radioactive fuel in Reactors 1, 2 and 3, there are unsafe pools of spent nuclear fuel rods in Reactor 4 - more than 1,300 in all, amounting to some 400 tons of uranium. Contaminated groundwater is flowing into the sea at the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool every week with radiation spreading throughout the Pacific. The site generates every day about 700 tons of contaminated water.
Fukushima, after 3 years, a 20 kilometre exclusion zone is still in place due to the high levels of radiation with the nuclear plant in a critical state with the risk of further leaks of radiation.
The people of Chernobyl and the surrounding area were exposed to radioactivity in 1986, 90 times greater than that from the explosion of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The long term effects are terrifying. Some areas will be radioactive for 24,000 years, which is the half life of highly radioactive plutonium. A millionth of a gram of plutonium is enough to cause lung cancer. Fukushima area faces worse hazards.
Sayings:
“Mother Earth is only one being
And we, the children of all nations
Must learn to protect her
All living things
To help to hold the world in balance.”
Hopi Elder
Poem: “The No-Go Land” [applicable to Chernobyl and Fukushima]
It was like happening
On the Mary Celeste,
Entering a sometime home
Of a sometime town
With a table still
Laid for breakfast
And not a soul to be
Seen since the wind
Blew all the arrows
Of the weathervanes
That way and invaders
Whisked everyone away.
Unmade beds hold
The mould of
Sleepers and a framed
Unknown woman cradles
A babushka–wrapped child
And smiles into space.
An open book lies
Face down on a stand
Waiting for a hand to
Turn it right side up
And children to be lulled
Again to never never land. Greg Delaney
FUKUSHIMA (haiku)
Left my plums
to fall and rot -
Fukushima . Chris D Aechtner
NO MORE FUKUSHIMAS
All day long the window rattled.
Then, in the evening, sleet fell.
The freshly bloomed Cornelian cherry blossom will open once again in the wet snow.
The weather report says to rest easy, that the westerlies are blowing toward Japan.
I push the button and turn it off.
No more Fukushima.
And when the rays of spring come again,
After the days of the arrogant man alone return to humility,
I hope those long beams of spring sun
Linger long in your garden.
I hope that you once again raise the tilted stone lantern,
And that even on the alpine plants you planted last year,
The spring flowers bloom.
No more Fukushima!
Do Jong-hwan (written for Yuko Tsushima)
MUTANT RADIOACTIVE BUTTERFLIES NEAR FUKUSHIMA
Cho Cho San, a geisha's fan
opening like a primrose
mutant radioactive butterflies
a plague on sacred Japan
Ray Bradbury warned us
not to step off the time travel path
lest we catch a butterfly
and destroy the world
Now it has happened in Fukushima
The Butterfly Effect
gruesome nuclear creatures
tearing through cherry blossoms
as they flutter helpless to the ground,
silk tears, forever lost. Pam Malone
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