FInal Fukushima Blog Post - Matthew Slasten

During the Semester, my group tracked the developments following the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. We found that the international community holds fears that the radioactive wastes from the damaged plant have and will make their way into the Pacific Ocean, effectively spreading toxic wastes worldwide. Their fears seem to be legitimate, as evidence continues to show that toxic debris has been making its way across the Pacific Ocean to North America. To make matters worse, every other week reports come out of accidents and setbacks on clean-up efforts. These setbacks have been so bad that they have sparked the Japanese Prime Minister to ask the world for intellectual help. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), on the other hand, keeps ensuring the international community that it has clean-up efforts under control and has recently undertaken a 40-year clean-up plan to remove radioactive fuel rods from damaged reactor buildings. Only time will tell if they are successful. As for now, the international community continues to watch and continues to hold their breath.

To accurately track the developments regarding Fukushima, we kept ourselves updated by searching online for recent events relating to the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. We would send each other articles that we thought were interesting and eventually one person would be assigned to take the lead that week on writing the Blog. We keep the rough draft of the Blog Post on Google Docs, where each group member had access to edit typos and add to any areas that seemed to be missing. By Friday, we would do a final read through and one of the group members would submit it. This process really gave everybody flexibility because we couldn’t all meet at the same time. It would also ensure confidence that the group was in agreement on the Blog post.

Overall, this project challenged me to follow a world event and critically assess the implications of each new development. From the past couple of months, I learned that the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster is far from being over. It may not be at the forefront of the top news stories, but it is still causing lasting effects. Radioactive wastes don’t just go away, so the cleanup and the aftermath of this disaster will continue to plague Japan and possibly the world for years to come. And even worse, no one knows what the lasting effects will be and what the most effective cleanup efforts should be. Only time will tell. As for researching as a group, I think that it went well. I really enjoyed knowing that all of the pressure wasn’t on me to do the work and that I had partners that could catch what I missed. Working with a group also gave me the drive to do my part and make sure my tasks were completed on time. I am very glad that I chose to work with this group and that I chose this topic.