We Are All Always in Danger

What many people suspected since earthquakes and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March has finally been admitted – it appears there has indeed been total meltdown at all three nuclear reactors.

CNN reported that “The earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi, causing the three operating reactors to overheat. That compounded a natural disaster by spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere. Tokyo Electric avoided using the term ‘meltdown’, and says it was keeping the remnants of the core cool. But U.S. experts interviewed by CNN after the company’s announcement in May said that while it may have been containing the situation, the damage had already been done.”

Gary Was, a University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor and CNN consultant said, “On the basis of what they showed, if there’s not fuel left in the core, I don’t know what it is other than a complete meltdown.” And given the damage reported at the other units, “It’s hard to imagine the scenarios can differ that much for those reactors.”

The Japan Times reported on June 7th, “In April, Japan raised the severity level of the crisis to 7, the maximum on the International Nuclear Event Scale, putting it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

At the time, NISA (Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency) believed that 370,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material had been ejected from reactors 1, 2 and 3. That was revised Monday after NISA found that more material escaped from reactor 2 than thought.”

NISA now “doubled its estimate of the radioactive material ejected into the air in the early days of the Fukushima nuclear crisis to 770,000 terabecquerels.”

In a separate article on the same day it was reported “Plutonium that is believed to have come from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has been detected in the town of Okuma about 1.7 km away from the plant’s front gate.”

This is not going away soon or ever. I remember the Chernobyl disaster that happened in 1986 while Osho was staying in Punta Del Este in Uruguay during the world tour. The amount of radioactivity that escaped was played down as it is now. Presently scientists and notably Dr. Helen Caldicott are of the opinion that the Chernobyl meltdown devastated forty percent of the European land mass. The food grown there will be radioactive for hundreds of years.

Osho encourages us to use such situations renewed for meditation:

“This disaster in Russia has simply created a situation in which those who have a little intelligence can start devoting more and more of their time to meditation, because tomorrow is really uncertain. It has always been uncertain, but now it is more uncertain than ever. This disaster may be just the beginning of a chain of disasters, because all these nuclear plants don’t have any intrinsic safety. If anything goes wrong – and now we know that one plant has gone wrong – then they don’t have any power, they are simply helpless. They cannot control the energy that they are creating.

The same disaster can happen in America, can happen in Germany. Just next to this plant which has burned down there are two other plants of the same age; they were made at the same time and had the same architect. They must have the same faults. There is every possibility that the second plant will blow up soon, and the third will not be far behind. And these disasters can trigger panic in thousands of people who are working in other plants; they can lose their so-called controlled behavior. They can start committing mistakes that they have never committed, just out of a feverish, frenzied state. And it is only a question of pushing a wrong button. But you can use this as a great moment.

We are all always in danger.

Osho, The Path of the Mystic, Ch 4 Q 1

Bhagawati for Osho News